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.
From the Middle East to Middle America: Engineering Better Policy with Andrew J. Tabler
Brian sits down with Andrew J. Tabler, the Martin J. Gross Senior Fellow in the Linda and Tony Rubin Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute, to trace his unique and distinctive path from Oil City, Pennsylvania, to fourteen years living and working in the Middle East. Tabler discusses his time in Syria under the Assad regime, his service as director for Syria at the National Security Council and as senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Syria Engagement at the US State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in the first Trump administration, and explains how these experiences shaped his perspective and inspired him to found the Drake Energy Forum.
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.
This article is part of a collection of short essays written by the Fellows of the Middle East Institute to explore aspects of the ongoing war with Iran. The intent of the collection is to help readers see new and unexpected elements of the dynamics and impact of the ongoing hostilities and to think harder, deeper, and broader about the implications of the conflict.
Yemen: The Houthis’ Role in the Next Evolution of the Axis of Resistance
The outbreak of the war with Iran demonstrated the strategic value of maritime chokepoints in the Islamic Republic’s confrontation with the United States. But as Tehran’s strategy of using the Strait of Hormuz to pressure Washington seems to be backfiring, Iran is working with the Houthis to strengthen its leverage over another strategic chokepoint: the Bab el-Mandeb. The recent escalation in Yemen should be viewed within this context.
US Regional Foreign Policy: Unforced Diplomatic Errors Risk Accelerating American Retrenchment
As the summer draws to a close, the storyline for the 2026 Iran war remains incomplete and the United States’ broader Middle East policy direction highly uncertain. None of the major issues that have long headlined Washington’s Iran portfolio appear any closer to resolution, and new problems have emerged that did not exist before.
US Regional Defense Policy: Strategic Prioritization and the Promotion of Collective Defense
A war that the White House initially hoped would be brief has now dragged on for more than six months, with prospects for a resolution frustratingly remote, and the Trump administration’s credibility among friend and foe alike is nearly exhausted. Focusing on defense and security, there are multiple lessons from the Iran war that should shape US strategic thinking.
When the US and Israel launched military action against Iran on February 28, 2026, it set in motion a chain of events that saw violence spread across the Middle East. Yet as the region found itself engulfed in conflict, Syria has experienced its most peaceful months in 15 years, and the government in Damascus appears determined to stay its course toward recovery.
Gulf: The War Has Shaken Relations With Washington
When President Donald Trump ordered US forces into war against Iran, the administration’s ambitions reached well beyond Tehran’s nuclear program. Trump openly encouraged Iranians to topple their government. Israeli leaders spoke of reshaping the Middle East. The war’s architects got their wish — only not in the way they intended.
The conventional framing of China’s role in the Middle East in policy discourse centers on a familiar question: what challenge does Beijing pose to US primacy? The answer is often framed as a largely linear story in which expanding economic influence gradually translates into geopolitical leverage.Yet this view captures only part of the reality.
Europe did not choose the war with Iran, and most European governments still resist describing themselves as participants in it. But six months of military basing, missile-defense drawdowns, energy shocks, sanctions pressure and planning for possible migration crisis have made that distance harder to sustain.
The Houthis: Iran’s Bargaining Chip With Washington
As Washington scrambled to contain the consequences of the Houthis’ dramatic advance along Yemen’s Red Sea coast last week, US Vice President JD Vance confirmed US media reports that the Trump administration was “engaged in direct conversations with the Houthis.”
Algeria and Morocco have long been at odds, but recent diplomatic moves may signal a widening geopolitical split in North Africa. Hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj are joined by MEI Senior Fellow Intissar Fakir to unpack Algeria’s decision to sever diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates and Morocco’s warming relations with both the UAE and Israel. They also explore linkages between these diplomatic shifts and the Western Sahara conflict, Moroccan domestic concerns, particularly in light of this week’s elections, as well as broader regional stability.
