Gulf and Arabian Peninsula

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

The United States and its Gulf Arab partners need a new security arrangement that effectively shares the burden of defending against Iranian hostility and goes beyond deterrence.

The July 2022 leaders’ meeting took good steps on energy and food security, but Egypt and Saudi Arabia can help take the I2U2 to the next level when it comes to regional security.

In June, Iran and Venezuela signed a 20-year road map on cooperation. As much as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has wanted to differentiate himself from his predecessor, his Venezuela policy has so far closely resembled that of Hassan Rouhani during the latter’s second term.

There is currently an ongoing conversation in Europe around how to hold the Iranian government accountable for its crimes. While efforts to bring justice to the regime’s victims continue, the road ahead will be difficult and as the recent Swedish and Belgian cases make clear, sometimes it will be one step forward and one step back.

There is no shortage of U.N. interest in Taiz or concern over the Houthis’ blockade and truce violations in the city, but pressure on the Houthis to commit to relieving the humanitarian suffering of the Taizi people remains lacking.

The Iranian government has invested heavily in trying to sway public attitudes to embrace closer relations with Russia; but a plurality of Iranians would like to see balanced ties with all nations and for Tehran to pursue a mature, pragmatic overseas agenda.

In July 1987, Iran lost the opportunity to end the Iran-Iraq war as part of a U.N. deal by imposing two preconditions, one of which was impossible to meet. In 2022, Iran is likely to lose another opportunity, this time to return to the 2015 nuclear deal, once again by imposing two preconditions, one of which is also impossible to meet.

Despite Russia and Iran’s apparently tightening relationship, Russian Ambassador Levan Dzhagaryan has come under withering criticism in Tehran, becoming a reminder of the interventionist and imperialist policies that Russia had practiced toward its southern neighbor over the past two and a half centuries.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE purchased $5 billion of U.S. air-defense missiles at a time when multiple American partners around the world are also looking to buy the same systems. The main effort in the Gulf will continue to be training and provisions of the material to develop an indigenous missile-defense capability.

After achieving respectable growth in 2021, the GCC member states now face the risk of monetary (over) tightening due to the need to follow the U.S Federal Reserve’s interest rate adjustments. These increases are not warranted, however, as the GCC economies currently face relatively moderate inflation. Instead, they should use the available fiscal space to mitigate the negative fallout of monetary tightening and make greater use of PPPs for future infrastructure development.

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

Although the latest two-month extension of the Yemeni cease-fire was welcomed by all, the conflict will not end until meaningful pressure is applied on the Houthis to deny them a military victory and force them to accept a political resolution to the war they launched in 2014.

When he declared his presidential candidacy in May 2021, Ebrahim Raisi was already recognized as a favorite of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A month later, Raisi was handed the job on a silver platter of an election that was carefully engineered by Khamenei. Voter turnout hit a historical low, making clear that Iranian voters saw the sham for what it was. From the get-go, then, Raisi’s primary concern was not Iranian public opinion but Khamenei’s continued patronage.

Iranian-Turkish trade and economic cooperation has been the all-important platform on which otherwise often tense bilateral relations could survive. With trade and economic ties now weakening, their geopolitical rivalry could sharply re-intensify.