Though it has fallen out of the headlines because of the Iran war, Syria has had a dramatically consequential summer. Hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj are joined by MEI Senior Fellow Charles ...

In an essay published in Egyptian newspapers immediately before his arrival, Xi described China and Egypt as two great civilizations and called on them to “take pride in who we are” while becoming an ...

I was a teenage Afghan refugee in Pakistan’s tribal areas when the Twin Towers fell. Almost nobody around us understood the politics of what had happened, but we knew that something had changed for ...

Middle East Focus is a weekly podcast featuring discussion and analysis on US foreign policy and contemporary political and social issues in the Middle East. You can subscribe to the show on Apple ...

In November 2025, the United States sought and obtained approval for a United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR 2803) endorsing the formation of a Board of Peace (BoP) and International ...

A decade has passed since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan landed in Mogadishu at the height of one of Somalia’s worst famines, announcing grandiose projects like the launch of Turkish Airlines ...

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 ...

The potential exploitation of generative AI by terrorists and violent extremists has attracted warnings that the technology may be used to groom or radicalize young people, help identify vulnerable ...

As the U.S. administration considers whether to remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, understanding its nature, development, and ideology is essential to ...

After 40 years, Syria once again has dual military rule, where the president and his brother are the highest authorities. In the early 1980s, Rifaat al-Assad, the brother of Hafez al-Assad, was the ...

This individual is a guest contributor. MEI is not able to assist with contact requests.

A key player in the oil industry and central to producer-consumer relations, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was formed by major oil exporters to stabilize prices and ...