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Oil and gas have long dominated trade and investment flows between Singapore and the Gulf. In the wake of two new projects — one in Singapore and the other in the United Arab Emirates — unveiled last month, this article considers whether Singapore and the Gulf are on the cusp of a new level and type of economic relations.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The force is the United States’ best partner in the country, but should Washington pay up?
Over the course of two weeks in May and June, the Middle East Institute hosted its inaugural Lebanon policy conference in collaboration with the American Task Force on Lebanon (ATFL) and LIFE. This series of events brought together leading diplomats, policymakers, economists, development practitioners, and think tank professionals from the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Lebanon to discuss the urgency and viable paths forward for the country’s political, financial, and humanitarian crises.
Hanin Ghaddar and Kasra Aarabi join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the challenges Hezbollah poses to the region and its key role in Iran’s proxy network, which spans from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon to Yemen.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Syrian refugees in Lebanon are now in a state of legal limbo and have been pushed further to the margins of society and into the arms of smugglers and profiteers as they, along with most Lebanese, desperately try to survive in a country described by one of its own political leaders as a sinking ship.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Journalists, media workers, and activists in Lebanon — especially critics of the ruling elite and established political parties — are coming under increasing threat both by private parties, with the authorities unwilling or unable to protect them, and directly by government authorities, often with impunity.
Lebanon’s political leaders are getting deeper into trouble, and they know it. This does not make them any less dangerous. Recurring skirmishes over cabinet formation — namely those referencing constitutional powers, cabinet size, sectarian representation, and ministerial allocation — continue to dominate the public discourse and waste precious time. They remain, however, peripheral to the central issue that establishment parties currently face: an all-out struggle for political survival at a time when tough and unapologetic decisions need to be made.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
إن تجاهل القيادة اللبنانية المستمر للمكافآت والحوافز– ناهيك عن المناشدات الأخلاقية – يدل على عدم فعالية هذه السياسة في فرض تغيير بنَّاء وحقيقي في سلوك هؤلاء القادة
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
For decades now, decentralization has been a recurring theme in Lebanese politics. That it is “administrative” does not make it any less “political” in a country where even minor technicalities can easily turn into major controversies. Yet decentralization is still perceived as one of the key reforms that has yet to come about.