Trump’s Family Business Deals Risk Further Undermining the Credibility of US Middle East Policy
President Trump’s family businesses are once again in the spotlight as a new financial disclosure showed they earned $2 billion in income in 2025 — a dramatic increase on the year before, with much of it coming from Gulf entities, raising emoluments concerns. Mounting perceptions of corruption, combined with unresolved crises in Iran and Israel-Palestine, are eroding trust among key partners in the Middle East. With the 2026 midterms approaching, these entanglements could represent a major political vulnerability and further undermine America’s already-strained standing in the region.
After the US-Israel-Iran war — and the strikes that followed the cease-fire — the Gulf states find themselves dangerously exposed. Host Alistair Taylor is joined by MEI Associate Fellow Gregory Gause to discuss the war’s impact on the Gulf, their partnership with the United States, and whether the turmoil of recent months will push Gulf leaders to reassess their alliances and international engagement.
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.
When Islam Was an Ally: China’s Changing Concepts of Islamic State and Islamic World
For many at present, the phrase “China and Islam” connotes conflict and oppression. This is due to a preponderant focus on the security situation in the Muslim-majority northwestern province of Xinjiang. Chinese policies in Xinjiang—particularly restrictions placed on Xinjiang’s Turkic Uighurs regarding beards, veils, and fasting during Ramadan—have been perceived as targeting Muslims as Muslims, exacerbating the security concerns they were meant to address. Moreover, the pursuit of stability in Xinjiang has led the Chinese government to adopt an anti-terrorism rhetoric reminiscent of its American counterpart.
The death of King Abdullah in late January 2015 brought a seamless transition of power in Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Salman acceded to the throne and Prince Muqrin became crown prince, while Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, minister of the interior, became second deputy prime minister and the first grandson of Ibn Saud in line for the throne. Despite speculation to contrary, the smooth transition was strong evidence of a preexisting agreement that included the late king, Salman, and other senior princes.
The Egypt Economic Conference: Q&A with Hoda Selim
Egypt’s Economic Development Conference will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh March 13-15, 2015. The conference aims to lay out the Egyptian government’s economic vision and plans for reform and position Egypt as a desirable destination for international investment. We spoke with Hoda Selim, an economist at Egypt’s Economic Research Forum, about the country’s current economic position and how the conference could help.
As a result of the growth of its comprehensive power, China today has two frontiers. One is the natural frontier of its sovereign territory; the other is an artificial frontier created by its overseas interests. By deploying a “soft” military presence overseas, specifically in the Middle East, China can protect its commercial interests while also providing public goods for the international community and minimizing the risk of damage to multilateral relations.
On March 13, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will inaugurate the Egypt Economic Development Conference in the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. The main objective of the conference is to put Egypt back on the world investment map. Sisi’s government is aiming to achieve a target of $60 billion of foreign investment in the coming five years. This ambitious amount would close Egypt’s resource gap and would generate sufficient growth to absorb growing unemployment.
When the Houthis, a Shia rebel group in Yemen, forced the country’s pro-Western president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to flee the capital this past January, many in the region concluded that another Arab state had fallen into Tehran’s lap—a result, as one prominent commentator put it, of Iran’s “offensive state, the likes of which we have not seen in modern history.”
Could Kurds Be the Liberal Alternative Turks Have Been Looking For?
Turkey’s first tangible democratic push came from the Islamist camp in 2002 when the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power. The second could come from an unlikely source: the Kurds.
Feasts of the Sacrifice: Ritual Slaughter in Late Imperial and 20th-Century China
Muslims in imperial China did not necessarily have to worship at the altars of Chinese gods to exert their identities as upstanding local inhabitants, obedient subjects, or agreeable neighbors. As any child brought up on the story of God’s sparing of Ibrahim’s son knows, the followers of any god who pulls his weight in this world or the next are sometimes in need of a lamb or two …
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come to the United States, spoken his piece and returned home to Israel to finish campaigning for the March 17 elections. Netanyahu’s visit to Washington was neither the triumph he expected nor the disaster forecast by opponents of the visit. Indeed, the visit shed no new light on the supposedly central issue of the day: the state of play in the Iran negotiations.
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.
