Alex Vatanka, Abdolrasool Divsallar, and Michael Eisenstadt join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the high-level talks in Vienna, now in their fifth week, aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal that the Trump administration withdrew the US from in mid-2018.
On the margins of Vienna’s nuclear talks, Riyadh and Tehran have opened their own conversation in Baghdad. Despite predictions of a potential grand bargain, Saudi and Iranian identity security will confine the results to a mere cooling of relations, at best.
“منذ أن اندلعت الأحداث في حرم المسجد الأقصى، يستمر الوضع في التصعيد”.
Since the normalization of UAE-Israel relations was first announced, much of the international commentary only focused on the deal’s political and diplomatic significance. However, the deal will create a new digital order in the Middle East, one in which Israel and the UAE will partner more closely than ever in developing emerging technologies and cyber capabilities. This cooperation will be at the forefront of this UAE-Israel tech order.
Sanctions have had a devastating impact on Iran’s oil production and exports, preventing much-needed investment in the country’s ageing fields and barring it from legally exporting crude oil to global customers. Using a range of evasion tactics, however, Iran has succeeded in circumventing sanctions and maintaining a steady — albeit much lower — level of crude exports. The Gulf’s complex regional oil market has facilitated these tactics, providing the perfect environment for trade in oil that U.S. sanctions designate as illicit.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Failure to condemn anti-Palestinian violence will only further it.
President Joe Biden’s commitment to “stepping up” diplomacy to end the war in Yemen generated hope among peace practitioners and policy shapers. In February, the president appointed Tim Lenderking, a seasoned diplomat with solid experience in the region, as the U.S. special envoy to Yemen.
“في حين أن المدى الكامل لتداعيات القرار لا يزال غير واضح، فليس هناك شك بأن عباس تسبب لنفسه بضرر كبير”.
When the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell Fontelles, took office in December 2019, he emphasized the need to preserve the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and cooperate with Iran. At the same time, he criticized then-U.S. President Donald Trump for maintaining extended sanctions — which in practice prevented leading European firms from concluding large contracts with partners in Iran — and for the U.S.’s withdrawal from the provisions of the treaty.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
A leaked recording of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif criticizing the role and influence of the regime’s ideological army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and its late leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, has been making the rounds in international and Iranian media. For Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s shrewdest political mind, who once said he “ensures the details of private meetings are not disclosed,” the recording, of a three-hour interview in March with the journalist Saeed Leylaz, was extremely frank and generous in detail. The timing of the leak also appears to be key.
Iran’s presidential election is set to be held in less than two months, but the dynamics in the country’s domestic politics have changed significantly compared to 2017. The parliamentary elections of February 2020 saw the lowest voter turnout since the 1979 revolution, with only about 40% of Iranians casting a vote. Now, with the June presidential elections on the horizon, Tehran fears a repeat.
At the end of Joe Biden’s first 100 days as president of the United States, where do things stand when it comes to U.S. policy toward the Middle East and North Africa? We asked experts and scholars from across MEI to weigh in with their thoughts on the changes we’ve seen so far, the new challenges that have emerged, and what we know about the administration’s key priorities for the region.
In the past several weeks, news has been coming out of Ankara regularly about normalization in relations with countries with which Turkey has had problematic relationships for some time.