The “Anti-Strategic President” Needs to Revive a Policy Process to Resolve Iran
President Donald Trump’s disdain for strategy extends to process: mass National Security Council firings and reliance on a tiny circle of advisors have left the interagency policy process dormant amid the Iran war. The result is improvised, damaging moves like the Strait of Hormuz toll scheme. Reviving a professional, deliberative policy process is essential.
It has become a commonplace for Americans to describe our current war with Iran as stuck in a kind of limbo, neither full war nor real peace. We’re not the only ones. Iraq finds itself caught in a limbo of its own, between America and Iran, between the tolerable and the intolerable, between progress and relapse.
The Iraqi Peshmerga, the military arm of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), remains one of the United States’ most important defense partners in the Middle East. This monograph provides an in-depth assessment of Peshmerga combat effectiveness, particularly considering its experience in the war against the Islamic State and its subsequent clash with the Iraqi Army and Iran-backed militias. Drawing on past research and more than two dozen interviews with Peshmerga officers, US military officers, and subject matter experts, this study includes detailed policy recommendations as well as a discussion of their implications.
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.
Podcasts
Middle East Focus
MEI’s flagship weekly podcast on US foreign policy and contemporary political and social issues in the Middle East.
MEI Senior Fellow Brian Katulis engages friends, colleagues, and policy experts in casual conversations on the most important happenings in the Middle East.
Integration or conflict in northeastern Syria? Ten key points to consider
After 10 months of US-mediated talks failed to achieve an integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces into Syria’s transitional state, hostilities erupted in early January. US diplomacy stepped in to try to calm tensions and force through the integration of the SDF’s Kurdish core into the Syrian state. Here are 10 key takeaways and indications of where things could go next.
Ambiguous Uncertainties: Phase Two of Trump’s Plan for Gaza
MEI Senior Fellow Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to discuss the latest developments in Gaza. Nearly four months after the Israeli government and Hamas agreed to President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, Washington has announced that phase two of the process is now underway. Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, Taylor, and Czekaj examine the humanitarian situation in the devastated coastal strip, assess what phase two could entail, break down how international actors are responding, and explore what would need to happen to realize the plan’s aspirations.
Media and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are hyping the idea that President Trump’s attempt to gain sovereign control of Greenland has caused unprecedented and irreparable damage to the over 75 year-old Transatlantic Alliance. This “analysis” stems from multiple sources. On both sides of the ocean, there are those who pounce on any deviation from the norm by Trump as evidence the world as we know it is ending. And in Europe, there is the human but unattractive reaction of weak, dependent states against their one powerful ally when it rejects Europe’s preferred script. Much of the US media criticism is summarized by the concept that our other NATO allies can never again “trust” the US.
The US Commerce Department announced on November 19, 2025, that it had authorized the export of advanced American semiconductor chips to HUMAIN of Saudi Arabia and G42 of the United Arab Emirates. The approval enables both companies to purchase up to 35,000 Blackwell chips (GB300s). This sale is a core component of a broader “Compute Diplomacy” approach under the second administration of President Donald J. Trump, which was solidified following his May 2025 visit to the Gulf, where a series of multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure agreements were signed.
From a US military build-up in the region to Trump’s growing unpopularity at home, several factors could influence his decision on whether or not to attack.
Ankara’s double win: Kurds, Israel, and the new Syria
Whether the truce between Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces holds or collapses will have major implications for neighboring Turkey, which has long-standing interests in Syria, but recent developments already point to a win for Ankara.
The question facing international oil companies is not whether Libya has oil and gas to develop. It does. The question is whether the country’s current political, economic, and security conditions allow that potential to be converted into reliable returns — and whether near-term changes could alter that calculation.
This bonus episode of Middle East Focus features an excerpt from a recent MEI Virtual Briefing recorded on January 20. Director of Communications Zeina Al-Shaib is joined by MEI Affiliate Fatima Abo Alasrar and Associate Fellow F. Gregory Gause III to discuss the dramatically changing dynamics in Yemen’s civil war. Last month, Yemen emerged as a focal point of rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Southern Transitional Council, a UAE-backed southern separatist movement, has disbanded in recent weeks, following fierce clashes with Saudi-backed forces. In the conversation, Alasrar and Gause analyze the political, security, and socio-economic shifts affecting Yemen’s internal dynamics and what all this means for regional stability.
The Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict: A strategic concern for the US
Pakistan’s relationship with the Afghan Taliban has shifted from open sponsorship in the 1990s to a silent partnership following 2001 to alienation and belligerence since 2021. Their current conflict, which comes at great cost to both countries and seems to have no easy military or political resolution, also poses a threat to the stability and prosperity of neighboring states. Although American strategic interests in the region greatly diminished following the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the region’s altered political dynamics have prompted a growing American engagement with Pakistan and tentatively with Afghanistan. At the same time, the US has become a factor in how both Islamabad and Kabul have come to form their national security strategies.
Breaking News Brief: Damascus and the Syrian Kurds Come to Blows
MEI Senior Fellow Charles Lister joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to unpack the latest developments in Syria, as a tenuous cease-fire takes hold after several days of intense fighting between the Syrian army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Their discussion explores the drivers of the conflict, the prospects for a lasting deal that would integrate the SDF into the Syrian military, as well as the role and perspective of key external actors, including the US, Turkey, and Israel.
Brian sits down with Behnam Taleblu, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to unpack the ongoing protests in Iran and what this moment reveals about the long struggle between the state and the street. They discuss the regime’s brutal crackdown, the prospect of US intervention, and what both could mean for the future of the Islamic Republic. The episode centers on agency, imagination, and the possibilities facing Iranians at a critical juncture in the country’s history.
Iran’s coming reckoning: Regime collapse is likely — democracy is not
The collapse of the Iranian regime in its present form now seems more plausible than its survival as a functioning state. Yet the emergence of a democratic Iran remains far from certain. Between these two outcomes lies a volatile and dangerous middle ground. But much will depend on four factors.
What Ankara sees in Riyadh — and why it still needs Abu Dhabi
As the rivalry between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi sharpens in Yemen and beyond, Turkey has begun edging closer to Saudi Arabia, sparking claims that a new regional order is taking shape: a Turkey-Saudi axis backed by a NATO-like defense architecture, implicitly aligned against Israel and the United Arab Emirates. This reading overstates the case.
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.
