Research & Commentary Results

In retaliation for an airstrike that killed 33 Turkish soldiers at the end of February, Ankara launched “Operation Spring Shield” (OSS) against the Syrian regime and the pro-Iranian militias supporting it. Despite being unable to rely on its fleet of F-16s due to Russia’s control of the Syrian airspace over Idlib, Turkey managed to successfully wipe out a large portion of Assad’s army in the area within just a couple of days by making innovative use of drones.

Democrats ought to build a moral firewall around Syria policy, establishing a framework for understanding the Syrian conflict and debating policy options.

From Morocco to Afghanistan, the scholars and experts at MEI take a closer look at how the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is affecting the Middle East.

Recent developments are making it increasingly difficult for the months-old protest movement to sustain its momentum.

This was an inauspicious start for a plan that from the outset was riddled with holes.

In changing the balance of power on the ground and forcing hostilities to a stalemate, Turkey’s military intervention in Idlib had produced its desired effect. On March 5, Vladimir Putin and Erdogan sat together for six hours and announced to the world a comprehensive cease-fire and the establishment of a secure corridor spanning six kilometers on the north and south sides of the M4 highway.

The story from Iraq since last October has been mainly one of uplifting hope, as mass protests sweep across the country in a fight against corruption, nepotism, and bad governance. But what of the places left behind and ignored? For most of its modern history, Iraq has been embroiled in sectarianism and conflict, most recently with the rise of ISIS. The country has celebrated its ability to fight ISIS and take back the areas the group controlled between 2013 and 2017, but for those that remain in the most vulnerable liberated areas, life is precarious and dangerous, with underserviced communities living in the most dire of conditions.

As Syria’s war reaches its ninth anniversary, Russian and U.S. soldiers are increasingly finding themselves face to face — quite literally — in the country’s northeast. A spate of confrontations over the last two months has opened questions about the fate of Syria’s north in the coming year.

Washington’s foreign relations in the Middle East are often characterized by ebb and flow, tracking the region’s dynamic politics. But when it comes to Iraq, this ebb and flow is especially turbulent, and the country’s energy sector has been thrown under the spotlight as Washington presses Baghdad to take swift action to ensure its “energy independence” from Iran.

After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hammered out a deal with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on March 5 to bring an end to the fighting in Idlib in northwestern Syria, he said he was hopeful that the two countries could extend their cooperation to Libya.

The United States has missed a valuable opportunity to use its influence in Iraq to encourage the government to implement the reforms Iraqi protesters have been demanding over the past six months and push back on Iran.

On March 1, Iraqi PM designate Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi announced that he had failed to form a new government to replace the current caretaker one headed by PM Adel Abdul-Mahdi. In the post-Saddam era, government formation in Iraq has always been a complicated process, but this is the first time since 2003 that a PM designate failed to form a government and the episode has revealed fundamental deficiencies in the Iraqi political process.

Minority communities in south-west Syria have shrunk to a fraction of their pre-2011 size, and the regime’s repressive policies perpetuate a cycle of violence and chaos that prevents their safe return. The regime’s strategy of transforming minority communities into sources of militia fighters has not only led to the deaths of thousands of young Alawite and Shi’a men, but also created sectarian tensions between formerly interconnected communities in south-west Syria. So long as the regime’s policy in the south-west is characterized by violence, the safe and dignified return of displaced Syrians will not be possible. This paper studies current and former minority communities in south-west Syria, the security and economic challenges these groups face, and the manner by which the regime exploits and weaponizes these vulnerable Syrians.

The U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force commander, along with the deputy chair of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, altered the political balance in Iraq. But the killings took place against a wider backdrop of political unrest and protests that forced the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi at the end of 2019. With Iraq potentially headed for early elections,the country is set for significant changes as political actors vie for a seat at the table. U.S. and coalition forces in the region will inevitably be affected, and the coming months will determine the future of both Iranian proxies and the coalition presence in Iraq.

In the past, similar cease-fire agreements ended shortly after they were announced and were followed by more fierce fighting that further consolidated the regime’s control.