The Middle East As Informational Battlefield

Once upon a time, the Middle Eastern media environment was predictable and staid, dominated by a few prominent outlets that in Arab countries were often owned and operated by the governments’ information ministries.  No longer. Over the past three decades, the region has witnessed an explosion in information and connectivity. In the 1990s and 2000s, […]

With Renewed Crisis in the Middle East, Who is Watching the Indo-Pacific?

USS Carl Vinson in South Korea, March 2025. Photo credit: Lee Young Ho/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect.

In October 2023, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels began attacking civilian and military shipping in the Red Sea between the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. The impact on global trade has cost consumers world-wide billions of dollars, as ships avoid the Red Sea and transit instead around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. In […]

A New World Order

The war in Ukraine is leading to a seismic geopolitical shift, reshaping the global order. At its fulcrum stands Donald Trump, the champion of “America First” who is asserting Washington’s dominance on his own terms. Opposing him, Europe remains trapped in the inertia of its post-Cold War illusions, struggling to adjust to a world where […]

Fighting the Information War in the Middle East, One Case at a Time

The Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem after the suicide bombing, August 9, 2001. Photo credit: REUTERS.

The Islamist terrorist armies – Hamas, Hizbullah, Ansarallah (the Houthis) – and their backers are not able to win wars against the US allies in the Middle East. But they are able to win information campaigns. In so doing, they can influence and prepare Middle Eastern publics for future rounds of conflict. The Arabic media […]

Look to Middle Eastern Diasporas for Figures to Inspire Change

Photos: REUTERS, Shutterstock.

The Middle East presents a formidable array of challenges and opportunities for President-elect Trump, with the Iran nuclear issue emerging as the most perilous and complex threat to both regional stability and US interests. Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its potential to destabilize the balance of power overshadow other crises, including the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, which […]

Trump Administration Faces a Suddenly Promising Middle East

BACKGROUND The second Trump administration will face immediate foreign policy dilemmas in all three Eurasian fronts. This paper concentrates on the Middle East, but the competing demands of Europe and East Asia, and the links among all of them, influence decisions everywhere. The dramatic events of the past year open the door to a regional […]

The Impact of Trump’s Election on The Middle East

The landslide election of Donald Trump’s holds out real promise of encouraging peace in the Middle East. Unlike President Biden, who demanded caution from Israel in exchange for providing arms, Trump seems to be sending a message that he will support Israel’s policy of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if that requires military […]

What to Expect from a Harris Administration on Israel-Palestine and the Middle East

Photo credit: REUTERS/Nathan Howard.

Should she beat Donald Trump in this November’s election, Kamala Harris would come into office with more foreign policy experience than most presidents. As vice president, she made 17 foreign trips, giving a high-profile speech at the Munich Security Conference and leading the US delegation to the 2023 climate summit in Dubai. She has met […]

The Failure of the “Economic Peace” Model in the Middle East

Economic peace illustration

On September 26, 2021, Israel’s then Prime Minister Naftali Bennet took the podium at the UN General Assembly and laid out a grand vision for the Middle East. It was a modernist, advanced, technological future (as befitted Bennet, a former high-tech entrepreneur) in which Israel would play a major role – focused upon a world […]