Policy Analysis

After more than a decade of feuding, Palestinian factions face an opportunity for change.

Algeria's divided political system has limited time to make critical reforms.

Qatar must adequately manage its ties to the Brotherhood if it wants to ensure sustainable Gulf ties.

Hezbollah is profiting from the pandemic.

Gridlock and economic stagnation are testing the Arab world's only functioning democracy.

Sisi may need to respond to U.S. pressure over human rights issues, but he knows that Biden will not willingly damage relations with Egypt.

The best means of understanding Biden’s likely Middle East policy is by analyzing his own writing on the question, which suggests that expectations for a major shift in regional policies may remain unmet.

Though the recent normalization deal between Israel and several Arab states certainly poses a new challenge to Iran, it is the unique combination of the past year’s events that is pushing the Islamic Republic towards an existential crisis.

While Iraqi elites seem to see the announcement of early elections as a major development, polling reveals that Iraqi public opinion is less optimistic about the moves ability to promise major change.

Egypt’s upcoming elections are shining the spotlight on the parliament’s deteriorating performance and credibility.

The 2014 National Dialogue Conference allowed for ample discussion of the southern issue in Yemen. Now, all sides must help implement the solutions outlined there and in the more recent Riyadh Agreement to ensure that a just solution to the southern issue is achieved.

Last week, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi led a large cabinet delegation to Washington D.C. for new sessions of the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue, topped off by the first Iraqi prime ministerial visit to the White House in over three years. During the visit, I spoke to most of the Iraqi

In a recently announced move, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Khartoum yesterday as part of his broader tour through the region, including visits to Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE. The Israel-UAE normalization deal sparked the series of diplomatic visits. In the wake of these developments, international observers wondered if

The nuanced verdict of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, announced Tuesday, August 18, 2020, provides a further opportunity for Iranian proxies to strengthen their stranglehold on Lebanon. As a state and society, Lebanon is already in the midst of a new phase of coerced transformation towards an abject dependence on

On July 30, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced that early elections in Iraq will take place on June 6, 2021. Following the announcement, various political parties unleashed a barrage of statements in Iraqi media, with some asking for even ‘earlier’ elections. This camp included the President, the Speaker, the UN

In August 2019, Mikail Yüksel—a Swedish politician of Turkish origin—founded a new party in Sweden called ‘ Nyans’ (Nuance). Yüksel, formerly a member of Sweden’s small liberal, slightly left-wing, Center-party, started the new party after being forced to resign on the cusp of Sweden’s elections to the European Parliament, where

The new Prime Minister of Iraq—Mustafa alKadhemi (MK)—has finally proven to be the nominee who has made it to the finish line and formed the 7 th Iraqi government after the 2003 regime change. The new government, sworn in on early hours of May 7, saw 15 out of 22

With the announcement this week that Binyamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu would remain Israel’s prime minister in a new “emergency national unity” government, the latest poll shows that 62% of Israelis express support for this unusual political deal. Opposition leader Benny Gantz, who fell just short of unseating Netanyahu in an unprecedented

In her December 2019 piece for Quartz, the geopolitics expert Annalisa Merelli identified 20 countries now governed by populist movements and 14 other countries—Iraq included—where populist parties played a pivotal role in policy making. The quick spread of populist movements over the past few years has been a reactionary response

After considerable consternation in U.S. congress against Turkey’s incursion into Syria, and a subsequent successful visit by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House in mid-November, much attention in the United States has been focused on Turkey’s foreign policy agenda. However, Turkey’s foreign policy in Syria is deeply