Geopolitical influence over trade increasingly rests on controlling the systems that make them work. The Middle East illustrates the stakes. US ports, cable corridors, cloud facilities, artificial intelligence (AI) investments, and maritime routes connect regional economies to global commerce while exposing them to external decisions and disruptions. For the United States, the challenge is to translate technological advantage into resilient networks rather than rely on centrality that can itself become a source of vulnerability and coercion.
Bonus Episode: Previewing Israel’s First Post-October 7 Election
Israel is preparing to hold what may be its most consequential election in decades. On October 27, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will face his first electoral test since October 7, 2023. In this bonus episode of Middle East Focus, we present the audio from a recent MEI webinar, hosted in Israel on the eve of the vote. Senior Fellow Natan Sachs is joined by Dr. Shira Efron, Distinguished Chair for Israel Policy and senior fellow at the RAND Corporation, and Neri Zilber, veteran journalist and Financial Times correspondent. They explore what’s at stake in this historic election and how different outcomes could reshape Israel’s domestic politics and the wider region.
Israel Was Built on Hope. This Election May Be Our Last Chance to Save It
Israel’s national anthem, Hatikva, means “the hope.” Israel is not just another country, but the culmination of a 2,000-year-old dream of national redemption. The rebirth of the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland, just three years after the Holocaust, was a miraculous triumph of hope over all odds.
Today, that hope has been shattered and the elections on October 27 have become the most consequential in Israel’s history.
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.
In the coming months, we can expect that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will no longer occupy the executive leadership position in the muqata, the interim Palestinian government headquarters in Ramallah. His age and his repeated insistence that he does not plan to run in new elections, as well as his most recent comments about his willingness to resign, point to this fact.
Twenty-five years ago, on August 7th 1990, an American interagency team walked into an urgent meeting with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, not knowing what would happen. A week earlier Iraq had seized Kuwait. The Americans feared that the Iraqi Army might keep going, seizing the Saudi oil fields. As a result of decisions made at that August 7th meeting, Iraq and terrorism have dominated American foreign policy for three decades and continue to do so.
After months of hesitation to take action against the Islamic State (ISIS) and almost two years of quiet since a 2013 truce with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkey decided to pick a fight with both. It has been pounding Islamic State targets in Syria and PKK positions in northern Iraq.
If the hallmark of al-Qa‘ida was to execute simultaneous spectacular attacks to advance its strategic momentum, the month of Ramadan in June and July showed that the Islamic State (ISIS) is taking this tactic to a new level. Yet the extreme amounts of blood shed during the holy month will likely ultimately weaken ISIS, as tribes and other groups in Syria and Iraq, even more appalled by the organization’s barbarism, unite against it.
The flow of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf to East Asia has rejuvenated the ancient Silk Road, refashioning new networks of collaboration. The energy trade―the backbone of Sino-Middle Eastern ties―has provided the foundation for an increasingly diversified and robust set of relationships between China and the Gulf monarchies. The multidimensional strategic partnership between China and the UAE, in particular, is illustrative of this broader pattern.
Few states face the kind of complex, sustained security challenges that Israel does.
Israel has not enjoyed one day of peace with its neighbors since its independence in 1948. Many Arab and Muslim states have maintained an economic and political boycott against Israel for decades.
Predictions of a new Palestinian intifada in the occupied territories tend to accompany every breakdown in the diplomatic process, announcement of a new colonial expansion project, and Israeli violence against Palestinian life—such as the recent horrific murder of Palestinian infant Ali Dawabsheh by settler terrorists who set fire to his West Bank family home.
This article was first published on NPR’s Parallels blog.
It started so well. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the United States swiftly cobbled together a broad coalition, unleashed a stunning new generation of air power and waged a lightning ground offensive that lasted all of four days. Iraqi troops were so desperate to quit that some surrendered to Western journalists armed only with notebooks.
The Middle East Dialogue on New Political and Security Dynamics Shaping the Arab Region met in Beirut May 30-31 to consider the situation in Syria, which has deteriorated further since the last meeting of the Dialogue in Berlin last December. Violence has risen, government-controlled territory has been lost to both opposition and extremist forces, Syrians are suffering and the Syrian government is reaching the limits of its military and civilian capabilities.
Education: The Key to Women’s Empowerment in Saudi Arabia?
In recent news from Saudi Arabia: religious police filmed berating a fully veiled woman for not wearing gloves; a cleric’s fatwa against women watching football to prevent them from staring at men’s thighs; and a woman sentenced to 70 lashes for insulting her husband on WhatsApp.[1] At the same time, the Saudi education ministry released statistics showing that women constitute almost 52 percent of university graduates inside the kingdom, while more than 35,000 female Saudis studied abroad in 2014.
The Military Muzzling of Thailand and the Quandary of Demilitarization
Over a year has passed since the latest military coup in Thailand. On May 22, 2014, then-Army Commander Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha led a putsch against civilian Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. The coup followed six months of demonstrations against Yingluck and her brother, fugitive ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The protests, centered in Bangkok, were reportedly protected by military elements.
Here are some criticisms of the Iran deal that contain at least a kernel of truth; they are worth addressing for the sake of clarifying some of the arguments pro and con.
Responding to Assaults on Health Care in the Middle East
The conflicts and political crises in the Middle East have brought anguish, suffering, and severe declines in health to people throughout the region. The most catastrophic case by far is Syria, where more than a million people have experienced traumatic injuries, once-rare infectious diseases have returned, chronic disease goes untreated, and the health system has collapsed. In Yemen, Libya, Gaza, and Iraq as well, violence has limited access to health care and grievously harmed the population.
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.
