Geopolitical influence over trade increasingly rests on controlling the systems that make them work. The Middle East illustrates the stakes. US ports, cable corridors, cloud facilities, artificial intelligence (AI) investments, and maritime routes connect regional economies to global commerce while exposing them to external decisions and disruptions. For the United States, the challenge is to translate technological advantage into resilient networks rather than rely on centrality that can itself become a source of vulnerability and coercion.
Bonus Episode: Previewing Israel’s First Post-October 7 Election
Israel is preparing to hold what may be its most consequential election in decades. On October 27, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will face his first electoral test since October 7, 2023. In this bonus episode of Middle East Focus, we present the audio from a recent MEI webinar, hosted in Israel on the eve of the vote. Senior Fellow Natan Sachs is joined by Dr. Shira Efron, Distinguished Chair for Israel Policy and senior fellow at the RAND Corporation, and Neri Zilber, veteran journalist and Financial Times correspondent. They explore what’s at stake in this historic election and how different outcomes could reshape Israel’s domestic politics and the wider region.
Israel Was Built on Hope. This Election May Be Our Last Chance to Save It
Israel’s national anthem, Hatikva, means “the hope.” Israel is not just another country, but the culmination of a 2,000-year-old dream of national redemption. The rebirth of the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland, just three years after the Holocaust, was a miraculous triumph of hope over all odds.
Today, that hope has been shattered and the elections on October 27 have become the most consequential in Israel’s history.
Since 1967, Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been a contested feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The ultimate disposition of the settlements and ongoing activity related to their growth have repeatedly defied agreement in negotiations over a resolution to the conflict.
The Houthis are a political-military faction and Zaydi religious movement founded in northwestern Yemen in the 1980s. A key member of Iran’s Axis of Resistance with links to other militant organizations in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, the group has continued to pose a threat to Western interests on a global scale.
The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a proposed multinational infrastructure initiative aimed at upgrading connectivity between the three regions through integrated trade, energy, and digital networks. Announced at the G20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023, IMEC is envisioned partially as a counterweight to China’s international infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative.
After a decade of post-Arab Spring isolation, Turkey’s leaders have recognized that their ambition to position the country as an agenda-setter on the world stage requires active engagement in all directions. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s consolidation of executive authority has centralized foreign policy decision-making and tied it to his domestic political priorities, transforming the country’s revisionist approach to one shaped primarily by personal and pragmatic interests.
MEI Senior Fellow Brian Katulis engages friends, colleagues, and policy experts in casual conversations on the most important happenings in the Middle East.
US-Iran Tensions After Killing of Qassem Soleimani
MEI experts Randa Slim and Alex Vatanka join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the sharp escalation in US-Iran tensions following the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Gen. Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3, along with Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. After several days of waiting to see how Iran might respond, on Jan. 7 Tehran launched more than a dozen missiles at two bases in Iraq housing US forces. No casualties were reported, and in comments on Jan. 8 President Trump promised to impose new sanctions on Iran, but seemed to back away from further military action.
Jihadism in South Asia: A militant landscape in flux
Over the past five years, the focus of U.S. counterterrorism strategists has remained on the Middle East, especially after the emergence of ISIS in 2014, while Islamist terrorist organizations operating in South Asia have been considered a secondary threat. However, the fact remains that South Asia is home to more Islamist terrorist organizations than any other region of the world. Al-Qaeda was born there, in Afghanistan, and ISIS has roots in the region. But at the turn of the decade both global jihadist groups are now facing major challenges and the critical question is whether they will manage to survive this period of crisis amid a severe leadership vacuum following the death of ISIS’s supreme leader and caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the killing of al-Qaeda heir apparent Hamza bin Laden.
Georgia: European aspirations, Middle Eastern realities
Since regaining its independence nearly three decades ago, European aspirations have been a central part of Georgia’s political agenda and identity. But the reality is more complicated and Georgia is, in a meaningful sense, part of both greater Europe and the greater Middle East.
The Military-Security Dimension of Israel-Southeast Asia Relations
Over the past two decades, Israel has developed robust bilateral relationships with China, India, and Singapore. Israel has also succeeded in forging ties with Japan and South Korea. More recently, Israel has devoted considerable attention to strengthening its relations with Southeast Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar. Military-security cooperation in the form of arms trade as well as technology transfer and licensed production has emerged as an important dimension of Israel’s relations with Southeast Asian countries.
Trump has taken such a forward-leaning and aggressive position now that he has set himself, and the U.S., in a conflict trap that he might not be able to defuse.
While yesterday’s vote in the Iraqi Council of Representatives on a decision to remove U.S. forces is not legally binding, it creates dynamics inside the U.S. and Iraq that make a U.S. decision to remove its forces all but inevitable.
The future of the UK’s relationship with the Maghreb
The UK’s impending exit from the EU will present a new chapter for British interests in and posture toward the region. If the UK is to find a trade-off for loss of diplomatic and economic heft, it will need to re-prioritize its engagement efforts. Policy continuity toward Morocco and Tunisia appears inevitable; Algeria, in contrast, promises great opportunity for an evolving relationship.
Strong U.S. leadership could still make a difference to counter the threats arising from the ongoing proxy war, but the Trump White House appears mainly to have other things on its mind.
The oldest peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East, MEI’s flagship journal covers politics, society, and culture in the region.
