In recent weeks, the Iran-backed Houthis have fired missiles and drones deep into Saudi Arabia, striking high-profile targets, including Riyadh’s airport and Aramco’s headquarters. The attacks follow a rapid Houthi offensive in September to seize key parts of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, which Saudi-backed government forces are now trying to roll back. Fatima Abo Alasrar, an affiliated scholar at MEI and non-resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to unpack the latest phase of the conflict. They discuss what the Houthis want, Riyadh’s calculus and search for allies, and how this campaign ties into Iran’s confrontation with the United States.
Geopolitical influence over trade increasingly rests on controlling the systems that make them work. The Middle East illustrates the stakes. US ports, cable corridors, cloud facilities, artificial intelligence (AI) investments, and maritime routes connect regional economies to global commerce while exposing them to external decisions and disruptions. For the United States, the challenge is to translate technological advantage into resilient networks rather than rely on centrality that can itself become a source of vulnerability and coercion.
Bonus Episode: Previewing Israel’s First Post-October 7 Election
Israel is preparing to hold what may be its most consequential election in decades. On October 27, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will face his first electoral test since October 7, 2023. In this bonus episode of Middle East Focus, we present the audio from a recent MEI webinar, hosted in Israel on the eve of the vote. Senior Fellow Natan Sachs is joined by Dr. Shira Efron, Distinguished Chair for Israel Policy and senior fellow at the RAND Corporation, and Neri Zilber, veteran journalist and Financial Times correspondent. They explore what’s at stake in this historic election and how different outcomes could reshape Israel’s domestic politics and the wider region.
Since 1967, Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been a contested feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The ultimate disposition of the settlements and ongoing activity related to their growth have repeatedly defied agreement in negotiations over a resolution to the conflict.
The Houthis are a political-military faction and Zaydi religious movement founded in northwestern Yemen in the 1980s. A key member of Iran’s Axis of Resistance with links to other militant organizations in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, the group has continued to pose a threat to Western interests on a global scale.
The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a proposed multinational infrastructure initiative aimed at upgrading connectivity between the three regions through integrated trade, energy, and digital networks. Announced at the G20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023, IMEC is envisioned partially as a counterweight to China’s international infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative.
After a decade of post-Arab Spring isolation, Turkey’s leaders have recognized that their ambition to position the country as an agenda-setter on the world stage requires active engagement in all directions. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s consolidation of executive authority has centralized foreign policy decision-making and tied it to his domestic political priorities, transforming the country’s revisionist approach to one shaped primarily by personal and pragmatic interests.
MEI Senior Fellow Brian Katulis engages friends, colleagues, and policy experts in casual conversations on the most important happenings in the Middle East.
Iran’s Sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2016-21) identifies the energy sector as a key source of revenue and driver of economic growth.[1] The plan envisages increasing oil output by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) to 4.8 million bpd.[2] Achieving this ambitious target will require substantial foreign investment, technology, and expertise.
China’s Approach to Mediation in the Middle East: Between Conflict Resolution and Conflict Management
Mediation diplomacy has emerged as one of the central pillars of China’s foreign policy objectives and practice, with Beijing deliberately positioning itself as a peacemaker in the Middle East conflicts and crises in the region (e.g., Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process). This article examines whether China’s mediation diplomacy in the Middle East is a precursor of change in China’s interpretation and application of the principle of non-intervention.
In recent weeks, mass demonstrations in Gaza, near the Israel-Gaza fence, have resulted in large numbers of casualties, reportedly 44 dead and several thousand wounded.
In Sunday’s elections in Lebanon, Hezbollah and its allies gained more than half the seats in Parliament. After a result like that, an old canard in Washington is likely to resurface with full force: the idea that U.S. policy in Lebanon is a disaster. Don’t buy it. In fact, of all the investments the United States has made in the Middle East over the past decade, Lebanon has generated the greatest returns.
Trump's goal in Iran is regime change | Monday Briefing
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Alex Vatanka, Randa Slim, and Randa Slim provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including President Trump’s decision on whether to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, what this weekend’s election results in Lebanon indicate about Hezbollah’s standing in the country, and expectations for the outcome of Iraq’s elections on May 12.
Rouhani rejects JCPOA renegotiation, hints Tehran may remain in deal without US
In contrast to bellicose statements from Tehran in recent days, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said today that Tehran would remain in the 2015 nuclear accord, even if the Trump administration abandoned it. But he said Tehran would stick to the deal only if other signatories of the deal assure Tehran that the Islamic Republic will continue to benefit from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
IRGC's role in Iran's economy growing with its engineering arm set to execute 40 mega-projects
The commander of Khatam al-Anbia Construction Base, the main engineering arm of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), has said that the conglomerate will complete 40 mega-projects in the current Iranian year, which began on March 21.
What impact will the Trump administration’s new arms sales policy, named “Buy American,” have on the Middle East, historically one of the major destinations for U.S.-made weapons? Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research for the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and Bilal Saab, director of MEI’s Defense and Security program, join host Paul Salem to discuss.
With Lebanon’s parliamentary elections just around the corner, Washington will be watching closely how its Lebanese nemesis, the powerful Shi‘a party Hezbollah, sets itself up for the future.
Iraq wilting: How creeping drought could cause the next crisis
Nabil Musa learned how to swim and fish in the Tanjero River in the city of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. The Tanjero eventually joins the Tigris River, which, together with the Euphrates River, gave life to Mesopotamia.
Iranian leaders say “axis of resistance” will retaliate against Israel for Syria strikes
On an official visit to Damascus this week, the chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy committee said that the Islamic Republic would retaliate against Israel for last month’s strikes on an air Syrian military base that killed several Iranian nationals. “We will respond to any aggression on Iran at the appropriate time and place,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi said at a news conference in the Syrian capital on Tuesday. The senior Iranian lawmaker made the remarks after meeting with President Bashar al-Assad and top Syrian officials and parliamentarians.
Iran-backed Fateh Alliance seeks to win or play kingmaker in upcoming Iraqi elections
With Iraq’s May 12 parliamentary elections nearing, the coalition of Iranian-supported militia groups called Fateh Alliance is confident that it can translate its military gains into a political victory by either winning the premiership or playing kingmaker in the post-election government formation process, according to Tasnim News Agency, an outlet affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Morocco cuts ties with Tehran, accusing Iran and Hezbollah of arming Polisario Front
The Moroccan government announced yesterday that it has severed its diplomatic relations with Iran over Tehran’s support for the Polisario Front, a separatist movement in Western Sahara,
Conflicting reports on suspected Israeli strikes targeting Iranian-backed Afghan militia in Syria
The commander of the Fatemiyoun Division, an all-Afghan militia unit fighting under the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ leadership in Syria, has rejected media reports that missiles hit its military base near Syria’s northwest over the weekend. “The military base of this Division is near the city of Aleppo. No combatants from this force have been martyred by an attack as reported in the media,” Tasnim News Agency, a Revolutionary Guards mouthpiece, quoted the Afghan Shiite commander as saying in an exclusive interview, without disclosing his name.
The oldest peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East, MEI’s flagship journal covers politics, society, and culture in the region.
