Attiya Ahmad

Today’s episode challenges preconceived notions about Iranian society, the hijab, and the regime clinging to power in Tehran. Joining us today for an enlightening conversation are two Iran experts, Marjan Keypour Greenblatt and Alex Vatanka. Marjan is the founder and director of the Alliance for Rights of All Minorities (ARAM), a non-resident scholar with MEI’s Iran Program, and a member of the Anti-Defamation League’s Task Force on Middle East Minorities. Alex is the director of MEI’s Iran Program and a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Europe Initiative.

Under current, highly unpredictable market conditions, it is unreasonable for OPEC to make sharp movements to saturate the oil market or withdraw a significant number of barrels from it to meet divergent Western interests of lowering prices and punishing Russia.

Since the Biden Administration came to office, Washington has been full of reports that the United States and its Gulf allies are drifting apart. The core argument was that in order to deliver for the Democratic Party’s grassroots base, U.S. President Joe Biden would seek to pursue a foreign policy that prioritized American values over American interests. In such a policy turn, Gulf States would be adversely impacted as the U.S.-Gulf relations are much more about common interests than common values—such as political democracy, the issue of human or labor rights, etc.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently warned that his country needs “an infinite amount of funding” to support flood relief efforts. Torrential rains and heavy flooding have killed more than 1,550 people and displaced millions. Compounding the challenge are Pakistan’s intensifying food and health crises, as flood-borne diseases surge and nearly two-thirds of the country’s food basket has been destroyed.

Amid the ongoing circus over efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, two rumors have started to gain traction inside and outside Iran: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is on his deathbed and preparations are being made for his son, Mojtaba, to succeed him.

The Houthis have a poor track record in negotiations. But giving up on negotiating with them isn’t an option.

My week of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials and analysts in mid-September has left me groping for a coherent through line in the story about today’s Middle East. It’s the best of times and the worst of times, depending on where one sits.

Technology represents one potentially fruitful area where the I2U2 member states — Israel, India, the U.S. and the UAE — could cooperate together, expand their format to include more countries, deliver tangible results, and avoid agitating other global and regional powers.

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

U.S. Central Command is quietly making a historic transition from a wartime command center to something like a hub for cajoling the region’s partners large and small toward stouter collective defense. But since CENTCOM’s new commander has vastly fewer resources for his tough new mission, defense and national security leaders in Washington need to back him up with a larger measure of policy coherence.

More than 11 months after Iraq’s October 2021 parliamentary elections, the government has yet to be formed. The government formation power struggle pits the Sadrist Movement against the Coordination Framework. The ongoing Arba’een religious pilgrimage forces political downtime, but the deadlock continues and many fear future violence unless both camps can agree on mutually acceptable concessions.