Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
What happens when a petrostate loses its oil rents? While the oil market continues to go through boom-and-bust cycles, cases such as Iraq provide evidence of how the rapid loss of oil revenues—traumatic decarbonization—may affect the politics and stability of these petrostates. In Iraq, multiple shocks to oil revenues from 2014 through 2020 fundamentally altered the organization and concentration of political power in Iraq with destabilizing and democratic consequences.
Both historical and modern-day conflicts in the Middle East have all been centered around classical territorial considerations of the loss or recovery of land. Escaping that cycle required a shift away from one of the main root causes of conflict: geography. The current changes in the region, characterized by a significant drive toward de-escalation and a growing willingness to periodically part ways with traditional allies, may be telling symptoms of a profound tectonic shift toward “quantum politics.”
When Saudi Arabia suddenly announced in early April that it would reduce its oil production by 500,000 bpd, followed shortly thereafter by several other OPEC+ members, bringing the total cut to 1.1 million bpd, Japan was greatly concerned. In spite of Japan’s serious efforts to work toward a carbon-neutral society, the country is still heavily dependent on oil, the overwhelming majority of which comes from the Persian Gulf.
In the Middle East, the Gulf states — working together and on their own — are looking to achieve new scientific and commercial breakthroughs in various areas of the space industry. These ambitions carry major geopolitical implications with them, as an ever-growing number of spacefaring countries negotiate a sensitive and increasingly high-powered sector.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The development of small-scale LNG and the domestic deployment of LNG as a transport and power-generation fuel could help to lower Saudi Arabia’s carbon footprint as well as improve air quality by reducing vehicle exhaust.
In recent years, Iraq has become one of the leading destinations for Chinese investments in the Middle East and a crucial link in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. To capitalize on its geostrategic location and central position within the Chinese BRI, Iraq is seeking to develop a sprawling new 54-square-kilometer port project, known as al-Faw Grand Port, which will reduce the country’s reliance on Arab Gulf ports and overland transit from Iran and Turkey. The project also underscores Iraq’s growing economic rivalry with neighboring Iran, as both countries seek to carve out a similar niche in handling regional transit traffic.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Saudi Arabia has made it clear that it wants a defense pact with the United States in return for normalizing ties with Israel. However, that isn’t a price Washington is able or willing to accept, for both political and strategic reasons. But the conversation about improved U.S.-Saudi defense cooperation shouldn’t stop here. There’s plenty of room for achieving that objective without having to upgrade the relationship to a full-fledged alliance.
The conclusion of the China-brokered Saudi-Iranian détente on March 10, which aims to thaw long-standing enmity and manage competition between the two regional arch rivals, has multi-layered implications for Yemen.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The implications of the apparent rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran are likely to have significant consequences for vital neighboring regions like South Asia and other populous Muslim countries, including, notably, Pakistan.
As Women’s History Month in the U.S. draws to a close, women in the armed forces of several Middle Eastern countries continue to achieve historic milestones, with many now serving as pilots, engineers, peacekeepers, and in special forces units. The role of women is steadily increasing as the result of new initiatives, policies, and gradually changing mindsets in the Middle East.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.