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.
Misadventures in Violence in Yemen: Operation Resolute Storm
Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen is a risky move motivated by various Saudi objectives in Yemen and in the region. The immediate objective is to save President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi from Ansar Allah’s advance on Aden and reinstall him as head of state by forcing Ansar Allah to make major political concessions. But the operation also marks the increasing willingness of the Saudis to use their own military rather than rely on the United States.
The Middle East Dialogue is a regional Track 1.5 forum that meets twice a year under Chatham House rules. It brings together current and former officials as well as senior experts from the Middle East, the United States, Russia, China, and the EU to discuss emerging political & security trends in the region. What follows is a report from the latest meeting of the Dialogue in Berlin, Germany, December 5-7, 2014.
The recent public row between Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc and Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek marked the latest fallout from a widening rift between the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his handpicked prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. If the crack continues to widen, it will not only deal a blow to Erdogan’s presidential dream but also to the future of the ruling party.
At face value, the targets of the Bardo Museum attack on March 18 in Tunis were Tunisia and the West, the former as the sole survivor of the “Arab Spring,” a country that has been successful in bridging the transition toward a democratic order, and the latter as the foe that radical Islamism seeks to defeat and supplant. A more extreme secular reading of the event may even see in it a punishment for Tunisia for having denied Islamist parties the coveted electoral victory and a reminder that, even from the margins, Islamism will dictate the course of the nation.
Israeli Elections and U.S. Policy Reevaluation: What Lies Ahead?
The Obama administration has lost all patience with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defiant challenges to two basic U.S. goals: a two-state Israeli-Palestinian peace and a nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu’s hostility and the emergence after the March 15 elections of a new, more right-wing coalition, have triggered a major crisis in relations and an apparent decision by Obama to “reevaluate” U.S. policy.
Among Old Friends: A History of the Palestinian Community in China
Following the Bandung Conference in 1955, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) espoused―in an unusual contrast with other major powers of the “socialist” and “nonaligned” camps―a pro-Palestinian stance in its foreign policy toward the Middle East. This did not entail, however, any direct contact with the Palestinians, a development that did not appear until the mid-1960s emergence of a more autonomous and coherent Palestinian national movement embodied in the PLO. Contact prior to the establishment of formal channels of communication took place through a number of unofficial and semi-official conduits, ranging from the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), the Chinese embassies in Egypt and South Yemen after 1967, and the “underground” Communist networks (mainly Iraqi, Sudanese, and Yemeni) to such bodies as the Chinese Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity and the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. These contacts enabled the PRC to eventually extend formal diplomatic recognition of the PLO in 1964, making it the first non-Arab country to do so.
With its bold and public intervention in Yemen’s civil war, Saudi Arabia has cast off a half-century of caution and restraint in regional security affairs.
March 26, 2015 – Paul Salem discusses the new challenge the unfolding crisis in Yemen poses to the region, and how the Arab League and the United States are responding as the fight against ISIS continues.
The Egypt Economic Development Conference: Success or Failure?
Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah first conceived of the Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC) as a means of supporting Egypt and its new government after the toppling of President Mohamed Morsi in June 2013. The plan was to provide a forum through which donors could coordinate their economic assistance, and lengthy preparations finally culminated in a well-organized event on March 13-15.
March 24, 2015: Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at The Middle East Institute, discusses the mood in Tehran as the deadline for negotiations approaches, the state of U.S.-Iranian relations, and what reaching a deal could mean to that relationship and the Arab world, in a brief interview.
The Egyptian Family House: Fostering Religious Unity
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has not been shy about the need to reform religious discourse and relations.[1] He is concerned about how the image of Islam has been marred by Muslims themselves, and how extremist thought has torn the fabric of Muslim-Christian unity. Visiting the Coptic Orthodox cathedral on Christmas Eve, he told the cheering audience, “We will build Egypt together.
President Hassan Rouhani’s recent trip to Turkmenistan cannot be dismissed as a one-off. Since coming to office in August 2013, the Rouhani administration has prioritized relations with the Muslim states of the former Soviet Union. Given the potential for economic ties and trade, Tehran’s aspirations are fully understandable.
Collection Spotlight: In the Name of Oil: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1950-1958
Ivan L. G. Pearson’s In the Name of Oil: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1950-1958 provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent to which British interests in the Middle East influenced or were furthered by the United States between 1950 and 1958.
The Middle East is in disarray, but in Gaza, of all places, there are fragile hints of better days.
Two weeks ago, for the first time since Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel permitted produce exports from Gaza into Israel and the West Bank.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged Gaza’s plight during a visit to the area in February.
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.
Ivan L. G. Pearson’s In the Name of Oil: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1950-1958 provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent to which British interests in the Middle East influenced or were furthered by the United States between 1950 and 1958.