Research & Commentary Results

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Gerald Feierstein, Paul Salem, Ruba Husari, Amal Kandeel, and Gonul Tol provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the arrests of numerous prominent Saudi government officials and leading businessmen on charges of corruption, Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri’s resignation, oil prices in the Middle East hitting new highs, the threat to MENA due to rising temperature levels in the region, and the Turkish prime minister’s visit to Washington.

The resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Sunday has sent shockwaves in Tehran. While Iranian leaders and their regional allies try to appear measured and confident, they fear that political instability in Lebanon and a potential war between Israel and Iran’s ally Hezbollah – particularly at a time when Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies are still engaged in the Syrian war – could adversely impact Tehran’s regional ambitions.

Akram al-Kaabi, the leader of Iranian-sponsored Iraqi militia group Harakat al-Nujaba, visited prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric Sheikh Afif al-Nabulsi to discuss regional affairs, Iranian and

The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed two bills today that tighten sanctions on Hezbollah. The bills amend sections of the Hezbollah International Financing Act of 2015. The first bill imposes sanctions on any foreign person that assists a number of key Hezbollah financial, security, foreign relations, and media institutions. The second bill imposes sanctions on persons responsible for use of people as human shields in the 2006 war or thereafter, and names Hezbollah senior leadership among those intended.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Paul Salem, Gerald Feierstein, Randa Slim, Bilal Y. Saab, and Jean-François Seznec provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including tensions between Washington and Cairo over Egypt’s excessive authoritarian crackdown, Russia’s attempt to help mediate the G.C.C. crisis, the likely postponement of the Kurdish independence referendum, the performance of the Lebanese Army in anti-ISIS operations, and the Iraqi oil minister’s trip to Moscow to discuss oil production cuts.

From Tehran’s view, Hezbollah’s military operation against Nusra Front militants on the outskirts of the Lebanese town of Arsal near the Syrian border signifies Hezbollah’s growing political and military influence in Lebanon and the broader region.  “There was more cooperation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army in the battle of Arsal than at any time in the past. And this cooperation signifies fundamental changes in Lebanon’s political sphere.

One of the most revealing moments of the recently concluded Ramadan TV season occurred in the new Egyptian series, Don’t Turn Off the Sun. A newly-wedded young wife finds out that her husband is having an affair with his male friend; a liaison that ultimately leads to the dissolution of their marriage. The most telling aspect of what was potentially perceived as a provocative move from the series’ makers was the fact that it didn’t stir any controversy at all.

Read the full article on Foreign Affairs. 

Iran’s Islamic Azad University (IAU) plans to open new branches in Lebanon and Iraq, according to Ali Akbar Velayati, the head of the university’s board of founders and an influential political figure in the Islamic Republic.

Israel and Hezbollah have recently raised the profile of their long quiescent front across the Blue Line border. Warnings have increased that a conflict will soon engulf Lebanon, and perhaps even draw in the United States. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has threatened to attack Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona and Israeli chemical installations in Haifa.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Yousef Munayyer, Randa Slim, and Paul Salem provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including Israel’s expected announcement of new settlement expansion, the escalating risk of a clash between U.S.-backed and pro-Iranian forces in southeastern Syria, and Lebanon’s efforts to pass a reformed election law.

Read the full article on the Washington Post.

“There are really big problems right now,” a conservative Islamist cleric close to Syria’s armed opposition told me – “al-Qaeda is trying to create a new loyal faction in Idlib, but that’s being prevented by al-Hayat.” As this influential cleric and four other similarly well-connected Islamist opposition figures have described to me in recent days, al-Qaeda’s central leadership is growing increasingly exasperated at its former Syrian affiliate – now named Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (H.T.S.), after a second rebrand in January 2017 – and is now actively seeking to build a rival movement more loyal

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Gonul Tol, Randa Slim, Alex Vatanka, Marvin G. Weinbaum, and Mabrouka M’Barek provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including Turkish President Erdogan’s upcoming meeting with Russian President Putin, the upcoming speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Nasrallah, the suprising popularity of Rouhani’s VP in the Iranian Presidential Race, the Taliban’s new Spring offensive, and protests in Tunisia over a government proposal to give amnesty to the country’s corrupt financial elite.

This essay discusses Hezbollah’s gradual acceptance of Lebanon’s sectarian political system, the means by which it has achieved hegemony over Lebanon’s Shiite population, and how its intervention in Syria has accentuated sectarianism and Sunni-Shiite tensions in Lebanon.