The Israeli government’s plan to build 3,401 housing units in the 12-square-kilometer E-1 corridor, between Jerusalem’s municipal boundary and the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, would cut the West Bank in two. Israeli officials are under no illusion about the implications. Announcing the plan’s approval in August 2025, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called it a “significant step that practically erases the two-state delusion.”
The Americans Are Gone. Will Iraq’s Militias Disarm?
On September 30, the US completed its military withdrawal from Iraq, ending a 12-year-long mission to combat ISIS that began in 2014. The date was also meant to be the deadline for disarming the largely Iranian-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), but Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has now pushed that cutoff back to June 30, 2027. MEI Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow Amb. (ret.) Robert S. Ford joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to discuss what the US military withdrawal means for Iraqi security and the nature of the bilateral relationship going forward. They also speak about what it will take for Baghdad to bring the PMF militias to heel, and how Iraq may navigate the post-Iran war era.
Jordan’s Economy Weathers Iran War’s Shocks and Finds New Opportunities
In the summer of 2003, King Abdullah II told Bloomberg Jordan sits “between Iraq and a hard place,” a play on words designed to describe the kingdom’s challenging environment to an American audience amid the US-led Iraq war to the east and the lingering Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the west. Jordan is grappling with a much “harder place” today.
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.
ISIS appears to have collapsed in Syria in the wake of the SDF’s military defeat and subsequent integration, followed by the withdrawal of US troops. To the extent that the US prioritizes the group’s enduring defeat in the country, a relationship centered in Damascus is the best way to achieve it.
After over a decade of division between rival factions in eastern and western Libya, the Trump administration has put forward a plan to unite the two sides through a power-sharing agreement. Hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj are joined by MEI Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow Jonathan M. Winer to unpack the details of this proposal and its potential consequences for the Libyan people. Winer, who served as United States Special Envoy for Libya, offers analysis of the plan’s viability, the response of various actors on the ground, and whether it can stabilize the country and help resolve its deep-seated challenges.
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.
Although Russia has not directly intervened in the US-Israeli war with Iran, the conflict has underscored the nature and extent of its strategic partnership with the Islamic Republic. The Russia-Iran axis poses a real threat to the US and its allies; it demands a coherent and resolute response.
Three months after the Iran war began, the United States and Iran are engaged in talks aimed at ending the crisis, even as both sides conducted limited military strikes against each other this week and a separate-but-linked conflict between Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon continued to escalate.
A fragile cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel is barely holding as military delegations from both countries arrive in Washington for a new round of direct talks scheduled for this Friday. But diplomatic success could mean new strategic opportunities for the Lebanese nation. Guest host and MEI Senior Fellow Brian Katulis is joined by Lebanese Member of Parliament Fouad Makhzoumi to unpack the challenges facing the Lebanese government today, Hizballah’s influence over state institutions, and what all of this means for the country’s future. Makhzoumi also reflects on his personal journey and what inspired him to transition from business to politics in an effort to help shape a better life for his granddaughters in Lebanon.
As the world’s attention shifts to the Iran war, Gaza is increasingly disappearing from the international spotlight. But more than six months after the United Nations endorsed a peace plan for Gaza, the humanitarian catastrophe continues. Israeli strikes remain relentless, while major international NGOs and aid groups say critical supplies are still not entering Gaza at anywhere near the scale needed.
The Impact of the Iran War on the Gulf’s Grand AI Plans
When Iranian drone strikes hit two of Amazon’s data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in early March, amid the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran, much of the media’s reflex was to declare it the end of the Gulf’s artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions. That read is misguided, and it misses why what Iran was trying to accomplish failed.
Syria’s New Investment Law and the Return of State-Mediated Market Access
As Syria moves toward reconstruction, the country’s new authorities have already made a consequential decision about who will control the postwar economy. Last June, President Ahmed al-Sharaa enacted Investment Law 114 by presidential decree, granting sweeping and permanent concessions to investors. Yet rather than make those incentives broadly accessible, the law preserves the country’s longstanding model of state-mediated market access.
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.
