Founded in 1946, the Middle East Institute (MEI) is the leading Washington, DC-based institution focused solely on the Middle East, delivering non-partisan insights, analysis, and recommendations to ...

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Alex Vatanka is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute. He specializes in Middle Eastern regional security affairs with a particular focus on Iran. He was formerly a Senior Analyst at Jane’s ...

John Calabrese is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI) and book review editor for The Middle East Journal. His work focuses on the international relations of the Middle East, with a ...

This individual is a guest contributor. MEI is not able to assist with contact requests. Anne-Linda Amira Augustin works as a political advisor in the Foreign Representation of the Southern ...

The global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has focused new attention on friction between the United States and its traditional partners in the Gulf and reinforced skepticism regarding the ...

There is a new and little noticed geostrategic alliance on the rise. India, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have had surface-level, transactional relations for a long time. However, last ...

In his second term in office, President Donald Trump faces a Middle East undergoing multifaceted upheaval and an Islamic Republic of Iran currently in its weakest and most isolated position since the ...

The final days of 2025 marked a turning point in the Middle East, as competition between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen spilled out into the open. Tensions between the two ...

As the third quarter of President Donald Trump’s first year of his second term comes to a close, the record of his administration’s accomplishments is mixed. The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas ...

The US Commerce Department announced on November 19, 2025, that it had authorized the export of advanced American semiconductor chips to HUMAIN of Saudi Arabia and G42 of the United Arab Emirates. The ...

This is the third in a series of articles examining and rebutting the shu al-badīl? (“What’s the alternative?”) argument in the run-up to this year’s presidential elections, when Bashar al-Assad, ...