Reports emerged this week that President Bashar al-Assad traveled on Sunday to his ancestral hometown and Alawi stronghold of Qardaha for a meeting with members of the powerful Makhlouf family.
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Charles Lister, Randa Slim, Jonathan M. Winer, Alex Vatanka, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Robert S. Ford, Mirette F. Mabrouk, and Syed Mohammad Ali.
Tom de Waal, Nicole Grajewski, and Theodore Karasik join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the recent border hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the role that Russia, Turkey, and Iran are playing in the geostrategically important South Caucasus.
As the people of Iran and the region rise up against the regime in Tehran, it is time to prepare for what comes next and imagine what could lead to the region’s next renaissance: a Middle Eastern cooperative organization.
The relationship between the Middle East and the Horn of Africa is centuries-old and complex. While the world’s attention is focused mainly on the “great power competition” in the region, primarily between the U.S. and China, the Horn of Africa has also become a central battleground for influence among competing regional players, principally Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Qatar, Iran, and Egypt. As they pursue their interests in the region, from Ethiopia and Sudan to Somalia and Djibouti, these competing states are the main drivers of tension and instability in the Horn of Africa.
Iran’s high leadership has come to a consensus on an eastward shift in its foreign policy, and Russia is a salient part of that. Recent indications suggest that, at least for now, the Russians do not want to enlarge their footprint in Iran. Yet Iran wants a more proactive Russia.
In recent weeks, reports of a potential 25-year, $400-billion deal between Iran and China have dominated the conversation about Tehran’s options for freeing itself from the punishing U.S.-imposed sanctions regime on the country. But China is not alone in seeing an embattled Iran as a major geopolitical and commercial opportunity — Russia too has ambitions of strengthening ties with Iran.
MEI’s Paul Salem and Ross Harrison join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the complexity and limitations of US diplomacy with Iran, and how the upcoming US presidential election impacts the state of play. Salem and Harrison examine the issue in depth in their recent article for The National Interest, “The Layers and Limits of Diplomacy With Iran.”
After months of under-reported cases and relaxed lockdown measures, the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic has gripped government-held areas. A worrying rise in daily deaths and infections, especially in Damascus, has left Syria facing what could be its biggest challenge yet.
In October, the United Nations embargo on arms sales to Iran is scheduled to expire. This was a deadline specified in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal concluded by the Obama Administration. The Trump administration stridently opposes the lifting of this restriction and is lobbying within the UN Security Council to have the embargo extended indefinitely.
On July 27, the White House announced that President Donald Trump has appointed retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor to be the next American ambassador to Berlin. Macgregor’s appointment is already seen by some in Tehran as about more than just an American military drawdown in Germany: it is seen as a sign of a broader American policy reorientation in Europe and beyond.
I don’t understand why Iran’s Revolutionary Guards insist on conducting military exercises in the Gulf waters that are as devoid of credibility as they are comical. Because if the goal of these drills is to intimidate or change the calculations of the U.S. Navy, nobody is flinching or losing any sleep in the Bahrain-headquartered U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, or NAVCENT.
If elected, Joe Biden and his administration will face a wide range of foreign policy challenges. Possibly none will be more vexing than what to do about the clerical regime in Iran.
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Mirette F. Mabrouk, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Gonul Tol, Alex Vatanka, and Gerald Feierstein.
The circumstances seem to be right for a genuine rethink of the Syrian political process, but there are few answers to the question that can be heard often in Geneva, Washington, and Brussels these days: “What now?” The Syrian Association for Citizens’ Dignity has just released a major report, titled “We Are Syria,” that could help to provide the answer to that question: reorient the political process to make the rights of the displaced its foundation, and make the regime and its allies understand that this is the way toward the easing of sanctions and ultimately a sustainable political solution.