Research & Commentary Results

Sometimes the only thing more frightening than Afghanistan’s problems is the Taliban’s solutions and the recently signed Russia-Taliban military-technical agreement may be the most alarming one yet. The partnership signals that Afghanistan’s security architecture is being rebuilt without the United States, and increasingly by America’s rivals. Washington should pay close attention because the deal hands one of the world’s most repressive regimes a pathway to becoming more capable and deeply entrenched in a regional order where Russian influence is expanding at America’s expense.

After months of deadlock following the November 2025 elections, Iraq’s parliament approved a new government under Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi on May 14, 2026 — just as the country has become a battleground in the US-Israel-Iran war. Zaidi inherits a daunting brief: reviving a struggling economy, reining in armed factions, and steering Iraq through a perilous regional landscape. Dr. Renad Mansour, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme and director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House, joins host Alistair Taylor to discuss the war’s impact on Iraq — from Iran’s militia networks to the surge of attacks on the Kurdistan region — and how it’s reshaping Baghdad’s ties with Tehran and Washington.

The Middle East is both central to key United States interests and prone to instability. Yet US national security and defense strategic guidance has struggled to account for the unique demands of the region. Calls for strategic divestiture from the region have grown in prominence among analysts and policymakers alike in recent years.

What made Mohammad Javad Zarif’s recent Foreign Affairs article so explosive was not simply what he proposed, but when and where he proposed it.

The United States and Israel have done significant damage to Iran’s military and security apparatus. Senior commanders have been killed at a pace rarely seen in modern warfare.

This special episode of Middle East Focus features a conversation from MEI’s Virtual Briefing Series. Host Alistair Taylor is joined by former National Security Council Senior Director Stephen Flanagan and MEI Senior Fellow Iulia-Sabina Joja to discuss the impacts of the Iran war on US-European relations. The conflict has hit Europe’s economy hard and created deep divisions across the continent, even as some European countries play a quiet supporting role to the US. President Donald Trump has called for NATO member states to help secure shipping through the Iranian-blocked Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for international maritime trade. Flanagan and Joja explore the prospects for stepped-up European military involvement, the knock-on effects on the war in Ukraine, and the potential longer-term impact on the future of the US-European alliance.

The launch of large-scale US and Israeli strikes against Iran places Beijing in a strategically uncomfortable position. This campaign is the most significant US military operation since the Iraq War, unfolding across a region central to China’s energy security and commercial ambitions.

The latest cycle of U.S.-Iran escalation has followed a familiar script: sharpened rhetoric from the United States, calibrated military signaling by Iran in the Persian Gulf, indirect diplomacy through Oman, and Israeli warnings that remain deliberately ambiguous but unmistakably real. Yet beneath this choreography lies a more consequential development inside Tehran. The current crisis is forcing Iran’s political class to reassess its central foreign-policy wager of the past decade: that deepening alignment with Russia and China would provide strategic insulation against Western coercion.

The Abraham Accords have represented a remarkable shift in U.S. Middle East policy. They reframed Arab-Israeli normalization as a result of shared interests – within the Middle East and directly with the US, rather than as a byproduct of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Signed in September 2020, on the last leg of the first Trump administration, the Accords brokered by Washington normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, followed by framework agreements with Morocco and Sudan. From the American perspective, the Accords were intended to break decades of diplomatic stagnation in the Middle East in order to establish a regional framework aligned with American strategic objectives.

In November 2025, the United States sought and obtained approval for a United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR 2803) endorsing the formation of a Board of Peace (BoP) and International Stabilization Force (ISF) to support the implementation of the 20-point peace plan agreed to by Israel and Hamas the previous month. The ISF’s stated role is to help secure and demilitarize the Gaza Strip, primarily by facilitating the decommissioning of weapons, protecting civilians, and training and advising burgeoning Palestinian police forces. In the intervening months, however, progress on standing up the ISF has stalled, and conflicting messaging from US officials provides more questions than answers.

Hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj are joined by MEI Distinguished Military Fellow Mick Mulroy to discuss the Trump administration’s new National Defense Strategy (NDS) and its implications for the Middle East. While serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for the Middle East from 2017 to 2019, Mulroy helped prepare the 2018 NDS, giving him an insider perspective on US defense planning. Together, Taylor, Czekaj, and Mulroy unpack what the new strategy means for US priorities globally and for the Middle East in particular, including how it could be reflected in a potentially looming military strike on Iran.