Research & Commentary Results

Israel has reportedly expanded its operations against Iran in the Middle East. In July, Israeli and foreign media attributed airstrikes on Iranian targets near Baghdad to Israel. Last week, U.S. officials confirmed that Israel was responsible for the attacks, which mark the first such air raids on Iraq since 1981, when Tel Aviv destroyed Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor.

On Aug. 12, an explosion took place inside an ammunition warehouse in the al-Saqr military base in southern Baghdad, triggering hundreds of mortars and rockets to fire off in all directions throughout urban, populated areas. One person was killed and 29 wounded, as munitions and debris scattered as far as 5 kilometers away.

While some changes may be in the offing, for now most signs suggest that regional leaders should expect neither new opportunities, nor new challenges, but more likely a broad continuity of existing EU policy toward the region.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a destabilizing element in an already volatile Middle East. The Palestinians are too weak to wrest their independence from Israel. But as long as their right to self-determination is denied, they are likely to engage in regular violence targeting Israel. Absent outside intervention, Israel is powerful enough that it can suppress Palestinian demands for freedom — but it is not able to completely pacify the Palestinians. Thus, the conflict continues, punctuated every few years by rounds of more significant violence.

The current Rashida Tlaib/Ilhan Omar debacle has received more attention from every quarter than virtually anything other than a war. All the usual suspects have weighed in with (mostly) predictable comments, generally in the context of the long-running “special relationship” between Israel and the U.S. The two domestic political contexts are often mentioned only in passing. With all respect to those who have tried to take a longer or strategic view, I would suggest that it really boils down to the political calculations of just two men, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Autonomy is normally given to a specific cultural or national group as part of a political agreement. For Palestinians, the idea that autonomy is the goal of talks is unhelpful because they already have autonomy.

The news came eight months after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to the Omani capital for surprise talks with Sultan Qaboos in October 2018, and four months after Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah met with Netanyahu in Poland during the Trump administration’s “Peace and Security in the Middle East” summit.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region including Kazakhstan’s upcoming “Astana talks” on Syria, Jared Kushner’s planned visit to the Middle East, the shift in US-Pakistan relations, and Abbas’ announcement that the Palestinian Authority will halt all signed agreements with Israel, featuring Charles Lister, Gerald Feierstein, Marvin G. Weinbaum, and Khaled Elgindy.

Many analysts have been dismissive of the plan’s prospects, but for Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, there’s at least one major reason to line up with Washington on the issue: Iran.

With the increased influence of right-wing populism and evangelicalism, Mahmoud Abbas has seen the region’s historic commitment to the Palestinian cause wane. These internal changes, along with a pivot toward Washington, have, in turn, aided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in making further inroads on the South American continent.

Becca Wasser, policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, and NPR national security correspondent and MEI scholar Greg Myre join host Alistair Taylor to discuss Moscow’s growing political, economic, and military footprint in the region.

My colleagues and I at the American Task Force for Lebanon (ATFL) visited the LAF southern headquarters, the UNIFIL headquarters, and the Blue Line, established in 2000, separating Israel and Lebanon. We were encouraged by what we saw.

The Trump administration’s economic workshop in Bahrain produced some noteworthy moments that reflected recent changes in Israeli-Gulf relations, but it fell well short of its original declared intent. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials attended, and it did not conclude with any tangible steps to advance the peace process.

Competition for security and energy is at the center of recent developments in the Eastern Mediterranean. Countries from Egypt to Turkey are moving to secure, exploit, and market their (not always fair) share of the game-changing offshore natural gas reserves. Russia, China, and Iran are securing port facilities, and in the case of Russia, drilling rights, in Lebanon and Syria. 

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Gerald Feierstein, Guney Yildiz, Nathan Stock, Elizabeth Dent, and Eran Etzion provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including this week’s Bahrain “workshop” on Palestine’s economic development, an opposition victory in Istanbul’s rerun election, the release of a portion of the Trump administration’s Israel-Palestine peace plan, the fracturing of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, and Tuesday’s trilateral meeting between the U.S., Israel, and Russia.