The Americans Are Gone. Will Iraq’s Militias Disarm?
On September 30, the US completed its military withdrawal from Iraq, ending a 12-year-long mission to combat ISIS that began in 2014. The date was also meant to be the deadline for disarming the largely Iranian-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), but Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has now pushed that cutoff back to June 30, 2027. MEI Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow Amb. (ret.) Robert S. Ford joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to discuss what the US military withdrawal means for Iraqi security and the nature of the bilateral relationship going forward. They also speak about what it will take for Baghdad to bring the PMF militias to heel, and how Iraq may navigate the post-Iran war era.
Jordan’s Economy Weathers Iran War’s Shocks and Finds New Opportunities
In the summer of 2003, King Abdullah II told Bloomberg Jordan sits “between Iraq and a hard place,” a play on words designed to describe the kingdom’s challenging environment to an American audience amid the US-led Iraq war to the east and the lingering Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the west. Jordan is grappling with a much “harder place” today.
Proponents of the war with Iran have taken recent increases in crude-oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz as proof that the US strategy is finally working. President Trump is so confident in this that he recently rejected a seven-day plan, set forward by Iran’s foreign ministry, to end the war and open the strait. The United States is “winning tremendously,” Trump boasted.
A Rentier Social Contract: The Saudi Political Economy since 1979
Originally posted October 2009
The year 1979 was the last year of the pivotal decade in which the Saudi economy took its modern shape; no other decade before or since has seen more change. The patterns of oil-driven politics that emerged at the time still define the Kingdom’s political landscape today — even if some of the players in the political game have subtly shifted their roles.
Three months after the release of the Bassiouni report, which documented systematic government abuses of pro-democracy protesters, Bahrain's King Hamad has announced constitutional reforms to increase parliamentary oversight. His announcement has done little to appease opposition forces, however, who contend the reforms do little to address the underlying sectarian inequities in Bahrain. Popular protests continue almost daily and are often met with police violence. In this highly polarized environment, is political compromise possible?
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.
