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.
This report explores maritime security conditions in the Mediterranean and the evolving US engagement in the region. As critical infrastructure becomes increasingly vulnerable to sabotage, freedom of navigation is undermined by conflict, and energy disputes generate tension, US policy focus on the region has become fragmented and disengaged. The authors call for a sustained American role to strengthen maritime domain awareness, allied coordination, infrastructure protection, and the capacity to respond when Mediterranean crises affect US and transatlantic interests.
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.
On August 10, Turkish voters will go to the polls to choose a new president for the first time in the country’s history. The following candidates are on the ballot: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister and leader of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP); Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, joint candidate for the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Nationalist Action Party (MHP); and Selahattin Demirtas, the candidate of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP).
Lebanese Presidential Election Unlikely to Alter Hezbollah’s Syria Calculus
The presidential vacuum in Lebanon since May 24, when president Michel Sleiman’s term ended without the Lebanese parliament having elected a successor, is likely to continue until an electable candidate is found who respects Hezbollah’s military autonomy and does not challenge its Syria policy.
Collection Spotlight: Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict By Marda Dunsky
Free media in a democratic society allows people to evaluate and challenge, to scrutinize honestly and debate accurately. But what happens when mainstream media unknowingly fails the public? Marda Dunsky argues that, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a decade-old conflict at the center of U.S. interests in the Middle East, the American mainstream media has failed the public and even perpetuated violence.
Not Our Kind of Caliph: Syrian Islamists and the Islamic State
On June 29, the al-Qaeda splinter faction known as the Islamic State (formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS)[1] declared its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to be the caliph, or successor to the Prophet Mohammed, a post that no one has claimed since 1924.[2]
The Cruel War in Gaza Calls for a New Approach to Peace
The terrible war in Gaza, the third and worst of its kind in the last decade, is a product of Palestinian political disarray, Arab disunity, and division in Israel. Washington’s policy of “no direct talks” with Hamas and bitter partisanship between the White House and Congress have also limited effective U.S. intervention. As such, this latest tragedy is yet another symptom of decades of failure to resolve the larger Israel-Palestine conflict, which, without major policy changes, will surely drag on regardless of the latest cease-fire.
Jordan has survived – and at times even prospered – for decades because of its ability to collect “strategic rents.” Unlike its Saudi neighbor, which has long collected oil rents from the global market for its energy resources, Jordan has sold its geographical location, stable domestic politics, and pro-Western orientation to the United States and its allies on the Arab side of the Gulf. Considering Jordan’s dearth of other more tangible resources, the path to survival carved by the late King Hussein and his son King Abdullah II was essentially the only one
"Marked" for Exclusion: The Problem of Pluralism, State-building, and Communal Identities in Iraq and the Arab World
In this essay, the author argues that the dynamics of contemporary Sunni-Shi‘a relations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world are not fundamentally different from those animating other societal cleavages. The modern Iraqi state’s awkwardness vis-à-vis its Shi‘a population, and indeed other outgroups and minorities, was most directly a product of exclusionary nation-building based on problematic conceptions of “unity” and “pluralism.” Rather than actually fostering unity or respecting and nurturing pluralism (politically or communally), these concepts have often been used to exclude dissenters whose non-conformity was deemed a threat to the body politic.
Sectarian Violence Involving Rohingya in Myanmar: Historical Roots and Modern Triggers
While the tangled roots of the Rohingya have played a critical role in the recent inter-religious violence between Rohingya and Buddhists, so too has the rise of Burman-Buddhist ethno-nationalism. This essay discusses the the salient narratives driving anti-Rohingya/anti-Muslim sentiments as well as the policies and reforms that have contributed to prolonging the violence.
Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza — Protective Edge — has animated the Shia Islamist leadership in Tehran.
The bloody conflict, and the global Muslim outrage it has provoked, is held by the Iranian regime as a chance to redeem itself in the eyes of the Sunni Muslim majority in the world.
Democracy Cannot Exist without Social Cohesion: The Myanmar Challenge
By emphasizing uniformity through laws to protect one class of race and religion, Myanmar legislators are advancing a device for oppression. If enacted, the Law on Protection of Race and Religion would not only breach international conventions; it would also preset the conditions for further sectarian violence.
Salafism and the Persecution of Shi‘ites in Malaysia
In the last few decades, religious scholars have branded many age-old Malay and Sufi religious practices as wrongful innovations. One of the great casualties of this rising intolerance has been Shi‘ism, whose followers have received some of the most intense criticism. It is widely accepted that these developments have much to do with the rise of Salafism.
The current crisis in Gaza represents the first real foreign policy test for Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Hamas’s rejection of the Egyptian initiative to end hostilities calls into question Egypt’s ability to maintain its decades-long special status as mediator, a role it assumed by virtue of its relations with all parties – Israel and the United States on one hand, and the PLO and Hamas on the other.
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.
