Iran

In the Trump administration’s diplomatic track with Tehran, one crucial variable is missing: steady US engagement with its Arab partners, particularly in the Gulf, on what the strategic endgame with Iran looks like.

The standoff in the Hormuz is not simply a question of whether Tehran can survive economic pressure, but whether Washington can sustain the pressure at an acceptable cost.

The opposition in Congress is attempting to force a war powers vote on the Trump administration’s Iran operation, with an eye toward the 60-day deadline on military action legally imposed on the executive branch; and key defense-spending measures are also on the immediate horizon. These actions on Capitol Hill could shape the trajectory of how the US moves forward in Iran and the region — and influence Americans’ overall appetite for long-term engagement in the Middle East.

As Lebanese, Israeli, and American teams prepare for their first-ever trilateral leaders summit, it is time to reflect on this opportunity and lessons from the past.

The war with the US and Israel has intensified pressure on the Iranian economy, but it has not represented a fundamentally new shock. The key question is not whether pressure exists, but whether it can be made decisive.

This bonus episode of Middle East Focus features a recent MEI Virtual Briefing. Director of Communications Zeina Al-Shaib is joined by MEI Distinguished Diplomatic Fellows Alan Eyre and Daniel Benaim to discuss the historic talks held in Pakistan last weekend between the United States and Iran. Tehran insists the US failed to gain its trust, while the US made its red lines clear and declared it would blockade Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf. What happens next? Eyre and Benaim offer insights into what goes on behind the scenes at such negotiations; identify the core issues at play; explore potential incentives to end the war; analyze the weaponization of energy; as well as assess the role of other regional players in this conflict.

Israel’s killings of Ali Larijani and Kamal Kharazi were meant to do more than remove two senior figures from the Islamic Republic’s political landscape. And yet the regime did not break.

As the international community focuses on the regional and economic reverberations of the US-Israel-Iran war, the wartime experiences of ordinary Iranians and their aspirations for the future have received much less attention. Arash Azizi, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University and contributing writer at The Atlantic, joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to discuss the war’s repercussions for the Iranian population and how the outcome of the conflict may shape the peoples’ lives going forward. Together, they explore Iran’s internal politics, the viability of the opposition, and the conditions needed to achieve democracy in Iran.