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.
Moving to a post-Khamenei era: Iran’s new rubber-stamp Assembly of Experts
The results of the March 1 election for Iran’s Assembly of Experts hold great importance for understanding how the regime is preparing for the selection of the next supreme leader. The major responsibility of this 88-member body is to designate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s successor, either after his death or if he becomes incapable of fulfilling his responsibilities.
Rebuilding Gaza: Navigating the politics of infrastructure
The scale of rebuilding needed after the Gaza war, in addition to the difficult political questions involved, will require close international coordination as well as innovative, future-informed thinking.
The Evolving Conflict Between Hezbollah and Israel
MEI’s US-Lebanon Fellow Fadi Nicholas Nassar and Emile Hokayem – Director of Regional Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies – discuss the changing and uncertain rules of engagement between Hezbollah and Israel, and the potential for war between the two following Oct. 7.
Since Oct. 7, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been at the center of international attention. This is in stark contrast to the situation in recent years, when the issue has been sidelined in the international discourse and the question of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has almost disappeared from the diplomatic agenda.
Amid war, resolving Lebanon-Israel territorial disputes unlikely
With Israel and Hezbollah on the brink of war, there have been ongoing diplomatic attempts to defuse tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border. Among the long-standing issues between the two countries are disagreements over their shared boundary. Asher Kaufman takes a closer look at these territorial disputes and how they came about, with a particular focus on the village of Ghajar at the center of the tension.
Biden's Gaza aid port plan: How did we get here and where might it lead?
Since Oct. 7, humanitarian aid has been entering the Gaza Strip via land and air. Following US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 7, aid is also likely to enter via the sea, under an emergency US mission to establish a temporary pier on the Gaza coast that can receive large shipments of food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters.
Women’s rights under the Taliban: The socio-economic consequences of political exclusion
One of the first things the Taliban did after capturing power in August 2021 was to abolish the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs and re-establish the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The environment within which Afghan girls and women had found avenues of employment, education, and empowerment over the previous two decades had been lost. Many families now had to deal with acute poverty, mental health issues, and even suicides.
A report card on women’s integration into Arab militaries
A look at what Arab countries have done to implement the year 2000 UN Security Council resolution on women, peace, and security, especially in terms of increasing women’s presence in the armed forces.
Interview With Rashid Al Khalifa – Bahraini Artist, Collector And Founder of RAK Art Foundation
Director of MEI’s Arts & Culture Center Lyne Sneige interviews HH Sheik Rashid Al Khalifa – artist, collector and founder of the RAK Art Foundation and a participating artist in MEI’s current exhibition “The Sea of Life: Modern and Contemporary Art from The Kingdom of Bahrain”
As Western options narrow, Yemen's anti-Houthi forces vie for US military support
In recent weeks, Yemen’s main anti-Houthi leaders have increasingly been sending the same message to the US, urging it to provide support in the fight against the Houthis on the ground. The provision of military assistance is still hypothetical but seems more and more plausible given developments in Yemen, triggered by the Houthis’ continuing attacks on maritime shipping in the Red Sea.
Home to around 1,000 forts, castles, and watchtowers, Oman has long used its historical structures to showcase the country’s rich history. Now, as part of an effort to promote cultural tourism, the sultanate is looking to develop more of them with a focus on the arts and cultural activities, giving its centuries-old heritage sites a new lease on life.
In his new book, Steve Coll casts doubt on whether Iraqi intelligence had actually tried to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush in Kuwait in April 1993. If the Kuwait plot were a fabrication, it would fit yet another brick in the wall of many well documented falsehoods and misunderstandings that led to the US invasion. Unfortunately for that allegation, the plot was very likely to have been quite real.
The recent Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have highlighted the critical importance of US Naval force presence in the Middle East.
When the decades’ long commitment of US ground troops to Afghanistan ended with the debacle of a withdrawal in 2021, the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain once again became the anchor to US regional presence and the core protector of national interests in the region.
تُعد المجلة الرئيسية لمعهد الشرق الأوسط أقدم مطبوعة محكّمة مكرّسة لدراسة الشرق الأوسط الحديث، وتغطي المجلة الرئيسية في المعهد السياسة والمجتمع والثقافة في المنطقة.
