Monday Briefing: Four factors to watch to assess the Saudi-Iranian diplomatic opening
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
MEI Managing Editor Matthew Czekaj speaks with scholars Iulia-Sabina Joja, Alex Vatanka, Yörük Işık, Charles Lister, and Roger Kangas on Russia’s current standing in the Middle East a year since re-invading Ukraine.
How has Russian aggression in Ukraine redrawn Moscow’s relationships in the MENA region? And as the Middle East increasingly becomes a key area of global great power competition, is Russia still a meaningful player there, politically, economically, militarily, and diplomatically?
Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.
Ten of the most important or far-reaching events and trends that dominated the MENA region in 2022.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The Biden Administration’s National Security Strategy has drawn some criticism for its relatively late release, but what of its actual substance? Today, Alistair Taylor talks with four experts, each with unique insights into the context and strategy of this document with regards to the Middle East, North Africa, and American foreign policy at large.
Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.
Today’s two-part episode is a study in contrasts. On one hand, the Partnership for Peace Fund strives to create a social and economic environment in which sustainable peace can become possible. On the other, hard political realities and gridlock undermine cooperation at every turn.
My week of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials and analysts in mid-September has left me groping for a coherent through line in the story about today’s Middle East. It’s the best of times and the worst of times, depending on where one sits.
It appears that calm has returned to Iraq after the reported intervention of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s chief and widely respected Shia cleric. In recent weeks, violence had occurred in and near parliament, which has been unable to implement last October’s election results. The clashes involved demonstrators and armed forces loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the leading candidate in the elections, and militias loyal to a loose array of rival Shia political parties calling themselves the Coordination Framework.
Followers of Iraqi Shi’a cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr and those of the Iran-aligned Coordination Framework clashed in downtown Baghdad on Aug. 29. Iraqis spent that evening wondering whether the country was descending into an intra-Shi’a civil war.