When the Strait of Hormuz closed in March, fertilizer prices spiked within weeks, triggering a food security crisis across North Africa and the Sahel. Host Alistair Taylor is joined by MEI Senior Fellow Intissar Fakir to explore what it means for the region, unpack the link between food security and regional stability, and assess how the strait’s reopening could impact those affected.
This backgrounder provides an overview of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional political and economic alliance comprising six states in the Arabian Peninsula: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
A Strategic Conundrum: Pakistan’s Transit Corridor to Iran as Lifeline or Liability
The US-Iran standoff over the Strait of Hormuz — disruptive to global trade and energy flows, and devastating for debt-burdened economies — has handed Pakistan an unexpected geoeconomic opportunity, one that may persist even if the framework agreement announced on June 14 results in a lasting peace and permanent reopening of the strait. But seizing it will have interlocking consequences for Islamabad’s ties with Tehran, Washington, and the Gulf states.
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.
This backgrounder provides an overview of how the Abraham Accords came about, the US interests involved, their economic and strategic consequences, and the prospects for further enlargement going forward.
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.
As the Western Sahara conflict reaches its fifth decade, the territorial dispute remains unresolved and largely unknown. MEI’s Intissar Fakir unpacks the Western Sahara’s complex history and the rival claims by Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. She examines recent developments, such as President Trump’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the territory and the collapse of a 30-year cease-fire, as well as the core questions that remain unanswered after half a century.
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.
Is the Israel-UAE agreement a game changer for Israel?
In an Aug. 13 tweet, U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated the Israeli-Emirati accord to normalize relations as a “HUGE breakthrough.” Israel’s integration into the region has been a goal of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy for decades, and the mid-August announcement was the first major official step in that direction in over 25 years. But is this really a game changer for Israel’s strategy in the Middle East?
Foreign fighters have played a major role in Syria’s ongoing conflict, with a presence in the country that numbered in the tens of thousands at its peak. One of the most mythologized sources of foreign recruits has been Chechnya, the once-separatist province of Russia’s North Caucasus that was reconquered by the Russian army in the early 2000s. Several thousand Chechen fighters traveled to Syria to fight in various opposition and Islamist factions, where their battlefield prowess made them a prized commodity among Syrian rebel militants.
Since the inception of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, China has substantially expanded its political, legal, trade, economic, educational, scientific, and cultural presence in the Black Sea region. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has pursued various initiatives with the littoral states to open new markets for Chinese goods, acquire local industries through loans and investments, and most importantly build infrastructure connecting China with Europe and the Middle East via the Black Sea.
Will COVID-19 hasten the rise of lethal autonomous weapons?
The latest figures from the Pentagon indicate that the total number of COVID-19 cases among members of the U.S. military has topped 60,000 since the onset of the pandemic. COVID-19 and other similar outbreaks could become an increasingly important consideration in the calculus of future military deployments. They could add impetus to the Pentagon’s development of lethal autonomous weapons or at least be cited as a perfect reason to do so. This could, in turn, have significant implications for the future of both U.S. military operations in the Middle East and the U.S. military presence in the region.
China’s Pursuit of a “Strategic Fulcrum” in the Middle East
A great deal of the literature on China’s relations with the Middle East engages the subject through geopolitical analyses that are based mainly, if not exclusively on Western sources and perspectives. This article draws on the work of scholars and thinkers in China’s leading government and party-linked think tanks and foreign policy institutions to shed light on China’s interests and approach to the region — a “competition without confrontation” approach centered on the development of relationships with a select number of key Middle Eastern states that can serve as “strategic fulcrums” (战略支点) for building Chinese influence.
UAE-Israel normalization gives rise to new risks for Yemen and the region
As unimportant as the move may seem for Yemen, the UAE’s normalization of relations with Israel and patronage of the STC, if left unaddressed, may ultimately lead to undesirable outcomes for both Yemen and the broader Arab world
An International Financial Commission is Libya’s Last Hope
For the last five years, the international community has tried a range of different approaches to mediating the Libyan civil war. All have failed. Most nations not actively fueling the war with weapons, money, training, and mercenaries now see that halting these destructive flows is critical to bringing the rival militias to the negotiating table. However, this will not be enough to solve the conflict. Once militias are cut off from external sources of support, the core economic issues that gave rise to the conflict will still remain. Only a new approach empowering Libyan economic reformers and reworking the economic system can fix the dysfunction. To achieve this, international actors need to facilitate the establishment of a Libyan-led International Financial Commission with the authority to restructure the economy.
Economic transparency and structural reform remain Libya’s last hope
Since 2011 Libya’s seemingly endless Wars of Post-Gadhafi Succession have not fundamentally been fought over the control of territory, but rather over the control of economic institutions, patronage networks, and the amorphous optics of legitimacy and international support. The most recent battle, the 2019-20 “War for Tripoli,” was about gaining access to the fonts of both legitimate and corrupt enrichment: letters of credit, smuggling networks, subsidized petrol, and control of those myriad institutions to which Libya’s sui generis economic system grants the ability to exert de facto fiscal, financial, and legal power. Therefore, although Hifter and his allies have been wholesale evicted from western Libya, the grievances they highlighted, preyed upon, and took advantage of remain unchanged.
Monday Briefing: Intra-Afghan talks begin with pomp and circumstance
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Grace Wermenbol, Jason Pack, Shahla Al-Kli, and Khaldoun Khelil.
Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) took a different path than the rest of the financial world. As markets around the globe plunged, the TSE soared to new heights. There has been a recent reversal, however, with the index falling sharply from its peak in early August and losing around 20 percent of its value over the course of a month. The story of the TSE is about the extreme measures a desperate government is willing to take to make ends meet.
An enduring divide: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Durand Line
The Durand Line, as the British-Empire-drawn border that separates Afghanistan and Pakistan is known, continues to haunt the region and its leaders. On Sept. 7, Afghanistan’s first vice president, Amrullah Saleh, opened Pandora’s box by saying in an interview that “No Afghan politician of national stature can overlook the issue of Durand Line.”
Trump and the UAE give Abbas a new lease on political life
A March 2018 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that satisfaction with the performance of President Mahmoud Abbas stood at 33 percent; 68 percent of the public wanted him to resign; and had elections been called, he would most likely have lost his presidency to a rival from Hamas.Nearly two and a half years later, however, and Abbas’s political fortunes have been restored, thanks in large part to the Trump administration and the United Arab Emirates
حلقة 9: الانتخابات الأمريكية والسياسة الخارجية — مع جويس كرم
ما هي أهم الاختلافات بين ترامب وبايدن على الصعيد الداخلي وعلى صعيد الملفات الخارجية: روسيا، الصين، إيران، الصراع في سوريا، دول الخليج والاتفاقية الإماراتية-الإسرائيلية؟
هل سيكون هناك تغيّر كبير في سياسات الولايات المتحدة تجاه الشرق الأوسط في العام القادم؟
هل انتخابات الكونغرس مهمة على صعيد السياسة الخارجية؟ هل يمكن أن يسيطر الحزب الديموقراطي على غالبية مجلسي الكونغرس؟
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.
