Curb Your Enthusiasm: Why the Midterms Might Not Change Much in US Middle East Policy
With less than a week before the midterm elections in the United States, the spotlight is on the economy and cultural divides. US foreign policy remains mostly on the sidelines, but this year’s inconclusive Iran war and its effect on America’s economy have shaped the broader political environment in this electoral cycle.
The Multiple Costs of the US–Iran War – From Hormuz to Europe and South Asia: The Widening Economic and Political Geography of the Conflict
Wars are decided by those who hold military power, but their costs are increasingly borne by those who have little or no voice in the decisions that start them. The US–Iran war shows this imbalance very clearly. Its economic consequences have gone far beyond the battlefield and have disrupted energy markets, trade routes, food supplies, public finances and investment in the Gulf, Europe, Africa and Asia. The most striking feature of the conflict, however, is not only the size of the damage but its very unequal distribution.
In recent weeks, the Iran-backed Houthis have fired missiles and drones deep into Saudi Arabia, striking high-profile targets, including Riyadh’s airport and Aramco’s headquarters. The attacks follow a rapid Houthi offensive in September to seize key parts of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, which Saudi-backed government forces are now trying to roll back. Fatima Abo Alasrar, an affiliated scholar at MEI and non-resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to unpack the latest phase of the conflict. They discuss what the Houthis want, Riyadh’s calculus and search for allies, and how this campaign ties into Iran’s confrontation with the United States.
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.
*This Opinion first appeared in the Huffington Post on December 13, 2011
The first free and by all accounts fair elections in Egypt mark a major turning point in the country's long history. In what is likely to be a tenuous and trying transition to democracy, Egypt's Islamists won a resounding victory, gaining two-thirds of the vote in the first round of Egypt's parliamentary elections. While many in the West fear that the Islamist victory in this first election will radicalize Egypt, in reality, the situation is far more complex and nuanced.
More than three decades after the Revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army [Artesh-e Jomhouri-ye Eslami-ye Iran] and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami] (IRGC), remain entangled in a state of fierce rivalry.
Much attention has been given to the IRGC’s asymmetric defense capabilities, its role in Iraq’s post-2003 insurgency, and its alleged hold over the Strait of Hormuz, but there is little scrutiny in open source literature on the significance of the Iranian Army (Artesh) to Iran’s national security.
Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has duplicated almost all state institutions. It retained the institutions that existed under the old regime while creating new Islamic agencies to perform the same tasks. The Iranian armed forces did not escape this process. Under the monarchy, the armed forces were called the Artesh Shahanshahi or Imperial Army. Although called the “Army,” or Artesh, the force consisted of the three main services (army, navy, and air force) plus the Imperial Guard Divisions (Gard-e Javidan) and the Army Aviation Command (Hawa Nirouz).
In an official gathering in December 2010, Major General Attollah Salehi, Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Army said that during his visits to Army barracks, he would see the pictures of the leaders of the “sedition” (The Islamic Republic’s present hard-line leadership refers to opposition leaders and 2009 presidential candidates Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi as leaders of sedition) hanging on the walls.
Along with Egypt and Turkey, Iran is one of the most populous countries in the Middle East. Aware of its strategic significance and millennium-long civilization, Iranian leaders have always aspired to assume a leadership role on regional and international issues and pursued an assertive policy to reach their country’s potential. This ambitious strategy requires, among other things, strong military forces.
The Artesh: Iran’s Marginalized and Under-Armed Conventional Military
Originally posted November, 2011
Ravaged, intimidated, and gutted to the core in a series of purges after the 1979 Revolution, the remnant of the Shah’s military, renamed the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, known generally in Persian as the Artesh, put itself together as best as it could to face invading Iraqi forces at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war.
Iran’s conventional military forces — ground, air, and naval — once stood tall as the best armed military forces in the Middle East aside from those of Israel. The United States lavished the most sophisticated military hardware on the Shah, who was willing and able to tap his financial resources from Iran’s oil wealth to buy modern conventional arms. The Shah had the ambition, the financial means, and the political-military backing of the United States to turn Iran into the Persian Gulf’s most formidable military power.
A United States Marine's View of the Artesh and IRGC
United States military forces use standard procedures for planning operations against other militaries. These procedures differentiate between different branches, or units, of an opposing force depending on their capabilities and limitations. This article presents one such analysis of the Iranian Military, where there are vast differences between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)and the Artesh, or the regular Iranian armed forces. The article then draws parallels to the planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom that led to the defeat of the Iraqi Republican Guard and regular Iraqi
As the United States and its allies have tightened sanctions on Iran, they have sought in particular to isolate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s most aggressive institution. The IRGC, known in Persian as the Pasdaran, fields its own army, navy, and air force, and dominate a large and increasing share of Iran’s national economy.
Iran’s regular military, the Artesh, receives virtually no attention from international media or scholars on Iran. By contrast, its political rival, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, also known in Persian as the Pasdaran), is scrutinized constantly by analysts for its visible, high-profile role in Iran’s political system, its economic resources and corporate activities, and its role as a spearhead of Iran’s regional policies.
Introduction to The Artesh: Iran's Marginalized Regular Military
As the US-Iran showdown continues, among Western analysts there is an infinite desire for more data and analysis relating to the workings of the Islamic Republic. From a US standpoint, a better understanding of the various organs and players in the Iranian regime setup is imperative as Washington weighs its options and sets out to formulate its policies.
This Opinion first appeared in the Huffington Post on November 11, 2011
On November 28th, millions of Egyptians will finally breathe a deep sigh of relief as they gather at the polls to vote in the first phase of parliamentary elections following the ousting of the Mubarak regime.
Center for Turkish Studies Second Annual Conference on Turkey
The 2011 Second Annual Conference on Turkey, entitled “Change Within and Beyond and Borders: Turkey’s Domestic and Foreign Policy Agenda,” was organized by the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute on June 23rd, 2011 at the University Club. As the Conference coincided with recent important developments in Turkey, especially the general elections, about 300 participants from think tanks, universities, U.S. and foreign government officials as well as private sectors attended the Conference.
This Commentary was first published as an op-ed in Politico on October 21, 2011
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asserted recently that critics of the Libyan mission “have been proven wrong.” Now, with the death of dictator Muammar Qadhafi, the secretary’s view is supported by the overwhelming majority of Washington’s foreign policy establishment.
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.
