The most recent cross-border hostilities between Afghanistan and Pakistan show how tensions have crossed a dangerous threshold.
Saudi Arabia has stepped up its efforts to unify and restructure Yemen’s anti-Houthi forces after the rapid expansion and sudden implosion of the United Arab Emirates-backed secessionist Southern Transitional Council following Abu Dhabi’s military withdrawal from the country.
MEI Senior Fellow Mohammed Soliman joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to discuss his new book, West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East. The book argues that it is time for the United States to move decisively away from nation-building and focus instead on order-building, outlining a framework for a new regional order that links Europe to the Indo-Pacific. Soliman also shares how he conceived of the core ideas behind his book and explains why his thesis is especially relevant in today’s geopolitical, economic, and technological landscape.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
في 23 سبتمبر الماضي، احتفلت المملكة العربية السعودية بالذكرى التسعين لتأسيسها.
Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.
Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.
Since being named crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman has launched a series of far-reaching socio-economic reforms known as Vision 2030 and introduced a new form of nationalist identity — “Neo-Saudism.” Taken together, some see these changes ushering in what essentially amounts to a fourth Saudi state.
Strains in the U.S.-Saudi relationship do not paint a full picture of the Oct. 5 decision.
Drawing comparisons to the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center will increase US-Saudi cooperation to counter two of the greatest threats emanating from Iran and its proxies — drone and missile attacks.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
As welcome as recent moves toward Iranian-Gulf détente have been, extensive obstacles continue to stand in the way of a real and sustained relaxation of tensions, cause by what international relations scholars call the “security dilemma.”
The Saudi-Iran dialogue continues, but has produced little progress. As James Jeffrey of the Wilson Center and Bilal Saab of the Middle East Institute argue, part of the reason is that the two powers have fundamentally different objectives for the negotiations and that the power imbalance in Iran’s favor is profound. They suggest ways that Saudi Arabia might improve its bargaining power and argue that the United States can help strengthen Riyadh’s position.
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.
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.
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.
