With Iran, American policymakers have often chased phantoms in search of solutions to problems they did not understand. This futile shadow-chase continues when “experts” argue that the U.S. should somehow encourage the break-up of Iran on ethnic or linguistic lines. This idea is simply wrong.
On Aug. 25, Iran’s parliament voted on the cabinet of its new president, Ebrahim Raisi, approving 18 out of the 19 ministers put forward. Raisi’s government is full of revolutionaries likely to adopt a hardline approach to domestic and international affairs, leading to heightened geopolitical risk and potentially prolonging the country’s economic crisis.
Under President Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is poised to exert greater control over Iran’s national security agenda and economy. Several of his ministers and advisors were members of the IRGC or have connections to it.
Just before visiting Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus in late July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave Serbia an unpleasant surprise. He announced that Turkey would lobby to increase the number of countries that recognized independent Kosovo. Erdoğan stated on July 19, “Now 114 countries recognize Kosovo, and we want that number to increase. We hope that this year at the United Nations General Assembly, at the meeting I will have with [U.S. President Joe] Biden, we will discuss this topic again, that we will work together on the recognition of Kosovo.”
اقرأ تقرير MEI الأسبوعي الذي يتضمن تحليلات الخبراء للتطورات الإقليمية الرئيسية للأسبوع المقبل.
While the Black Sea has historically been an area of significant geostrategic importance, this has not made it a vibrant zone of commerce, transport, energy, tourism, or cultural exchange. Rather, it has become a theater of struggle for dominance and competing geopolitical and geo-economic interests. This situation has been exacerbated by conflict between Russia and countries in the region, like Ukraine and Georgia, that have sought closer ties with the West and aspire to NATO membership and EU integration. These developments have dire consequences for regional security and stability, disrupting political and economic ties in the area and beyond. A long-term solution to the region’s security issues could be based on intensifying trade relations and increasing economic interdependence between the states. This paper identifies major barriers to closer regional trade and economic cooperation and outlines ways to overcome them.
Many analysts oversimplify the political conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia as one driven by sectarianism or Shi’a-Sunni tensions that has shaped the two states’ outlook and actions in the Middle East. However, their political differences are actually much more complex and deeper rooted.
The July 29 suicide drone attack on the Israeli oil tanker Mercer Street, which left two British and Romanian crewmembers dead in the Arabian Sea, was carried out by Iran and was intended to cause human casualties and physical damage, according to the investigative report from U.S. Central Command(CENTCOM). While Tehran denied any hand in the strike, the G7 directly blamed Iran and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised a “collective response.”
Every year 400-500 women are killed brutally in Iran to protect men’s “honor.” The killers are usually close relatives — often the victim’s father, husband, or brother. According to a report published in The Lancet in October 2020, at least 8,000 such killings were reported in Iran between 2010 and 2014. “The number of honor killing victims is greater than reported as in some cases women were driven to suicide or the cause of the death was not reported as murder but as illness,” according to Dr. Rezvan Moghadam, founder of the Iranian organization Stop Honor Killings. Dr. Moghadam has documented more than 1,200 cases of honor killings in the country. According to research, which will soon be published as a book and made available to the public, these kinds of violent killings of women and girls have been increasing for the last 20 years in different cities and villages in Iran.
At the dawn of the Biden era of American foreign policy, a more mature, realistic Saudi foreign policy is emerging to match the shifting signals from Washington. In some measure, the Saudis are readopting elements that traditionally characterized their policy preferences before the meteoric rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
Since 1979 U.S. policies toward Iran have alternatively ranged from some version of “maximum pressure” to appeasement and back again while maintaining the same assumptions and calculus: the clerics would ultimately fall when the elite and middle class had enough and were willing to pay the price for revolting. Today, however, the landscape is evolving. While Iran’s leaders appear to be adapting, U.S. thinking is rooted in the past.
Suddenly and seemingly without warning, Russian forces amassed in Crimea and near the Ukrainian border in April 2021. Heavy armor, long-range missiles and artillery, modern air forces, and elite airborne infantry units deployed into positions that raised alarm in Ukraine and throughout Europe. The situation today appears stable, but reports of new and upgraded hardware, including unmanned vehicles, demand a fresh evaluation of the Russian way of war.
One of the most consequential changes in the Middle East’s geopolitical map is happening at the water’s edge. Along the entire eastern rim of the Mediterranean basin, global and regional actors are engaging in a spate of port capacity expansions, new private port construction, and the sell-off of major state-owned ports that will determine who sits atop the region’s global trade flows for decades to come. The international competition to rebuild Beirut’s port is one key puzzle piece in this larger process that is reconfiguring the Levant’s maritime commercial architecture and, as a consequence, the geopolitical contours of the Middle East.
The possibility that the Lebanese government could opt for China to reconstruct Beirut’s port has raised alarm in Washington and European capitals given China’s already outsized commercial port presence in Egypt, Israel, and Greece. Increased Chinese involvement in Lebanon’s port operations could consolidate Beijing’s hold over the commercial connectivity architecture of the Levant. Re-orienting global commercial flows between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia according to Beijing’s priorities would make China’s Belt and Road Initiative a dominant organizing principle in the international relations of the Middle East. The most effective way to offset China’s ambition may be to facilitate Mediterranean rivals France and Turkey to jointly rebuild Beirut’s port.
Due to his divergent views on Iran’s international and regional policies, Hossein Amirabdollahian had various disagreements with then-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif while serving as deputy foreign minister beginning in 2011, and these ultimately led to his removal from the post in June 2016. The official reason announced for the change was Amirabdollahian’s appointment as Iran’s new ambassador to Oman, although he refused to accept the position.
Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s new foreign minister, is famous for his exceptionally close relationship with the Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as its regional allies.