Analysis

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 fundamentally transformed U.S.-Iran relations from a special relationship into an adversarial one. However, this has not prevented American presidents of both parties, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, from reaching out to Tehran in the hope of a potential détente. There are many ideological, political, and economic factors behind the inability of Washington and Tehran to normalize their relations over the past four decades. One that has received little attention, however, is the cycle of U.S.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan typically never misses an opportunity to appear in front of the cameras. But after the airstrike last week that killed dozens of Turkish soldiers in Syria’s Idlib Province, he was unusually quiet. The local governor of the south-eastern Turkish province of Hatay, just across the border from Idlib, did the talking instead, providing information to the outraged public about Turkey’s worst day in the Syrian conflict so far. As the death toll rose, so did the public anger.

On March 1, the Iran-backed Houthis took control of the city of al-Hazm, the capital of al-Jawf Province, after weeks of fierce clashes with local tribes and Yemeni government forces. Incompetence, lack of unified leadership, and the absence of a military strategy by the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition have played into the hands of the Houthis.

There has been a visible shift towards majoritarian politics and sectarianism in India since the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) accession to power in 2014. The party has promoted a Hindutva ideology that declares India as fundamentally Hindu and as such, its culture should be viewed in terms of Hindu ideas and values. This article discusses the series of controversial policies that the BJP under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has implemented since its re-election in 2019 and the domestic as well as international reactions they have elicited.

It is a near truism that U.S. relations with Pakistan have been historically unstable, waxing and waning, climbing to heights of interdependence and sinking to mutual recrimination. Yet this is presently a period unmarked by either high promise or driven by crisis. Rather than a reason, however, for leaving the relationship untouched and unexamined, this can be a time of unusual opportunity to create a more deliberative approach to thinking about the bilateral relationship and for shaping fresh initiatives.

As Lebanon nears a breaking point due to its acute financial crisis, the Trump administration faces a policy dilemma: should it financially support a corrupt ruling faction that is allied with Hezbollah – Iran’s friend and Washington’s nemesis – or should it hold off on aid and watch the country fall apart?

The announcement of Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” was a rude shock, roundly condemned by almost everyone concerned with peace and justice between Israelis and Palestinians. But it also presents an urgent challenge for all those who reject it because they realize the dire implications of what it portends for the future of any peaceful negotiated solution. If a genuine two-state solution is truly dead, and an equitable one-state solution is even harder to achieve, then where does that leave us? What is, or should be, the agenda for the foreseeable future for those concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

The past decade and a half have been a real whirlwind for Hezbollah, but the group seems to have weathered all of these storms, at least for now. However, it’s one thing for Hezbollah to survive and another altogether for it to thrive. In a special roundtable report from MEI, renowned Hezbollah analysts offer their perspectives on a series of key questions about the major upcoming challenges facing the group. This report includes contributions from Bilal Y. Saab, Nicholas Blanford, Nizar Hamzeh, Matthew Levitt, Magnus Ranstorp, Bruce Riedel, Randa Slim, and Michael Young.

The latest economic crisis in Syria is hitting the population hard. Syrians have been beset by currency depreciation, soaring prices for basic goods, and energy shortages that have left people to freeze in the harsh winter, leading to growing and increasingly vocal discontent.

The death of at least 33 Turkish soldiers and wounding of 60 more in Syria’s Idlib on Thursday night was a game-changing development. The crisis there and its effects represent an existential threat to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and for now, it appears likely that Turkey will remain alone in dealing with the crisis. That presents us with two possible scenarios, both bleak. If the world wants to avoid a true nightmare from becoming reality, it needs to wake up and get engaged.

The results of Iran’s recent elections and preparations for the succession of Ayatollah Khamenei as supreme leader could mean that the topic of replacing Iran’s presidential system with a parliamentary one may very well be up for discussion again.

U.S. Middle East policy tends to elicit the most heated debates in Washington. But if there’s one issue on which there’s near unanimous consensus it is that the region is in desperate need of a new security architecture that ideally would generate stability but more realistically reduce tensions and the risk of hostilities and escalation. Even regional antagonists agree that the time to form such an architecture is now.

Since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, malign foreign influence within EU countries has been the subject of considerable scrutiny. What lessons can be learned from comparing EU and NATO members Romania and Bulgaria with partner countries Moldova and Georgia?

If Assad and the Russians are not reined in and are instead allowed to conquer Idlib — and the more than three million people trapped there — the results could be catastrophic, leading to massive displacement and loss of life.

This paper looks at the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS), and the Irregular Warfare Annex (IWA) to that guiding document, with recommendations on how to better implement the strategy. It also analyzes the current Russian way of conducting irregular warfare by reviewing their actions in Ukraine, Syria, and Libya.