MEI’s Paul Salem and Ross Harrison join host Alistair Taylor to discuss what the Biden Administration can do to reduce regional tensions and proxy conflicts in the Middle East.
To get Washington’s Gulf partners on board, Biden needs an actual strategy for protecting them and ways to make them contribute to it.
Contents:
Marvin G. Weinbaum
Director, Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies
Because of football’s popularity, there is significant involvement by regime insiders. The Revolutionary Guards’ transition from barracks to boardrooms began back in the mid-1990s, when they took on management roles in some of the country’s most high-profile sports. Sports were not high on the agenda for the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, but as sports has grown in popularity and in profitability, it has become increasingly politicized. Over the past two decades, most sports clubs and related bodies have been taken over by political or security-military organizations, with former Revolutionary Guards holding the top positions.
As long as weapons transfers to armed non-state actors are not adequately restricted and the monopoly of violence is not exclusively in the hands of the government, it will be impossible to build sustainable peace in Yemen.
In recent weeks, power outages and severe air pollution have plagued Iran’s major cities.
The incoming Biden administration has a full plate as it seeks to reinvigorate American foreign policy engagements around the world. The need to reimagine future U.S. engagement with South Asia may not be among the highest priorities for policy makers. Yet, this region, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s population, presents perennial challenges as well as new threats that U.S. policy makers cannot afford to ignore.
As the Biden administration takes office, it faces a host of challenges, both at home and abroad. Where does the Middle East fit into all of this and what should the new administration prioritize in its first 200 days? In the second part of a two-part series, we asked experts and scholars from across the region to weigh in with their thoughts.
Contents:
Paul Salem
President
Is Iran’s Proxy Warfare Strategy of Forward Defense Sustainable?
MEI experts Gerald Feierstein, Alex Vatanka, Gonul Tol, and Charles Lister join host Alistair Taylor to survey what lies ahead for the region in the year ahead, with particular attention to Yemen, Iran, Turkey, and Syria.
The Biden administration will face a number of major challenges in the Middle East over the next four years, from great power competition and climate change to cybersecurity and refugees and migration. But what realistically can it achieve in that time on the policy front? To better understand what’s possible, we asked 10 experts from across MEI to weigh in with their thoughts.
Temporary marriages and sex tourism in Iran
