Research & Commentary Results

MEI Senior Fellow Charles Lister joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to discuss the Trump administration’s dramatic reversal of four decades of US policy toward Syria. Following President Trump’s May 2025 meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and the issuance of a new general license and 180-day waiver of Caesar Act sanctions, the episode explores the implications of this policy shift. What does this mean for Syria’s recovery and reconstruction? How are regional actors like Turkey, Israel, and the Gulf states responding?

The harsh realities of the region’s threats and challenges, like Iran and the Gaza war, stubbornly persist following the pomp and circumstance of Trump’s “spring bling” tour, which featured eye-popping dollar figures and an offer of a luxury jumbo jet from Qatar.

Two recent developments present the new Syrian government with a critical opportunity to stabilize the country. First, US President Donald Trump announced plans to lift sanctions on Syria. Second, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party declared it would disband and dissolve itself — a move that will help Damascus to finalize a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces and integrate it into the new Syrian national army. President Trump should build on this momentum and seize the opportunity to address one of the most complex remaining challenges facing Syria: the risk of a military confrontation between Turkey and Israel inside the country.

One of the strategic thrusts of the opening months of Trump’s second terms has been aimed at deepening America’s economic engagement with the leading economies of the Gulf. Thus, the first leg of his trip to the region resulted in a template for deeper US-Saudi ties.

This week, US President Donald Trump makes his inaugural visit to the Middle East since the start of his second term, traveling to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates on May 13-16. Amid the heightened focus on US policy toward the Middle East, MEI’s experts take stock of Trump’s trip to the Gulf, how his administration has shaped its approach to the wider region in its first several months, and how regional actors are responding to the policies coming out of Washington.

On March 10, 2025, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the president of Syria, and Mazloum Abdi, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces, signed a historic agreement, ending a long-running divide between Damascus and the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Now, two months after the deal was signed, how far has it progressed, and what are the main obstacles and disputes between the parties during this transitional phase?

As the EU prepares for its annual review of sanctions imposed on Syria, it faces a moment of reckoning — an opportunity to demonstrate whether its policies not only continue to be principled and legal, but also in line with its strategic interests. They no longer serve the purpose for which they were designed, and the EU should let the entire sanctions regime on Syria collapse unconditionally and immediately.

For months, Turkey’s government has been trying to accomplish three major tasks simultaneously or nearly so to solidify its hold on power at home and enhance its influence in the broader region. Its three-pronged approach to fulfilling that goal consists of seeking to 1) crush democracy and destroy the political opposition in Turkey by bringing serious criminal charges against Ekrem İmamoğlu, the popular mayor of Istanbul; 2) bring Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party into a coalition to win the next national election with current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continuing his 22-year rule; and 3) leverage its new and powerful influence in Syria to neutralize Kurdish power in the northeast and in the Syrian national government.

For much of the past two decades, ISIS has enjoyed favorable conditions in Syria, but since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, dynamics have changed. With Assad’s departure, ISIS lost its long-standing and vitally important safe haven in Syria’s central desert and its most significant driver for recruitment. The results — so far — have been dramatic.

Endemic corruption in Libya continues to deter foreign investment, cripple public services, and erode trust in government. This dismal situation is driven by the ongoing power struggles among Libya’s political and military elite. Recently, bad actors in both Libya’s east and west have undertaken a spree of arbitrary arrests and detentions that the United Nations Support Mission in Libya has now warned are not only illegal, but creating “a climate of fear.”

The work of the Syria Strategy Project and the considerable policy recommendations found in this report present a realistic and holistic vision for Syria’s recovery and reintegration into the international system.

While most media attention was focused on its global economic policy moves, the Trump administration continued to keep the Middle East high on its agenda this past week, with the president sending a letter to Iran’s supreme leader and his team directly engaging with the Palestinian group Hamas. This continued engagement on the region’s top two strategic questions, Iran and Arab-Israel affairs, contrasted with America’s hands-off approach to Syria, which saw some troubling violence.

Syria’s national dialogue, held in Damascus at the end of February, was intended to chart the country’s future, one that would have been unthinkable just three months earlier. However, the process and outcomes of the dialogue were flawed, left critical questions unanswered, and raised new concerns.

Either maintaining Russia’s military bases in Syria or finding an alternative outpost in the Mediterranean will prove extremely difficult for Moscow. And part of the problem with pursuing the latter option, particularly if in Libya, is that it would require a full-on transformation of Russia’s military presence model — from more traditional bases designed to establish deterrence by showing the flag in the region to building up a military and logistical operation inside a security “gray zone.”

In his second term in office, President Donald Trump faces a Middle East undergoing multifaceted upheaval and an Islamic Republic of Iran currently in its weakest and most isolated position since the founding of the regime in 1979. Yet far from permanently subdued, Tehran continues to move closer to building a nuclear weapon, and it is trying to preserve its regional network of proxies and non-state allies. Trump now faces an important strategic choice on Iran policy. This report analyzes three overarching dynamics: the shifting strategic landscape across the Middle East in 2023-24; the impact of these shifts on Iran and its Axis of Resistance network; and Iran’s current position and standing at home and in the region. It concludes with a series of strategic-level recommendations for the new administration.