Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
With the acute impacts of US-Chinese global tech decoupling becoming clearer, MENA is slowly emerging as an important region to watch. Economic and geopolitical ties with the West have long dictated the shape of the region’s digital environment, but more recent great power competition and Middle Eastern countries’ pursuit of economic and technological sovereignty have slowly deconstructed these dynamics.
Key findings from the latest Arab Barometer survey, its seventh wave, reveal that, despite some political gains in several Arab states, clear majorities in the 12 countries in which the survey was conducted still hold traditional views on gender norms.
Netanyahu is skillfully building a set of menacing tools, mechanisms, capabilities, and policies that create a credible threat to the current order. Today, he is executing this strategy to achieve success on three key issues: annihilating the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution, curbing Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and carrying out what is effectively regime change in Israel. The U.S. must swiftly and decisively confront and foil Netanyahu’s destructive leverage vectors or else it will find itself on the wrong side of history on some or all of these three critical fronts.
For the first time in several months, Iranian critical military infrastructure again came under attack from an unknown assailant. The Jan. 28 drone attack on a Ministry of Defense workshop complex appeared designed to deliver a politico-strategic message. The strike may mark the beginning of a more unstable post-JCPOA security environment in the Middle East characterized by a return of deterrence and risk-taking behavior.
Despite formal agreements and vast financial resources, Saudi Arabia has largely failed to integrate the various armed groups in Aden and southern Yemen under one national security sector. This adds to Riyadh’s ineffectiveness in establishing military-political influence in southern Yemen or in limiting the UAE’s continuing leverage. In an effort to boost its influence, since late 2022 Saudi Arabia has established new armed formations in Aden and nearby governorates, such as the Nation Shield Force.
This week, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) concluded what it called on social media, “the largest ever U.S.-Israel combined exercise.” The drills reasserted U.S. support for partnerships, deterrence, and integration, despite posture reductions and continued concern among partners about Washington’s commitment to the Middle East.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Facing the profound challenge of trying to diversify its energy supply while a destabilizing war rages on in Ukraine, Germany has looked to several Gulf monarchies to forge new energy partnerships. Notwithstanding heated domestic debates over controversial topics such as their human rights record, Berlin should consider a more comprehensive strategic approach toward the Gulf monarchies that encompasses issues beyond energy supply, such as joint efforts in regional integration and development.
A movement of Israelis who resist the new Netanyahu government is crystallizing and taking initial steps to push back against democratic erosion. It will need to evolve quickly and effectively to make an impact and could benefit from some international helping hands along the way.
Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.
Gulf states are collectively investing billions of dollars in developing renewable energy. Yet climate change patterns in neighboring regions, combined with rising average temperatures, could eventually trigger more serious climate migration problems for the Gulf countries themselves.
The Gulf states are often overlooked as indirect beneficiaries of the Russia-Europe energy war. In what ways and to what extent have they leveraged it? Are these benefits sustainable?
The challenge of developing export strategies for the offshore natural gas resources concentrated in the Eastern Mediterranean predates the Russo-Ukrainian war. Yet over the course of 2022, Europe’s intensifying energy crisis created a new and more immediate incentive to solve those export challenges, despite a great deal of work still to be done.
