Middle East

Israel has long been defined by its security imperatives, but rarely has the price of war been so steeply visible in its economy as it is today. In 2024, Israeli military expenditure soared to 8.8% of GDP—a staggering figure for a developed economy. Projections suggest that defense spending …

Eldar Mamedov While the region’s nations have reasons to pursue closer ties with Israel, they will most likely stop short of full diplomatic recognition.  President Donald Trump has often voiced support for expanding the Abraham Accords—the US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states—to include Azerbaijan and …

Alexander Langlois Disarming Hezbollah would be much easier if Israel withdrew its troops from Lebanese territory. In the first week of August, the Lebanese government’s cabinet voted to disarm all armed groups in the country, marking a significant milestone for the country. But will the decision be implemented? …

Jacob Heilbrunn and Robert Silverman How should the US balance democratic principles with the need to confront groups that shift between ballots and bombs? Calls to ban the Muslim Brotherhood are gaining renewed momentum in Washington, reviving a debate that has long divided policymakers over how democracies should …

For all the controversy that trails him, Donald Trump has a record of inserting himself into geopolitical standoffs and sometimes lowering the temperature. During his first term, he broke decades of taboo by meeting Kim Jong Un in Singapore in 2018 and again at the DMZ in 2019, …

On August 8, a historic summit took place in Washington, D.C., with the participation of the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, attracting global attention. In the U.S. capital, Aliyev, Pashinyan, and Trump …

On July 2nd 2025, the London-based online news outlet Middle East Eye reported that the heads of state of arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan were set to meet each other imminently in Dubai for normalization talks. Sure enough, this came to pass a mere eight days later – albeit …

Brian Hudson In a world where the foundations of international law are being eroded under the weight of geopolitical interests and strategic calculations, the European Union finds itself at a historic crossroads: Are the values it claims to champion—human rights, justice, and multilateralism—truly guiding its foreign policy, or …

By Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh In a private meeting with geopolitical analyst George Friedman in 2022, and during an earlier conversation with the late Henry Kissinger in 2021, both thinkers alluded to the strategic inevitabilities of conflict in the Middle East. Strategist Friedman warned that the region was heading …