Wars don’t just end. They get interpreted, reinterpreted, and turned into strategic doctrine. That is what happened after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, a conflict that saw the United States back Tehran’s Iraqi adversaries. The war taught Tehran three lessons it never unlearned: that Washington wants the Islamic Republic gone, that Iran stands essentially alone in the world, and that it cannot survive a direct, overt fight with the U.S. and Israel.
Within 48 hours this week, Iran filled six of the most important posts in its battered military and security establishment. Read together with the biographies and mandates behind them, the appointments show how Tehran is drawing lessons from successive wars and preparing for a prolonged period of insecurity, without proving it has abandoned negotiation.
In an August 9 interview with Axios, when asked about the endless swings of the Iran standoff, he shrugged it off as familiar territory. “It’ll work out in the end. It always does. It’s like a chess game.”
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.
Saudi Female Conservationist Fights to Preserve Islamic Heritage
The Middle East’s descent into chaos has been accompanied by a growing threat to the region’s historic sites. The breakdown of states and growth in extremism have exposed these ancient sites to looting and destruction. The drivers, however, are varied. Extremist groups like ISIS profit from the smuggling of antiquities, but there are also religious motivations. Extremist movements such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, which adhere to a strictly puritanical view of Islam, perceive heritage sites, including Islamic, as a sinful distraction from faith.
The Iranian media reports that the evacuation of Syrian rebels and civilians from eastern Aleppo has come to an end, and that the entire city is now under the control of the Syrian army.
The long, turbulent history of Lebanese cinema is one fraught with financial precariousness, thwarted potentials, and colonialist impediments. Fighting for decades to break away from the hegemony of Egyptian cinema, Lebanon finally came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, reaching a peak with a series of hugely popular mainstream flicks that included the popular Rahbani/Fairuz folk musicals. The rise of what was once deemed as the most exciting Arab cinema at the time proved to be short lived, coming to a premature halt with the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War.
For the Assad regime in Damascus, displacement has become an essential tactic in shaping the terms of its encounter with dissent, alongside violence and detention. At the same time, the process of displacement has not unfolded in a coherent or predictable manner. Rather, displacement in the Syrian conflict is a product of choices, chief among them the regime’s choice to erase, rather than accommodate, political Opposition in Syria. It is also the result of how the Opposition responds to these challenges. This essay explores how Opposition networks have adapted pragmatically to displacement and exile. Far from accepting the terms of the conflict passively, Syria’s diverse opposition continues to mobilize in the face of ongoing state oppression.
Iran Shows No Concern for Safety of Civilians in Aleppo
A senior Iranian security official has slammed a United Nations Security Council resolution that calls for international observers to monitor the evacuation of civilians trapped in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.
Iranian Official Admits Role in Syria’s Destruction
A top Iranian official admitted on December 21 that Tehran and Moscow shared a base in Syria to coordinate their military support for the country’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): Underway and Under Threat
China is already Pakistan’s largest trade and defense partner. But the coming into operation of the CPEC lends a new meaning to, and could transform the relationship between these two “all-weather allies,” including insofar as their ties to the Middle East are concerned — provided that the territorial and maritime security challenges associated with the completion and use of this corridor can be satisfactorily addressed.
Rouhani Trying to Woo Voters with Empty Human Rights Slogans
On December 19, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani unveiled a “Citizens’ Rights Charter” that he promised would guarantee Iranians’ individual rights and civil liberties.
In a speech published in the Iranian media, Rouhani called on relevant authorities to ensure that all Iranian citizens enjoy personal security and freedom, have access to fair trial and justice, are not subjected to forced confessions, are immune from illegal intrusions into their privacy, and are not persecuted for religious beliefs.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has claimed that its engineers are tasked to repair the Mosul Dam, Iraq’s largest dam that generates hydroelectricity and provides water for agricultural irrigation in Nineveh Governorate.
Hailing the IRGC’s scientific capabilities and non-military expertise, General Salar Abnoush, the deputy head of IRGC’s construction conglomerate Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Base, said that the company was busy “repairing cracks in Mosul Dam to prevent the complete inundation of the Iraqi cities of Samarra, Mosul and Kadhimiya.”
تُعد المجلة الرئيسية لمعهد الشرق الأوسط أقدم مطبوعة محكّمة مكرّسة لدراسة الشرق الأوسط الحديث، وتغطي المجلة الرئيسية في المعهد السياسة والمجتمع والثقافة في المنطقة.
