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.
Sabbahi, Spoiled Ballots, and the Egyptian Election
Egyptian presidential elections underdog Hamdeen Sabbahi achieved the impossible: he came in third in a two-horse race. The 60-year-old leftist politician and sole rival to the country’s ex-army chief Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi secured just under 757,000 votes in the preliminary count as opposed to Sisi’s more than 23 million votes—as well as to the votes of a last-minute unexpected entrant: the spoiled ballot.
Pakistan is only one of three countries—the others being Afghanistan and Nigeria—in which polio has never been eradicated. Polio in Pakistan has been a particular worry recently, with a disturbing spike in cases. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 61 out of 77 cases of polio reported worldwide from January through mid-May 2014, or 79 percent, were in Pakistan.[1]
The Role of a Middle Power South Korea in Iran, Syria, and Egypt
This article examines how South Korean foreign policy deals with Iran, Syria, and Egypt, with the overarching argument that because South Korea is pushing to build its middle power presence, it should clearly articulate its position on key security issues in the Middle East. As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, South Korea should support international norms such as nonproliferation, humanitarian protection, and democracy. Unless the South Korean government consistently upholds these norms, it will encounter setbacks in finding international support in its dealings with North Korea.
Egyptians have headed to the polls to elect a president for the second time since the January 2011 revolution. Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi is expected to win by a wide margin over the only other contender, leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi. The magnitude of that victory, however, will have an important impact on Sisi’s electoral mandate, and many questions remain about what he plans to do with it once in power.
Kuwait: At the Crossroads of Change or Political Stagnation
Though Kuwaitis have been striving for change, particularly since 2011, their country’s political structures remain more or less unaltered. Yet change is inevitable, writes Shafeeq Ghabra in this MEI Policy Paper. At issue is a semi-democratic system that has proven ineffective at dealing with problems such as government mismanagement, corruption, a lack of economic transparency, and inequality toward tribes and undocumented immigrants.
In 2001, there were only 34,000 Muslims living in Korea; today there are more than 150,000. Furthermore, there are over 45,000 ethnic Korean Muslims. In contrast to Europe, where over a thousand years of political, cultural, and religious interactions have shaped social attitudes toward Islam, Korea’s Muslim population remains relatively unnoticed, comprising only 0.3 percent of the total Korean population. However, Islam in Korea is in the midst of great change. With the continuing increase in international migration over the past decade from Muslim-majority countries, the Korean Muslim community is transforming into a significant social and religious force.
The Egyptian Military’s Economic Channels of Influence
Egypt’s new constitution grants the country’s generals greater autonomy and an increased formal political role. The draft authorizes military trials for civilians (Article 204) and ensures that the military’s budget be beyond civilian scrutiny. The most significant change is that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) will have the final say in choosing or dismissing the defense minister for two presidential terms (Article 234).
Geography alone should make the Arab world Iran’s key foreign policy focus. Of Iran’s 13 immediate neighbors, seven are Arab countries.[1] But Tehran’s approach to the Arab world, with its 22 states extending from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, varies widely in intensity, and Iran’s objectives are equally varied depending on the country in question.
Civilianizing the State: Reflections on the Egyptian Conundrum
The military, though it has been the most powerful and influential actor during Egypt’s transition since 2011, is not the great deus ex machina of the Egyptian system. Rather, it is an actor that, since the fall of Mubarak, has managed to maintain some organizational coherence and legitimacy and has served as the convener for various and changing forces that are the crux of a new ruling coalition. Consequently, civilianizing the Egyptian state will require that security sector reforms be embedded in a broader set of political reforms.
Collection Spotlight: Modern Islamic Political Thought, by Hamid Enayat, 1982
In Modern Islamic Political Thought, Hamid Enayat discusses the major currents in twentieth-century Islamic political thought. Although the work is broad in scope, at its core is the assertion that the abolition of the Caliphate was “perhaps [the] most important controversy in twentieth-century Sunni political thought.” To prove this assertion, Enayat traces Islamic political thought from the abolition of the Caliphate to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
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.
