Incoming Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi may break the mold of his predecessor by exceeding expectations in his first 100 days, but make no mistake—less horrific is still horrific; no one should be fooled.
Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as Iran’s new president on August 5. Ali Alfoneh and Henry Rome join guest host Alex Vatanka, director of MEI’s Iran Program, to discuss the political and economic challenges the new president will contend with, his relationship to Ayatollah Khamenei, and the future of Iran and the country’s leadership.
Iran’s water bankruptcy has been in the news lately, prompting deadly protests in Khuzestan province that also garnered the attention of global media. But this kind of problem is neither new or unique in the country. Drying rivers, vanishing lakes, shrinking wetlands, declining groundwater levels, land subsidence, sinkholes, desertification, soil erosion, dust storms, air, water and waste pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildfires are among the other familiar signs of Iran’s environmental devastation.
the years leading up to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban had strained relations with Iran. Tensions between the two sides escalated to the point that the Iranian government and the Quds Force actually assisted American forces during the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
Tehran’s policy toward the Afghan Taliban has created new clashes within Iranian government circles. These clashes recently escalated as influential hard-line media and associates of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made public efforts to portray the Taliban in a positive light.
The future of economic growth in the GCC is looking better than some analysts expected in the depths of the downturn in 2020. What may be different in this recovery compared to previous economic crises in the Gulf is a more limited fiscal policy space, and more variance among GCC countries in their ability to rebound with smart stimulus. As the global economic recovery now strengthens oil demand, taking advantage of this interim period of the global energy transition will mean accelerating government spending in areas where it can make a long-term impact on productivity growth and increased labor force participation among citizens in the private sector, especially women. Some governments will be able to accelerate productivity, including using highly skilled foreign labor and favorable long-term residency regimes, and others will be simply treading water to satisfy immediate demands of their populations.
There is a new and little noticed geostrategic alliance on the rise. India, Israel, and the UAE have had surface-level, transactional relations for a long time. However, last year’s normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states — chief among them, the UAE — along with Turkey’s bid to return as the leader of a Muslim order and the growing distance between the UAE and Pakistan have created an unlikely and unprecedented “Indo-Abrahamic“ transregional order. This emerging multilateral pact may fill the gap the United States is leaving in the Middle East and has the potential to transform the region’s geopolitics and geoeconomics.
Masameer County, the Netflix animated television series taking Saudi Arabia by storm, reveals how the country’s creative class, over the last two decades, has posed awareness-raising questions while reevaluating the assumptions and terms used to discuss contentious social issues. This is not the Saudi Arabia of clerics, oil, and the royal family, but the one experienced by everyday people.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
While Western banks saw their valuations drop substantially during the first 18 months of the COVID pandemic — and have yet to recover — the declines among Saudi banks have been smaller and their valuations are now closer to, if not above, their pre-pandemic levels. Identifying the drivers of this seemingly contradictory trend helps us better understand the shifts within the Saudi banking sector and the growing impacts of policies related to Vision 2030, the country’s long-term economic development and diversification program.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said arrived in Neom, Saudi Arabia, on July 11, 2021, in his first foreign trip since becoming the sultan of Oman on Jan. 11, 2020. At the start of his two-day visit to the kingdom he was met by King Salman and accompanied by a high-level Omani delegation. A slew of new agreements were signed across commerce, culture, and transport.
In the past few months, several articles have been written on the significant rise in the Saudi female labor force participation rate (LFPR) from 17.7% in Q2, 2016 to 33.2% in Q4, 2020. Interestingly, this increase in female LFPR was not coupled with a rise in unemployment, which often occurs when workforce participation rises for a particular group. In fact, the unemployment rate among female nationals declined to its lowest level in four years, at 24.4% in Q4, 2020. However, it still remains over twice as high as that for male nationals. Another positive labor market indicator, albeit one receiving little attention from analysts, is the significant change in the employment rate among Saudi women. In other words, Saudi women not only increased their share in the workforce, but were also able to gain jobs once they entered the labor force.
On July 1, 2021, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, accompanied by Mohamed Alabbar, an entrepreneur and the chairman of UAE real estate firm Eagle Hills, attended a ceremony in Belgrade. It commemoratedthe final work on a tower within Waterfront Belgrade, a major real estate project funded by the UAE. The ceremony was an illustration of the growing ties between Serbia and the UAE, which over the past nine years has become Belgrade’s primary partner in the Arab world. The UAE has also emerged as a source of cash and an instrument of domestic political promotion for the Serbian leadership.
Oil and gas have long dominated trade and investment flows between Singapore and the Gulf. In the wake of two new projects — one in Singapore and the other in the United Arab Emirates — unveiled last month, this article considers whether Singapore and the Gulf are on the cusp of a new level and type of economic relations.