The “Anti-Strategic President” Needs to Revive a Policy Process to Resolve Iran
President Donald Trump’s disdain for strategy extends to process: mass National Security Council firings and reliance on a tiny circle of advisors have left the interagency policy process dormant amid the Iran war. The result is improvised, damaging moves like the Strait of Hormuz toll scheme. Reviving a professional, deliberative policy process is essential.
It has become a commonplace for Americans to describe our current war with Iran as stuck in a kind of limbo, neither full war nor real peace. We’re not the only ones. Iraq finds itself caught in a limbo of its own, between America and Iran, between the tolerable and the intolerable, between progress and relapse.
The Iraqi Peshmerga, the military arm of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), remains one of the United States’ most important defense partners in the Middle East. This monograph provides an in-depth assessment of Peshmerga combat effectiveness, particularly considering its experience in the war against the Islamic State and its subsequent clash with the Iraqi Army and Iran-backed militias. Drawing on past research and more than two dozen interviews with Peshmerga officers, US military officers, and subject matter experts, this study includes detailed policy recommendations as well as a discussion of their implications.
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.
المدونات الصوتية
التركيز على الشرق الأوسط
البودكاست الأسبوعي الرائد لمعهد الشرق الأوسط حول السياسة الخارجية الأمريكية والقضايا السياسية والاجتماعية المعاصرة في الشرق الأوسط.
Since March 2020, Syria’s conflict lines have been frozen, as Russia, Turkey, Iran and the United States held together a series of ceasefires and security understandings. That all changed this week, when a broad coalition of armed opposition groups launched a surprise and daring offensive west of Aleppo city.
Dilemma for Joe Biden in dying days of his presidency
As they sweep across northern Syria, the advancing rebels are posing fundamental questions not just for the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but for watching neighbours and Western leaders.
Last week, as I made my way to Beirut airport, I drove through bombed out streets in an empty city. The Lebanese national airline still bravely flew in and out, its planes weaving their way between Israeli airstrikes. I boarded my flight to attend a conference, hoping we would make it out safely. I left behind a population that had paid a very heavy price for 13 months of war between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israel: thousands of dead and injured, thousands of homes and businesses destroyed, and over 1.2 million displaced.
US success in Iraq means being a more reliable partner than Iran
There is no quick path to limiting or reducing Iranian influence in Iraq. Tehran will react fiercely to American efforts to destroy the militias and zero-out its influence, and it would have multiple avenues to escalate through the porous 900-mile-long border between the two countries. Moreover, domestic Iraqi reaction, especially among elements of the Shi’a population, would be reticent at best and hostile at worst to intensified American military actions. Nor should it be an American goal to stoke a civil war among Iraq’s Shi’a that would give Iran new access points.
Persian Gulf-Black Sea corridor: A new era for Iran-Europe trade or just another risk?
The Persian Gulf-Black Sea International Transport and Transit Corridor, which Tehran proposed eight years ago, remains relevant today in the context of strategic competition, as it offers Iran and participating countries an alternative trade route that bypasses traditional Western-dominated shipping lanes, potentially reshaping regional economic dynamics and geopolitical influence.
For decades, the MENA region’s pivotal role in the global economy has been rooted primarily in oil and gas exports. The region’s GDP grew from $1 trillion USD in 2000 to nearly $4.5 trillion in 2022, and more than 60% of that combined GDP is in its oil-exporting countries.
لمواجهة الصين، يجب على إدارة ترامب أن تستفيد من مذكرة بايدن بشأن الذكاء الاصطناعي
على مدار إدارتي بايدن وترامب، نظرت الولايات المتحدة باستمرار إلى الصين على أنها المنافس العالمي الرئيسي، لا سيما في مجال الذكاء الاصطناعي سريع التطور. وقد أكدت إدارة الرئيس بايدن مؤخرًا هذا الموقف من خلال أول مذكرة للأمن القومي (NSM) بشأن الذكاء الاصطناعي، والتي أرست أساسًا متينًا لمواجهة التحدي الذي تشكله بكين في مجال الذكاء الاصطناعي.
To abandon the Syria mission now would bring no meaningful benefit to the US, but it would swiftly and significantly empower America’s adversaries, like ISIS, Iran, Russia, and Assad’s regime.
As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, the main question in Tehran is not so much what the incoming American president will do about Iran. Rather, it is about whether Tehran should negotiate with him.
How might US-Israeli relations evolve under the Trump administration?
MEI Senior Fellow for Israeli Affairs Nimrod Goren and Associate Research Professor Ilai Saltzman discuss potential shifts in US policy, the outlook for Israeli politics in 2025, and the challenges to advancing peace on the Israeli-Palestinian front. Tune in for expert insights on what lies ahead.
دور الشرق الأوسط في السباق بين الولايات المتحدة والصين للسيطرة على مجال الذكاء الاصطناعي
تعد الذكاء الاصطناعي محفزًا محوريًا للابتكار العالمي، حيث تتصدر الولايات المتحدة تطوير هذه التكنولوجيا التحويلية في خضم تنافسها المستمر مع الصين على القوة العظمى. يهدف هذا التقرير إلى تعريف مفهوم التفوق في مجال الذكاء الاصطناعي ومراجعة استراتيجية الولايات المتحدة في هذا المجال وفقًا لفهم أكثر شمولية له. كما يبحث التقرير في كيفية تأثير المنافسة على الأطراف الفاعلة في الشرق الأوسط، ولا سيما الإمارات العربية المتحدة والمملكة العربية السعودية، في محاولة لتوجيه الحوار حول السباق العالمي في مجال الذكاء الاصطناعي نحو مفهوم شامل لسيادة الذكاء الاصطناعي يرتكز على واقع الشؤون الدولية والتنافس بين القوى العظمى الأمريكية والصينية.
Reshaping the public discourse is key to restoring support for Israeli-Palestinian peace
Supporters of peace, both local civil society actors and international partners, need to make a sustained effort to promote conflict resolution by shifting the public discourse of traditional and new media outlets, especially in Israel.
تُعد المجلة الرئيسية لمعهد الشرق الأوسط أقدم مطبوعة محكّمة مكرّسة لدراسة الشرق الأوسط الحديث، وتغطي المجلة الرئيسية في المعهد السياسة والمجتمع والثقافة في المنطقة.
