Research & Commentary Results

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Marvin G. Weinbaum, Robert S. Ford, Alex Vatanka, and Birol Baskan provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including a potential agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan, protests in Algeria, Rouhani’s planned trip to Baghdad, and recent Turkish naval exercises.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, contributors Mirette F. Mabrouk, Gerald Feierstein, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Przemysław Osiewicz, Grace Wermenbol, and W. Robert Pearson provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the EU-Arab League summit, the progress in US-Taliban talks, challenges to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s power, consequences of the Kashmir attack, and Turkey’s next steps in Syria.

As the Sochi talks made clear, for all their efforts, Russia and Turkey remain far from a joint resolution on Manbij. But the two sides do not have equal clout on the issue. Russia’s significant and expanding military police presence in the Manbij countryside gives Moscow the final say on what will happen there, a reality that could result in Ankara losing some or all of the region to its Syrian rivals in Damascus.

In this week’s briefing, MEI experts Gerald Feierstein, Charles Lister, Marvin G. Weinbaum, and W. Robert Pearson provide analysis on Saudi-Pakistan relations, Turkish politics in the lead-up to March municipal elections, and the question of what to do with ISIS prisoners after the group’s territorial collapse.

The ongoing civil conflict in Yemen is a continuation of a cycle of violence, political upheaval, and institutional collapse, caused by the failure of Yemeni society to address and resolve the popular anger and frustration arising from political marginalization, economic disenfranchisement, and the effects of an extractive, corrupt, rentier state.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan angles to gain further influence as a leader of the Sunni Islamic world through an unlikely vehicle – Islamic insurance, or takaful.

This article highlights how the lesser-known issue of sea level rise makes Arab states increasingly vulnerable to climate change. Using the city of Doha as a case study to highlight how sea level rise represents a critical threat to many Arab coastal cities and a national security challenge to Gulf Arab nations, this article underscores the need for greater anticipation in the region’s urban planning of the risks posed by climate change and sea level rise.

Geopolitically, the Iranian Revolution did more to transform the Middle East than any other event in the second half of the 20th century. It aimed to restructure not only Iran’s society and political system, but also others across the Islamic world. Refusing to align with either the United States or the Soviet Union in the Cold War, the newly established Islamic Republic sought to create a new geopolitical order in the Persian Gulf and greater Middle East based on a mantra of “neither East nor West.”

With more of their geopolitical goals aligning, ties between Riyadh and Moscow are growing closer, and the kingdom plans to invest billions of additional dollars in Russian petroleum and other projects.

Turkey’s “Middle Corridor” (MC) and China’s “Belt Road initiative” (BRI) are two grand schemes that envisage trans-continental integration. These two ambitious initiatives have been developed independently of one another. However, are they compatible?

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Ahmad Majidyar, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Randa Slim, Paul Salem, and Guney Yildiz provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including U.S. negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan, a warning sent to Israel by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the Sudanese president’s appeal for external support, Turkish-Syrian diplomacy, and Pakistan’s acceptance of Gulf aid.

Since 1993, the EU has not adopted any comprehensive document to form the basis for its diplomatic and economic actions toward the Middle East, rendering the union less influential in the region today. The question remains, however, as to whether this attitude is in line with the bloc’s global ambitions.

This article was published by The Hill on January 23, 2019.

Once again, Turks and Kurds are squaring off to fight. Turks and Kurds have clashed with one another for nearly 1,000 years. The Kurds were in the Middle East first, with roots stretching back millennia. The Turks arrived in historical times and absorbed most Kurds into the Ottoman Empire. 

This article compares the local responses to the 2012-2018 outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) to that of the Avian Influenza outbreak in Southeast Asia from 2003-2015. How well do countries cope with the spread of new and deadly diseases? Why are some countries better at addressing the problem than others? And, what does this tell us about larger questions concerning states’ abilities to provide public goods (in this case health security) to their citizens and about global systems to prevent pandemics? What this comparison demonstrates is that countries with the ‘strongest’ state capacity to make and implement policy are best able to confront disease outbreaks.

Unlike other cases of repression against Muslims around the world, such as Myanmar, the Gulf monarchies have been silent about the “cultural cleansing” taking place in China’s Xinjiang Province.