In less than two decades, a string of offshore discoveries has turned the Eastern Mediterranean into a significant gas-producing region, making Israel an exporter, twice lifting Egypt into the ranks of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters, and giving Cyprus finds it has yet to bring to market. This backgrounder explores the potential and challenges of exploiting and managing LNG resources in the region.
MINURSO’s Future: What the Security Council’s Choice May Reveal
As the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) approaches the October 31 renewal deadline of the UN Monitoring Mission in Western Sahara (MINURSO), the mission’s longer-term future remains uncertain. Another largely unchanged renewal remains a likely immediate outcome. But beyond that holding pattern, three possible scenarios are also on the table.
Jordan’s Economy Weathers Iran War’s Shocks and Finds New Opportunities
In the summer of 2003, King Abdullah II told Bloomberg Jordan sits “between Iraq and a hard place,” a play on words designed to describe the kingdom’s challenging environment to an American audience amid the US-led Iraq war to the east and the lingering Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the west. Jordan is grappling with a much “harder place” today.
Western Sahara, a sparsely populated territory on the Atlantic coast of northwest Africa, is the site of one of the continent’s longest-running territorial disputes. The conflict dates to Spain’s withdrawal from the territory in 1975, after which Morocco Algeria, and Mauritania vied for control over the former colony.
Algeria and Morocco have long been at odds, but recent diplomatic moves may signal a widening geopolitical split in North Africa. Hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj are joined by MEI Senior Fellow Intissar Fakir to unpack Algeria’s decision to sever diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates and Morocco’s warming relations with both the UAE and Israel. They also explore linkages between these diplomatic shifts and the Western Sahara conflict, Moroccan domestic concerns, particularly in light of this week’s elections, as well as broader regional stability.
The Legacy of Morocco’s Gen Z Protests: Development as the New Political Language
Moroccans head to the polls on September 23 in a parliamentary election that is meant to formally close the chapter opened during last year’s Gen Z 212 protests. The demonstrations, which erupted almost exactly a year ago, drew attention to the mismatch that exists between Morocco’s economic and geopolitical ambitions, and the stark reality of its lagging domestic development.
Reflections on a Diplomatic Career in the Middle East: A Conversation With Ambassador Yael Lempert
Brian is joined by Amb. (ret.) Yael Lempert, Vice President for Outreach at MEI, to discuss her career in diplomacy and the importance of US diplomatic efforts abroad. She shares stories from postings across the Middle East in Baghdad, Cairo, Tripoli, Jerusalem, and Amman and examines how her personal and professional experiences shaped her approach to the work. Together, Brian and Yael discuss the realities of life in the Foreign Service, the core tenets of American diplomacy, and why it matters in today’s Middle East.
This summer, brutally hot temperatures, deepening water scarcity, and spiking fertilizer costs have put North Africa’s agricultural sector under intense pressure. Host Alistair Taylor is joined by Mohammed Mahmoud, CEO and founder of the Climate and Water Initiative and lead for Middle East Climate and Water Policy at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health, to unpack the region’s food and water security challenges. Drawing on Mahmoud’s new report card on agricultural sustainability in North Africa, they explore the diverging picture across the region, why some countries have weathered the strain better than others, and what it will take to build a more resilient and secure food system.
How Israel-Backed Sweida Became Syria’s Narcotics Capital
In the early hours of Sunday, May 3, Jordanian F-16 fighter jets crossed into Syrian airspace and launched strikes on at least six locations in the southern province of Sweida. In a statement issued hours later, Jordan’s military said that “Operation Jordanian Deterrence” had targeted “factories, facilities and warehouses used by trafficking groups as launch points for smuggling operations into Jordan.”
The Far Reach of the Iran War: Food Insecurity from North Africa to the Sahel
Within weeks of the Strait of Hormuz closure, fertilizer prices began to rise sharply. Tanker traffic through the strait, which handles one-third of the global fertilizer trade, fell by 90%. Across North Africa the impacts are multiplying, and this is having ripple effects for the Sahel in the south, adding to food price inflation, migration pressures, and the erosion of state legitimacy. The situation underscores how food security is a governance issue compounded by geopolitical crisis.
Why Some Gen Z Protests Succeeded as Others Stumbled
In 2025, youth protests over corruption, precarity and broken promises by government officials swept across multiple regions around the world. Demonstrations in Nepal forced early elections, while unrest in Peru toppled a president. In Morocco, Kenya, Indonesia and Serbia, young people mobilized around similar grievances, with widely varying effect.
The Abraham Accords have represented a remarkable shift in U.S. Middle East policy. They reframed Arab-Israeli normalization as a result of shared interests – within the Middle East and directly with the US, rather than as a byproduct of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Signed in September 2020, on the last leg of the first Trump administration, the Accords brokered by Washington normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, followed by framework agreements with Morocco and Sudan. From the American perspective, the Accords were intended to break decades of diplomatic stagnation in the Middle East in order to establish a regional framework aligned with American strategic objectives.
في 31 أكتوبر، أصدر مجلس الأمن التابع للأمم المتحدة قرارًا يركز على خطة الحكم الذاتي المغربية كأساس لحل نزاع الصحراء الغربية. يشير تصويت الأمم المتحدة وتعليقات المبعوث الخاص للولايات المتحدة ستيف ويتكوف إلى أن الرئيس دونالد ترامب يريد تحقيق انتصار آخر في مجال السياسة الخارجية تحت عنوان "صنع السلام". لكن الفرصة المتاحة لإدارة ترامب أكبر من مجرد حل قضية الصحراء الغربية. فهي يمكن أن تفتح الباب أمام مصالحة بين المغرب والجزائر من شأنها أن تدمج اقتصاد المغرب العربي الأوسع نطاقاً، وتقلل الهجرة إلى أوروبا، وتوسع التعاون في مجال الطاقة، وتمكن من تنسيق أقوى لمكافحة الإرهاب في منطقة الساحل.
الشباب المغربي يحتج بغضب على وعود التنمية التي لم تف بها الحكومة
يحتج مئات الشباب المغاربة في 11 مدينة منذ 27 سبتمبر تحت شعار "GenZ 212". كان الدافع الرئيسي وراء المظاهرات هو الإحباط الشعبي العميق من عجز المغرب المستمر عن الوفاء بخططه ووعوده التنموية. سيكون من الصعب على الحكومة معالجة هذا النوع من السخط الواسع بسرعة ومصداقية.
مع دخول نزاع الصحراء الغربية عقده الخامس، لا يزال النزاع الإقليمي دون حل وغير معروف إلى حد كبير. تحلل إنتصار فقير من معهد الشرق الأوسط (MEI) التاريخ المعقد للصحراء الغربية والمطالبات المتنافسة من قبل المغرب والجمهورية العربية الصحراوية الديمقراطية. وتبحث في التطورات الأخيرة، مثل اعتراف الرئيس ترامب بسيادة المغرب على الإقليم وانهيار وقف إطلاق النار الذي دام 30 عامًا، بالإضافة إلى الأسئلة الجوهرية التي لا تزال دون إجابة بعد نصف قرن.
