This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Paul Salem, Michael Sexton, Alex Vatanka, and Gerald Feierstein.
As the U.S. prepares to head to the polls to choose its next president, Iran finds itself at a dead end. Hit hard by American sanctions and its own mismanagement of the economy, Tehran needs to negotiate with Washington to get out of its current economic crisis and shore up its waning popular legitimacy. With an eye to addressing these issues and mindful of the steady erosion of support for the government, President Hassan Rouhani has obtained permission from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to negotiate with the U.S. While the news has not yet been made public, Rouhani has told Ayatollah Khamenei that he will begin talks to reach an agreement with the winner of the upcoming election — regardless of who it is — and the Iranian leader has given his initial consent.
Nazila Fathi, Nazee Moinian, and Alex Vatanka join host Alistair Taylor to discuss Iran, U.S. policy, and the potential impact of the upcoming presidential election.
The Islamic Republic of Iran recently announced that it is now welcoming the possibility of women’s leadership at the highest levels of government. Optimists are celebrating this development in the belief that it could reinvigorate weak voter turnout and lead to much-needed reforms in the country. But a more realistic analysis finds that this is little more than a cynical ploy. There is an overwhelming body of evidence that suggests not much has happened to truly advance women’s rights in the Islamic Republic in years.
Since Aug. 13, speculation has been rife that the Sultanate of Oman will soon follow the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) lead and formalize full-fledged ties with Israel. Yet, at least thus far, Muscat has refused to join the UAE, Bahrain, and now Sudan in normalizing relations with Tel Aviv. As a moderate Arab country, where tolerance is firmly embedded into the national ethos and the Ibadi sect of Islam, Oman appears to be maintaining a balanced position on the overall Arab trend toward normalizing relations with Israel. Muscat’s positive reaction to the Abraham Accords is not a major change in strategy and is more illustrative of Oman’s longstanding position on normalization.
The upcoming American presidential election is top of mind for the Arab Gulf states. This is no surprise as there is so much at stake for them. As the race enters its final critical week, all eyes are on who will occupy the White House for the next four years — and the Arab Gulf states have their preferences. America is still indispensable to Gulf security, but the Gulf is also becoming an indispensable regional partner for whoever wants to lead the world in the 21st century. Today both sides need each other more than ever before.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could spill over to Iran’s Azeri minority, setting off a battle the government can’t contain.
With the latest polls suggesting a likely victory for the Democrats in the November U.S. presidential elections, a looming foreign policy crisis awaits a potential Biden administration: escalating tensions with Iran. While the Democrats’ “diplomacy first” approach has won praise across the Atlantic as the solution to deescalating tensions with Tehran, this Western-centric view ignores the changing reality on the ground in Iran. If Biden thinks he can return to the 2015 status quo, he may be in for a surprise.
Landlocked Afghanistan has begun using the Chinese-operated Pakistani port of Gwadar for transit trade — a development Pakistani officials see as marking the start of Gwadar’s role as a gateway port through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Pakistan’s hope to develop the Arabian Sea port into a gateway for Afghanistan, Central Asia, and China’s Xinjiang region has been a long-standing one — and it is misguided. Islamabad should instead focus on local drivers to build the port and use it as a vehicle to develop the impoverished, but resource-rich region of southern Balochistan.
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Alex Vatanka, Dima M. Toukan, and Syed Mohammad Ali.
Over the past decade, Iran has made a concerted push to expand its cyber capabilities, an effort in which the IRGC has played a central role. Given the IRGC’s expansive and growing power, scholars, analysts, and many Iran watchers have long thought that at some point it could take over control in Iran, replacing the theocratic government with a military one. As Iran approaches an inflection point over the issue of succession after Ayatollah Khamenei, that day could be coming soon, and the IRGC is well placed to bring about such a transition given the hybrid mix of physical and cyber capabilities that it has developed and perfected over recent decades.
In recent years, China has become increasingly involved in the international arena, including the Middle East. As a rising superpower, China finds itself, time and again, needing to maintain relationships with countries that are hostile to one another. This is particularly true in the Middle East, which is one of the most conflictual areas in the world. China faces a challenge as it seeks to maintain good relations with both Iran and Israel, two of the region’s fiercest and loudest adversaries. How does Beijing manage to do this, and can it continue to do so going forward?
Despite critical differences between the two political regimes that have dominated Iran for nearly a century, there are striking similarities between the Pahlavi monarchy (1925-1979) and the Islamic Republic (1979-present). Like Mohammad Reza Shah, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has built a cult of personality around himself and has engaged in “civilizational thinking” — a preoccupation with defining the eternal essence and world-historical destiny of Iran through references to a glorious (one might say “glorified”) collective past. Nonetheless, the two leaders have interpreted Iranian history in vastly differing ways that serve divergent ideological ends.
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Maxim A. Suchkov, Ibrahim Jalal, Eliza Campbell, Alex Vatanka, and Marvin G. Weinbaum.
Last September, at the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani proposed the optimistically named “Hormuz Peace Endeavor” (HOPE). Over the past year, however, Iran’s plan has failed to gain any traction with the GCC states, even as the region’s security environment has fundamentally changed in ways that are detrimental to the Islamic Republic.