Research & Commentary

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

Since 1979 U.S. policies toward Iran have alternatively ranged from some version of “maximum pressure” to appeasement and back again while maintaining the same assumptions and calculus: the clerics would ultimately fall when the elite and middle class had enough and were willing to pay the price for revolting. Today, however, the landscape is evolving. While Iran’s leaders appear to be adapting, U.S. thinking is rooted in the past.

Suddenly and seemingly without warning, Russian forces amassed in Crimea and near the Ukrainian border in April 2021. Heavy armor, long-range missiles and artillery, modern air forces, and elite airborne infantry units deployed into positions that raised alarm in Ukraine and throughout Europe. The situation today appears stable, but reports of new and upgraded hardware, including unmanned vehicles, demand a fresh evaluation of the Russian way of war.

We can and must provide that assistance not to help defeat the Taliban, fix Afghanistan, or remove our moral stain, but to achieve a much more limited objective, one that’s stated by the President himself, which is to ensure that no major attack against the U.S. or U.S. strategic interests is launched from Afghanistan.

مع تكثيف جهود الإجلاء من قِبَل الولايات المتحدة وحلفائها في مطار كابول، تزداد معها التهديدات الإرهابية للمطار ومجاله الجوي. فلمدة 48 ساعة على الأقل، أشارت المعلومات الاستخباراتية إلى وجود تهديد “خطير” و”مستمر” بشن هجمات من قِبَل فرع تنظيم الدولة الإسلامية في أفغانستان، المعروف باسم ولاية خراسان الإسلامية (ISKP). وللمرة الأولى، بدأت طائرات النقل العسكرية يوم السبت بإطلاق مشاعل حرارية مضيئة أثناء الإقلاع – في مؤشر واضح على تهديد محتمل للاستهداف بصاروخ أرض – جو.

Amid typical governmental absenteeism, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah announced on Aug. 19 that the party had secured fuel shipments from Iran. He asserted that the first of many fuel tankers would set sail to Lebanon that same day. Hours later, U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea declared that the U.S. was working closely with Egypt, Jordan, and the World Bank to find solutions to Lebanon’s crippling fuel shortages. Shea’s comments imply a U.S. willingness to loosen Caesar Act restrictions that would otherwise prevent Lebanon from importing natural gas and electricity through Syria from Egypt and Jordan respectively. The two announcements have been in the making for weeks, but both come at a time when Lebanon’s physical and human infrastructure is crumbling in the absence of essential fuel supplies and energy sources.

تجنّبت ردود أفعال الدول الغربية تجاه تجميد الرئيس التونسي قيس سعيّد البرلمان والحكومة فرض أو التهديد بالعقوبات. يستعرض إبراهيم الأصيل رأياً للسفير روبرت فورد حول التطورات الأخيرة.

هل يمكن أن يتحقق طموح بغداد في لعب دور إقليمي؟ يناقش إبراهيم الأصيل رأياً للباحث يسار المالكي حول الدور الذي تحاول بغداد لعبه في المنطقة.

كيف تتعاطى إدارة بايدن مع اتفاقيات إبراهيم وما هو واقع وآفاق الاتفاقيات؟ يستعرض إبراهيم الأصيل رأياً للسفير جيرالد فيريستاين.

أسئلة الحلقة: ما الذي دفع الرئيس التونسي إلى تجميد البرلمان وتولّي السلطة التنفيذية، وما الذي يقوم به منذ 25 يوليو؟  ما هي الأطراف الداخلية الفاعلة في تونس وما هي مواقفها الحالية؟  ما هو مستقبل المؤسسات المُنتخبة في تونس ومستقبل الدستور؟ ما الدور الإيجابي الذي يمكن أن تقوم به الأطراف الخارجية لمساعدة تونس؟ ما هي السيناريوهات المُحتملة للمستقبل القريب في تونس وما يجب أن نتابعه لنعرف إلى أين تتوجّه تونس. — إبراهيم الأصيل انتصار فقير

Premeditated political paralysis and the absence of economic leadership have brought Lebanon to its knees. Critical infrastructure has collapsed. Reliable electricity and safe water provision are rare. Hospitals and medical services are crippled by the lack of power, medications, and supplies. Food security is at risk for the majority of the population. Desertions from the ranks of security forces are growing. A nationwide security collapse is increasingly likely. The humanitarian collapse is already here.

As the U.S. withdrew troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban pushed through large portions of the country, capturing strategic regional centers and ultimately securing the capital city of Kabul. In its pursuit, the Taliban faced relatively little resistance as it seized government strongholds. Rather than widespread fighting, reports indicate that Taliban fighters often cut deals with soldiers, offering payoffs or demanding surrenders. At the same time and as of the time of writing, the Taliban announced a general amnesty, encouraging former government officials and women to support the group.
Whether and how long this period of limited resistance and amnesty might last are unclear. What are the prospects for future political violence both within and outside the country?

On Sept. 15, 2020, Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then-U.S. President Donald Trump met on the South Lawn of the White House to sign the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between the two Gulf Arab states and Israel. Morocco followed suit several months later, signing a similar agreement with Israel on Dec. 22, and a week and a half after that, on Jan. 6, 2021, Sudan and Israel also agreed to normalize relations. A year on, these accords have had a significant, if not yet fully realized, impact on the Middle East, affecting everything from geopolitics and economics to tourism and people-to-people (P2P) ties, and they also reflect the changing dynamics in the region and beyond, particularly with the U.S. and China.

One of the most consequential changes in the Middle East’s geopolitical map is happening at the water’s edge. Along the entire eastern rim of the Mediterranean basin, global and regional actors are engaging in a spate of port capacity expansions, new private port construction, and the sell-off of major state-owned ports that will determine who sits atop the region’s global trade flows for decades to come. The international competition to rebuild Beirut’s port is one key puzzle piece in this larger process that is reconfiguring the Levant’s maritime commercial architecture and, as a consequence, the geopolitical contours of the Middle East.

The possibility that the Lebanese government could opt for China to reconstruct Beirut’s port has raised alarm in Washington and European capitals given China’s already outsized commercial port presence in Egypt, Israel, and Greece. Increased Chinese involvement in Lebanon’s port operations could consolidate Beijing’s hold over the commercial connectivity architecture of the Levant. Re-orienting global commercial flows between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia according to Beijing’s priorities would make China’s Belt and Road Initiative a dominant organizing principle in the international relations of the Middle East. The most effective way to offset China’s ambition may be to facilitate Mediterranean rivals France and Turkey to jointly rebuild Beirut’s port.

Six months into the 117th Congress, legislators continued to grapple with the complexities of a region in the midst of change. The reasons for this phenomenon were myriad. The Biden administration espoused a divergent worldview from that of its predecessor, the balance of power in Congress shifted, the international community continued to struggle with the ramifications of COVID-19, the Abraham Accords altered the dynamics between Israel and other regional actors, while the outbreak of violence between Israel and Gaza attracted attention from both sides of the aisle. Legislators offered an increased number of proposals to address these and other realities in the second quarter of 2021, marking a sharp uptick in legislation focused on MENA compared to the first quarter of the year.