This op-ed first appeared in The New York Times on June 16, 2014. Click here to view the full article.
This week’s visit to Tehran by the Kuwaiti emir, Sheik Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, is about more than Iranian-Kuwaiti relations. It might even be a pivotal moment in the shaping of Iran’s ties with the Arab countries across the Gulf. Kuwait, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), is acting as a conduit for the collective unease that the GCC’s six member states, particularly Saudi Arabia, have about Iran’s regional policies.
Allen Keiswetter is a scholar at the Middle East Institute and an analyst at the law firm of Dentons. This is an updated version of a paper originally published by Dentons-GPS.
Following the recent progress on the Iranian nuclear issue and the subsequent easing of sanctions, South Korean businesses are reengaging the Iranian market. A South Korean trade delegation visited Iran on March 9, 2014 to expand bilateral trade ties in the mining, industrial, and food sectors. On March 17, South Korea’s Finance Ministry lifted a ban, allowing South Korean auto, construction, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications industries to resume trade with Iran, though sanctions remained in the shipbuilding, shipping, and harbor sectors.
Geography alone should make the Arab world Iran’s key foreign policy focus. Of Iran’s 13 immediate neighbors, seven are Arab countries.[1] But Tehran’s approach to the Arab world, with its 22 states extending from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, varies widely in intensity, and Iran’s objectives are equally varied depending on the country in question.
This article first appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of the Caspian Report.
The political crisis in Ukraine and subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia have sent reverberations throughout the Middle East, where Western and Russian influences continue to weave a complex geopolitical web. MEI interviewed four of its scholars to produce this detailed account of the challenges the conflict poses to the region’s political, security, and economic conditions.
This article first appeared on Iran Matters, a publication of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
In early 2011, Yemeni youths took to the street to demand the downfall of the regime and much-needed democratic reforms. This eventually led to the removal of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh from power later the same year. The political turmoil associated with the uprising has resulted in an alarming deterioration of the security situation throughout the country, most notably the seizure of two major cities in the southern governorate of Abyan by Ansar al-Shariah (AAS), an offshoot of al-Qa`ida. Backed by the Yemeni government, the Popular Committees (PCs), local armed resistance groups, pushed AAS out of major cities in Abyan.
Yemen was not immune to the wave of popular uprisings that swept some countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. However, because of the Yemeni state’s fragility, concurrent zones of conflict, and a power struggle that divided the core military and tribal elites, the international community was afraid that the youth uprising that started in January 2011 might lead to a collapse of the state. Given the consequences of such a collapse on the security of the Gulf states, oil production, and the international war on terror, the Gulf Cooperation Council brokered a deal in November 2011—the Gulf initiative—which laid the foundation for a transitional government. The main aim of the initiative was to secure a peace deal that halted Yemen’s slide into chaos. Peace was sought through the brokering of an inclusive National Dialogue Conference (NDC), but peace did not entail changing the regime or its pattern of politics. While transitional justice has been a part of this process of peaceful reconciliation, it raises questions about the sustainability of this peace and provides a showcase of the precarious state of Yemeni affairs.
Fatemeh Aman co-authored this article.
As President Obama met his top Afghanistan commanders in the Oval Office on February 4 to discuss his decision to reduce the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, he received a compliment from an unlikely source. Ali Akbar Velayati, the top foreign policy aid to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, called Obama’s Afghan withdrawal policy “wise.”
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Tehran January 28 and 29 for his first meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz, and Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci are accompanying him. MEI spoke to Gonul Tol, Director of the Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies, about the meeting.
What is the reason for this high-level visit?
In the Middle East today, diplomatic success and failure are unfolding side by side, often with some of the same players. High-profile attempts are being made to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, to stop the massacre of innocents in Syria, and to bring Iran in from the cold.
