Regional International Politics

On March 1, Iraqi PM designate Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi announced that he had failed to form a new government to replace the current caretaker one headed by PM Adel Abdul-Mahdi. In the post-Saddam era, government formation in Iraq has always been a complicated process, but this is the first time since 2003 that a PM designate failed to form a government and the episode has revealed fundamental deficiencies in the Iraqi political process.

The country’s political parties now move to a new stage of repeating the crisis of the last few months, to nominate a new PM-designate.

The protest movement in Iraq is now entering its fourth month. The protests raging across most of the south of the country have remained non-sectarian in their tone and message, and the movement is steadfast in its rejection of the political order, and all members of the political elite.

On Dec. 2, a series of public statements from Emirati and Syrian officials brought widespread attention to the UAE’s rapprochement with Syria. In a video circulated by Russian state media outlet RT, the UAE’s charge d’affaires in Syria, Abdul-Hakim Naimi, praised the “wise leadership” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and hailed the Syria-UAE relationship as “solid, distinct, and strong.” Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad responded enthusiastically to Naimi’s comments by praising the UAE for standing by the Syrian government in its war against terrorism.

Although 350 Iraqis have died to date and close to 16,000 have been wounded, protesters are not going home. Yet, most of the ruling clique is still rejecting the idea of forcing the prime minister to resign.

Since early October, the southern provinces of Iraq have been consumed by protests and strikes. While ruthlessly attempting to suppress protests, the Iraqi government has promised legal and political reforms. Yet some of the Kurdistan Region-Iraq’s elites are suspicious that the government’s reform agenda is a “conspiracy” against Kurdish entitlements masquerading as a good faith effort to placate the protestors. The region’s hegemonic parties are concerned that legal, constitutional, and procedural reforms may overhaul the institutions that guarantee their positions of influence in the federal government and secure their territorial claims.

MEI’s Paul Salem and Randa Slim join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the nationwide protests that have swept through Lebanon and Iraq this week resulting in political and economic turmoil as well as crackdowns by security forces. Where do things go from here?

“We reached a level of injustice we could no longer take. For every action, there is a reaction,” explained one civil society activist following the Oct. 1 outbreak of protests in Baghdad and central and southern Iraq.

For now, both Najaf and Tehran seemed to have a convergence of interests on preserving the post-2003 political order.

MEI President Paul Salem and Senior Fellow Ross Harrison join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the underlying causes of the numerous civil conflicts engulfing the Middle East, the regional and global dynamics that complicate them, and potential policy responses.

MEI’s new book, Escaping the Conflict Trap: Toward Ending Civil Wars in the Middle East, co-edited by Salem and Harrison, is now available in paperback or for Kindle.

Randa Slim, director of MEI’s Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues initiative, and MEI Senior Fellow Alex Vatanka join guest host Jerry Feierstein to discuss recent regional developments that may be early indicators of an emerging round of diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and what renewed talks might be able to achieve.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Randa Slim, Gerald Feierstein, Alex Vatanka, Robert S. Ford, and Michael Sexton.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a destabilizing element in an already volatile Middle East. The Palestinians are too weak to wrest their independence from Israel. But as long as their right to self-determination is denied, they are likely to engage in regular violence targeting Israel. Absent outside intervention, Israel is powerful enough that it can suppress Palestinian demands for freedom — but it is not able to completely pacify the Palestinians. Thus, the conflict continues, punctuated every few years by rounds of more significant violence.

In late July, Russian officials met with Yemen’s Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik and representatives of the Houthi Supreme Political Council to discuss the resolution of the Yemeni civil war. These meetings underscored Russia’s ability to balance favorable relations with Yemen’s internationally recognized government and the Houthis: Moscow supported Abdulmalik’s vision for a political solution to the Yemeni civil war and concurred five days later with Houthi criticisms of U.S. military deployments to the Persian Gulf.

Elizabeth Tsurkov has courageously put forward what she calls a progressive case for staying in Syria. I would regard myself as progressive but I’m not convinced, even if I would have supported many of her arguments in the past. In arguing for an indefinite presence in Syria, Tsurkov relies on the notion that staying gives the U.S. influence over Ankara and Moscow, serves as a counter to Tehran, and pressures the Assad regime, possibly even creating “internal fissures in its senior ranks” and causing “the Assad regime to institute reforms that would benefit all Syrians.” Those fissures and reforms have been desired for the past eight years but have not yet appeared. It would be easier to argue that withdrawal is more likely to cause them, and to pressure Ankara and Moscow into countering Tehran.