Research & Commentary Results

Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s new foreign minister, is famous for his exceptionally close relationship with the Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as its regional allies.

Amb. Dennis Ross and Karen Young join guest host Gerald Feierstein to discuss the progress of relations between Israel and the Arab world one year after the signing of the Abraham Accords, as well as the agreement’s economic impacts and what role the United States will play moving forward.

It has been a year since the August 2020 announcement of the Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between the UAE and Israel. The accords were later signed at a White House ceremony attended by President Donald Trump that September. In less than a year the UAE and Israel swiftly exchanged ambassadors. This was the highlight of the first year of normalizing relations between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. During their first year the accords also successfully passed the unexpected, brutal test of the 11-day military escalation between Israel and Hamas that began in late May 2021.

The inauguration of President Ebrahim Raisi has been heralded as the advent of a “New Iran” by the ultra-conservative camp. Although the Iranian authorities are still interested in the revival of the JCPOA, Raisi represents a resistance discourse that believes Iran has to focus on thwarting the sanctions instead of trying to lift them by means of political negotiations. The focal point of this worldview is the expansion of relations with non-Western countries, and Africa plays a central role in this effort.

Incoming Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi may break the mold of his predecessor by exceeding expectations in his first 100 days, but make no mistake—less horrific is still horrific; no one should be fooled.

Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as Iran’s new president on August 5. Ali Alfoneh and Henry Rome join guest host Alex Vatanka, director of MEI’s Iran Program, to discuss the political and economic challenges the new president will contend with, his relationship to Ayatollah Khamenei, and the future of Iran and the country’s leadership.

Iran’s water bankruptcy has been in the news lately, prompting deadly protests in Khuzestan province that also garnered the attention of global media. But this kind of problem is neither new or unique in the country. Drying rivers, vanishing lakes, shrinking wetlands, declining groundwater levels, land subsidence, sinkholes, desertification, soil erosion, dust storms, air, water and waste pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildfires are among the other familiar signs of Iran’s environmental devastation.

the years leading up to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban had strained relations with Iran. Tensions between the two sides escalated to the point that the Iranian government and the Quds Force actually assisted American forces during the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Tehran’s policy toward the Afghan Taliban has created new clashes within Iranian government circles. These clashes recently escalated as influential hard-line media and associates of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made public efforts to portray the Taliban in a positive light. 

The future of economic growth in the GCC is looking better than some analysts expected in the depths of the downturn in 2020. What may be different in this recovery compared to previous economic crises in the Gulf is a more limited fiscal policy space, and more variance among GCC countries in their ability to rebound with smart stimulus. As the global economic recovery now strengthens oil demand, taking advantage of this interim period of the global energy transition will mean accelerating government spending in areas where it can make a long-term impact on productivity growth and increased labor force participation among citizens in the private sector, especially women. Some governments will be able to accelerate productivity, including using highly skilled foreign labor and favorable long-term residency regimes, and others will be simply treading water to satisfy immediate demands of their populations.

There is a new and little noticed geostrategic alliance on the rise. India, Israel, and the UAE have had surface-level, transactional relations for a long time. However, last year’s normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states — chief among them, the UAE — along with Turkey’s bid to return as the leader of a Muslim order and the growing distance between the UAE and Pakistan have created an unlikely and unprecedented “Indo-Abrahamic“ transregional order. This emerging multilateral pact may fill the gap the United States is leaving in the Middle East and has the potential to transform the region’s geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Masameer County, the Netflix animated television series taking Saudi Arabia by storm, reveals how the country’s creative class, over the last two decades, has posed awareness-raising questions while reevaluating the assumptions and terms used to discuss contentious social issues. This is not the Saudi Arabia of clerics, oil, and the royal family, but the one experienced by everyday people.

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

While Western banks saw their valuations drop substantially during the first 18 months of the COVID pandemic — and have yet to recover — the declines among Saudi banks have been smaller and their valuations are now closer to, if not above, their pre-pandemic levels. Identifying the drivers of this seemingly contradictory trend helps us better understand the shifts within the Saudi banking sector and the growing impacts of policies related to Vision 2030, the country’s long-term economic development and diversification program.

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.