Trump’s Midterm Loss Opens a Window for Iran Diplomacy
Eight months after launching the war alongside Israel, Trump has yet to explain what an American victory would look like or how much longer the United States must keep fighting to achieve it. While Americans opted to vote for the Democratic Party, which is preparing to challenge the logic of the war, Trump retains much executive power to stay in the war. Going forward, this means the political risks for him and his party will be high.
As it fights on four separate but connected fronts, Pakistan’s military is employing more force and less tolerance for public dissent. The result is not strength, but instead a widening set of vulnerabilities that will undermine Pakistan.
After decades of political setbacks, Iran’s former Revolutionary Guards commander has returned to the center of power. Is he an incidental beneficiary of war, or have observers underestimated him all along?
The Unavoidable Neighbor: Managing Iran Beyond the War
Gulf states and their partners are increasingly looking beyond their most immediate interests of containing the war with Iran. While recent talks between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran have kept de-escalation on the agenda, a broader regional security framework and non-aggression pact has also emerged, envisioning a longer-lasting solution to regional conflicts. The talks have yet to produce a settlement, but they reflect a growing recognition that Gulf security cannot depend entirely on Washington. Iran will still be there, and its neighbors will have to find ways of living with it.
Recent Elections and What They May Mean for the Middle East
Recent elections for the Israeli Knesset and American Congress may make less of a difference in the Middle East than some people think. Elections are significant indicators of national political trends, but do not always translate into changes in national security strategies. That is likely the case now in both nations.
The Coming Debate Over the US Military Presence in the Gulf
The war with Iran is hardly over, but the debate over the shape and nature of the post-conflict American posture in the Gulf region is just beginning. Undoubtedly, how the war ends will affect how the United States adjusts its role. While this debate is still in its early stages, something of a conventional wisdom is already developing in policy circles that could seriously compromise American influence in the Middle East.
Curb Your Enthusiasm: Why the Midterms Might Not Change Much in US Middle East Policy
With less than a week before the midterm elections in the United States, the spotlight is on the economy and cultural divides. US foreign policy remains mostly on the sidelines, but this year’s inconclusive Iran war and its effect on America’s economy have shaped the broader political environment in this electoral cycle.
Iran’s New Defense Minister Is a Missile Man, Not a Military Man
Mehrdad Akhlaghi was appointed defense minister in October 2026 by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. He is an unusual choice, as, unlike most of his predecessors, he does not come from a uniformed military background. And his appointment comes arguably at the most sensitive time in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Washington says it doesn’t know who runs Iran. Tehran insists its leadership is united. MEI Senior Fellow Alex Vatanka joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to sort out where the truth lies. They look at the small circle of political and military figures now steering the war effort in Tehran: who they are, how they make decisions, and how unified they really are. They also discuss the current state of US-Iran negotiations, the role of the upcoming midterm elections in the United States, and how the Islamic Republic is preparing for a potential renewal of conflict afterward.
Crude oil is flowing out of the Gulf again, but the market is no better prepared for another disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. It has assembled a temporary system for managing one. Crude exports from the Gulf, excluding Iran, returned to pre-war levels in September, while total Gulf shipments reached 15.5 million barrels a day, more than 80% of the pre-conflict volume.
Many of the immediate consequences of the Israeli-American war with Iran are already clear. The further emergence of drones and missiles as dominant weapons of war; the danger to the global economy from the threats to vital chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb; and the inadequacy of US weapons procurement, among other issues, have garnered widespread and entirely merited attention.
The Americans Are Gone. Will Iraq’s Militias Disarm?
On September 30, the US completed its military withdrawal from Iraq, ending a 12-year-long mission to combat ISIS that began in 2014. The date was also meant to be the deadline for disarming the largely Iranian-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), but Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has now pushed that cutoff back to June 30, 2027. MEI Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow Amb. (ret.) Robert S. Ford joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to discuss what the US military withdrawal means for Iraqi security and the nature of the bilateral relationship going forward. They also speak about what it will take for Baghdad to bring the PMF militias to heel, and how Iraq may navigate the post-Iran war era.
Jordan’s Economy Weathers Iran War’s Shocks and Finds New Opportunities
In the summer of 2003, King Abdullah II told Bloomberg Jordan sits “between Iraq and a hard place,” a play on words designed to describe the kingdom’s challenging environment to an American audience amid the US-led Iraq war to the east and the lingering Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the west. Jordan is grappling with a much “harder place” today.
Proponents of the war with Iran have taken recent increases in crude-oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz as proof that the US strategy is finally working. President Trump is so confident in this that he recently rejected a seven-day plan, set forward by Iran’s foreign ministry, to end the war and open the strait. The United States is “winning tremendously,” Trump boasted.
The Mecca Joint Défense Agreement: A New Geometry of Middle Eastern Power?
On August 7, 2026, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Défense Agreement, a collective-defense pact widely compared to NATO’s Article 5. This essay argues that the comparison is misleading. Mecca borrows NATO’s language of solidarity without yet possessing NATO’s institutional machinery, and the Houthi offensive against Saudi Arabia in September 2026 provided an early and revealing test of what the agreement actually means in practice. Neither Pakistan nor Turkey automatically entered the fight on Saudi Arabia’s behalf, and Washington, despite an initial reluctance to strike directly, remained indispensable through intelligence support and a major proposed F-35 sale. Drawing on realist alliance theory — Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, Stephen Walt, Glenn Snyder, and Steven David — and on the precedent of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), the essay contends that the Middle East is not dividing into rival blocs but moving from hierarchy toward a looser, overlapping geometry of hedged partnerships, in which American exclusivity is eroding considerably faster than American primacy.
