Middle East Policy最新文献

The collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime ushered in a new era of political uncertainty and power struggles in Syria. This article examines competing visions for the country's future, drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted between August 2024 and January 2025 with Syrian refugees in Hatay, Turkey, and residents of Idlib, Syria. Through 123 discussions with activists, scholars, and members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), this study explores three central issues: the role of Islam in governance, how to create a new constitutional order, and the evolving national identity. The findings indicate that HTS, once a transnational jihadist movement, has shifted toward a nationalist Islamism rooted in Syria's sociopolitical fabric. The interviews highlight Syrians’ rejection of Iranian influence, aspirations for regional alliances, and pragmatic approaches to governance. The article further examines the geopolitical stakes, especially Turkey's strategic influence and the tensions with Kurdish factions. While the respondents hope for stability and self-governance, Syria's fragmented geography and ethnoreligious divisions pose challenges. The study concludes that the country's future hinges on reconciling competing political ideologies, securing regional support, and fostering a national identity capable of uniting its diverse population under a post-Assad order.

The Abraham Accords of 2020 represented new political dynamics in Middle Eastern diplomacy, as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan normalized relations with Israel without demanding a path toward Palestinian statehood. In the short term, the accords increased trade and cooperation on technology, but the larger security project of containing Iran remained a mission unaccomplished. Still, President Joe Biden, until his last days in power, tried desperately but failed to forge a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. We argue that the initial success of the Abraham Accords was achieved when Israel was wedded to maintaining the status quo. However, the destruction of Gaza, Israel's expansion into the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, and its major military confrontations with the Yemeni Houthis and Iran have inflamed Arab public opinion and escalated the costs of normalization for any regional state. The Biden administration's unwillingness to restrain the Netanyahu government and President Donald Trump's imperial designs on Gaza also raised alarms in regional capitals, which now see any moves toward expanding the Abraham Accords as daunting, at best.

This article contends that Benjamin Netanyahu's cognitive beliefs, especially about the self and about Israel's adversaries, have shaped his approach to the conflicts with Hamas and the broader Axis of Resistance. Analyzing evidence from the first year of the post-October 7 wars, the study pinpoints how these beliefs informed the strategies he deemed most effective. More important, it examines how Netanyahu's actions were determined by the subjective game he believed Israel was playing, as understood through the frameworks of classical and sequential game theories. Employing methodological and theoretical innovations like the verbs in context system, the theory of inferences about preferences, and the theory of moves, the study creates quantitative indicators of three operational-code beliefs held by the prime minister after the deadly Hamas attacks. It then compares these indicators with a norming group to determine how cognitive biases played a role in the prosecution of Israel's wars.

The Middle East is on the brink of a profound transformation, primarily driven by economic corridors. From China's Belt and Road Initiative to the Development Road and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, these projects facilitate not only the movement of goods but also the exchange of energy, information, and services across regions. However, while such corridors are seen as fostering economic prosperity and political unity, they often deepen divisions and exacerbate existing geopolitical tensions in the region. The central question of this article is how, and through what mechanisms, do economic corridors change the geopolitics of the Middle East? To answer, the analysis advances a new understanding of corridors as vehicles through which regional states leverage their geoeconomic influence to achieve their goals. Introducing the concept of corridor geopolitics, the article illuminates the consequences of these corridors for the regional order. It also explores the possibility that corridor wars between Middle Eastern countries will emerge from their competition over strategic control of these routes.

Hezbollah, founded with the intention of destroying Israel, has long engaged in illicit efforts to amass resources the size of some states’ coffers. The Lebanese group's long-running global criminal syndicate with the Assad regime, initially forged in the 1980s, more recently allowed it to fight for more than a decade in the Syrian conflict and to launch attacks on Israel for more than a year during the Gaza war. This article traces the roots of Hezbollah's illicit financial operations, focusing on its collaboration with high-ranking Syrian officers and officials during their country's intervention in Lebanon. It leverages declassified IDF and CIA intelligence reports, Israeli and US government documents, and media reports in Arabic and Hebrew to reveal how the Hezbollah-Syrian partnership engaged in global drug trafficking, currency counterfeiting, and money laundering, then repatriated the earnings. The analysis then suggests how countermeasures used in the past could be repurposed to combat Hezbollah's financing for terrorism and military buildup, and it proposes some new methods, as well.

In the months before the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, Israeli security officials warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his pursuit of a judicial overhaul was undercutting the army's preparedness for war, rendering the country vulnerable to attack. The government, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel's history, sought legal reforms that would weaken the Supreme Court, viewed by the reforms’ proponents as too powerful for an unelected body. For the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who weekly took to the streets in opposition for nine consecutive months, Netanyahu's coalition was on the verge of destroying Israeli democracy. Dozens of reserve fighter pilots, drone operators, and intelligence officers, along with hundreds of reservists in other elite units, joined the demonstrations and threatened not to show up for duty. The community of army reservists who had become active in the fight against the judicial overhaul emerged collectively as a gatekeeper of Israeli democracy, serving as a key check on elected officials’ illiberal moves. This article explains the genesis of the reservists’ ideals, examines the history of their involvement in domestic politics, and looks ahead to the role they may play as Israel emerges from the post-October 7 wars.

Iran and the Axis of Resistance—the armed nonstate actors that it supports, plus the Assad regime in Syria—had a horrible 2024. Hamas and Hezbollah suffered heavy blows at the hands of Israel. Bashar al-Assad's Syria, the only state among the Islamic Republic's regional partners, collapsed in December. Tit-for-tat exchanges in April and October humiliatingly illustrated Iran's conventional military inferiority relative to Israel. And while the large-scale street protests in Iran that started in September 2022 had been largely repressed into silence, serious domestic discontent remained, a backdrop to its decaying regional posture. The Islamic Republic is not, however, on the verge of collapse. It retains control over a large, if diminished, pool of assets to pursue its influence throughout the region. Moreover, Yemen's Houthis were the sole Iranian partner to have a strong 2024, continuing their rise as a regional power. Hezbollah and Hamas have been weakened but are not dead, and it is not far-fetched to expect them to rise again, if not to their pre-2024 capacities. Iran, finally, has shown in the past, notably after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab uprisings of 2011, that it can adapt and transform threats into opportunities.

The fall 2022 protests in Iran reflected the public's frustration with the status quo. These outbursts were sparked by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody and quickly spread, undermining the Islamic Republic's credibility both domestically and internationally. This study investigates the motivations of those who participated in the demonstrations. Interviews with participants indicate that they were driven by dire economic, social, and cultural conditions, as well as what they saw as government failure, incompetence, and corruption. These feelings were exacerbated by violations of privacy and repression of rights, contributing to the deterioration of the social climate. State-mandated cultural programming, rooted in the government's suspicion of foreign infiltration, and disregard for the aspirations of younger citizens added to the discontent. By engaging with activists and participants, the study helps to specify the areas of public dissatisfaction and suggests some ways to improve the public mood.

Bashar al-Assad's shocking ouster in December 2024 has led to debate about whether Turkey is now ascendant in the region. This article examines the multifaceted trajectory of Turkey's involvement in the Syrian civil war and provides insights into the challenges ahead. It first traces Turkey's evolving positions throughout the Syrian crisis, highlighting its moves during critical junctures. It argues that Ankara shaped the conflict by transforming its strategic thinking, abandoning the agenda of regime change and instead prioritizing its self-interest and national security. This required internalizing costs and exercising strategic patience, flexibility, and pragmatism. Next, the article examines how, through difficult adjustments between 2015 and 2020, Turkey managed to create an unstable equilibrium on the ground. It then analyzes patterns of Ankara's engagement with the new Syria, in which it plays three interrelated roles: enabler, state builder, and protector. As for whether Turkey has “won” the war, the article discusses its advantages and challenges. While the official Turkish approach has been cautious, the final section argues that Ankara should avoid a patron-client relationship with the new administration in Damascus and forge the appropriate regional and international alignments. This can be ensured through a “sphere of interest” policy.