This backgrounder provides an overview of the Axis of Resistance, a loosely aligned network of armed groups and state actors led and supported by Iran to project its influence and military strength across the Middle East.
For Iran, Iraq is strategic depth, political sanctuary, and economic lifeline all at once. The results of the November 11 Iraqi elections will decide who in Baghdad controls the budgetary levers, internal security appointments, and committees that could codify, or constrain, Iraq’s Iran-backed militias.
Iraqis have just gone to the polls in a pivotal parliamentary election that could redefine the country’s political trajectory. What do the results tell us about the state of Iraqi democracy? What happens next? And is there still space for meaningful democratic reform?
The September 17 Saudi-Pakistani defense agreement generated a wave of overheated commentary about Saudi Arabia now residing under a Pakistani nuclear umbrella and how a new strategic reality was in the offing in the Persian Gulf and South Asian regions. Analysts need to slow their roll. Extended deterrence is an extremely difficult thing to pull off. The devil is in the details, about which we know nothing.
As the dog days of August approach, we are pleased to share a curated summer reading list featuring some of VP for Policy Ken Pollack’s favorite books on the region. Covering a variety of timely and engaging topics, the list offers recommendations for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of the Middle East.
After almost two years of fighting in Gaza, and after the decimation of Hizballah, the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and the 12-day Israeli-American war on Iran, the Middle East is in new strategic and political territory. Two pathways lie ahead: the first is one in which the gains and changes brought about by war are turned, through intense diplomacy and negotiation, into new international and political arrangements that bring about a period of security and stability in the region; the second is one in which that corner is not turned, and the wars in Gaza, Iran, and potentially Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, continue indefinitely. The trajectory will depend on the choices of key actors — above all Iran, Israel, and the United States.
When the Israel-Iran war broke out and the United States decided to assist the Israeli side by striking Iran’s nuclear program, both Tehran and Washington expected Islamabad to side with their respective positions. This situation placed the Pakistani government in a politically sensitive and diplomatically delicate position.
On June 19, false reports of an Israeli strike on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant sparked alarm across the Gulf. Though denied by Israeli officials, the claim traces back to a warning from Qatar’s prime minister of a potential catastrophe in the event of nuclear contamination — no water, no food, no life — due to the Gulf’s reliance on desalinated seawater. Gulf governments moved quickly to reassure the public that no radiation had been detected, but the episode underscored the region’s growing sense of vulnerability. A regional approach to water security could help to mitigate such risks.
The Iraqi government has long navigated a path between maintaining political ties with its Iranian neighbor and Tehran’s allies inside Iraq on the one hand, and preserving its security relationship with the United States on the other. Unsurprisingly, it quickly welcomed US President Donald Trump’s June 23 Israel-Iran cease-fire agreement.
The recent brief yet intense escalation of hostilities between India and Pakistan has further exposed the fragile nature of South Asia’s security landscape. The four-day tit-for-tat cross-border military confrontation between the two nuclear-armed rivals has significantly undermined prospects for normalization, redefining the rules of engagement and signaling a shift in how both countries may manage their relationship moving forward.
The recent elevation of Gen. Asim Munir to the rank of field marshal is a thunderous declaration of the Pakistani military’s unassailable supremacy, a gesture that reverberates far beyond the barbed-wire perimeters of the Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.
The chaotic US military pullout from Afghanistan in August 2021 became a hot campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election and continues to echo today. President Donald Trump, who set the withdrawal in motion during his first term in office, repeatedly criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for leaving behind billions of dollars of military equipment. Also left behind were tens of thousands of Afghans, and their family members, who faced retribution for assisting US forces in the fight against the Taliban.
Reflections on a recent visit to Baghdad. Much has changed and ordinary life has resumed in Iraq’s capital, but deep challenges remain.
Afghanistan’s neighborhood is in the midst of a consequential restructuring of its security architecture. Key regional actors Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and China have been continuing to adjust their defense plans and security partnerships to meet the growing threats posed by domestic and cross-border terrorism. At the same time, these four countries have also been looking for new ways to fill the vacuum in southern Asia left by the United States military’s departure from Afghanistan.
With the signing of a presidential memorandum on Feb. 4, the administration of Donald Trump has returned to a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, but circumstances have changed drastically since the policy of intensified sanctions was originally crafted during his first term. Regional geopolitics will present the White House with a new set of variables, while changes in the petroleum markets will affect how the administration approaches sanctions on oil exports.