John Calabrese is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI) and book review editor for The Middle East Journal. His work focuses on the international relations of the Middle East, with a particular emphasis on cross-regional ties between the Middle East and Asia. He also teaches US foreign policy at American University.
He holds a PhD in International Relations and a Diploma (with Distinction) in Comparative and International Politics from the London School of Economics, and a BA in English and Government from Georgetown University.
Suspended Between Escalation and Exit: The U.S.–Iran War’s Strategic Deadlock
Entering the second month of the war with Iran, the United States has delivered substantial military effects without articulating a viable political end state—a familiar pattern in which battlefield success fails to produce strategic clarity and increasingly risks an exit without resolution.
China’s Model of Power Projection in the Middle East
China’s expanding role in the Middle East is often framed as geopolitical rivalry with other global powers, including the United States, Russia, India, and others; but this lens obscures the strategic subtlety of Beijing’s approach.
Post-Saddam Iraq at 23: The War It Never Wanted Is Back
On the anniversary of the 2003 invasion, Iraq finds itself trapped between the same external powers that have defined — and destroyed — its last quarter-century.
Shockwaves Across Asia: The Iran War’s Strategic Fallout
The Israeli-U.S. military strikes on Iran that began on February 28 have done more than ignite a Middle Eastern war. They have sent shockwaves rolling across Asia, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Sea of Japan, exposing the brittle underpinnings of regional energy systems, straining diplomatic balancing acts, and forcing governments to make hard choices they have long deferred.
Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns: The US-Israeli War on Iran
Modern wars are fought not only with weapons but with assumptions—and the most dangerous assumptions are often invisible to those making them. Donald Rumsfeld’s distinction between known unknowns (questions we recognize but cannot answer) and unknown unknowns (risks we have not even framed as questions) captures something essential about the current confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran.
China in the crossfire: Calculated moves amid the US-Iran showdown
The launch of large-scale US and Israeli strikes against Iran places Beijing in a strategically uncomfortable position. This campaign is the most significant US military operation since the Iraq War, unfolding across a region central to China’s energy security and commercial ambitions.
Arming a Kurdish insurgency would be a risky endeavor – for both the US and Iran’s minority Kurds
With the Iranian regime weakened by relentless American and Israeli missiles, Washington is eyeing a familiar U.S. ally in the Middle East to help push the Islamic Republic over the edge: the Kurds.
Partners at war: Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict tests China’s westward strategy
The recent escalation of the Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict upends China’s westward economic expansion. With neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan willing to subordinate their core security objectives to Beijing’s connectivity agenda, will China find itself unable to push forward on its regional strategy? US academic John Calabrese ponders this quandary.
As the third and seemingly decisive round of talks in Geneva concluded, the Trump administration had avoided diplomatic deadlock — but only by narrowing negotiations to the nuclear file.
China is becoming harder to ignore in the Middle East. Yet the gap between economic presence and strategic power remains wide, even as American policy swings, argues US academic John Calabrese.
February talks between Saudi Arabia and Turkey signaled the emergence of a pragmatic regional order grounded in economic complementarity, defense cooperation, and shared anxieties about instability.
Freedom’s arrival in Syria remains deeply fragile. Even as the country’s new rulers gain diplomatic recognition, goodwill, and early relief from Western sanctions, Syria itself is still fractured—geographically, socially, and institutionally.
