Publications

Since 2021, Turkey has been resetting its policies in the Middle East and has started to reconcile with its rivals in the previous decade—Egypt, Israel, Saudi …

Over the first weekend of August 2023, Saudi Arabia convened an international summit on the war in Ukraine. Held in Jeddah and attended by representatives from…

Saudi Arabia and the United States are conducting complex negotiations in order to achieve a tripartite agreement that would include normalization between the …

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are waging a quiet struggle to determine who will emerge as the Arabian Gulf’s—and maybe the Arab world’s—preeminent power.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen discusses the current state of Saudi-US relations as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seeks to chart a new course in domestic and for…

Iran today is not nearly as isolated as Washington had hoped and it has scored some impressive successes in advancing its regional agenda.

Saudi Arabia’s announcement last month of surprise oil production cuts reverberated around the world. The cuts consisted of a voluntary reduction of 500,000 ba…

In June 2017, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi consented to ceding sovereignty over the islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia. However, nearly si…

The signing of a joint trilateral statement by senior national security officials from Saudi Arabia and Iran in the presence of Chinese officials in Beijing on…

In the closing scene of the 1942 film Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart, walking off into the fog with his occasional nemesis as they plan their next move together, …

While the central role that China recently played in renewing diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia underscores the United States’ declining influ…

The positions taken by many governments in the Middle East have proven a notable exception to the global groundswell of support for Kyiv.

Saudi Arabia has just spent three days hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in a summit that some believe could be fateful for the kingdom’s future strategic a…

New challenges abound for President Joe Biden in 2023. The loss of a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress promises to lea…

In a move that will certainly have serious political and economic repercussions in the United States and around the world, OPEC+, a group of oil-producing nati…

Over the past decade, the amphetamine fenethylline, widely known by the brand name Captagon, has increasingly become the drug of choice among the youth in Gulf…

In 2018, the United Nations Security Council’s Panel of Experts on Yemen suggested that the Yemeni State had begun to fragment as a result of a conflict that i…

The paths of US President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) crossed briefly on July 15 and 16 when Biden stopped in Jeddah, Saudi Arab…

With President Joe Biden concluding his Middle East visit, many in the United States are left wondering what tangible benefits the American people gained as a …

Despite the declining capacity of the United States to shape the Middle East’s strategic architecture, it is unlikely that effective regional solutions to secu…

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did not hide his main demand when he buried the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was killed o…

Reports that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may be planning to visit Turkey as part of an international trip in June, one of his first outside …

The surprise resignation of Yemeni President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi in early April and his immediate replacement by an eight-member Presidential Leadership Coun…

On April 4, 2022, Gulf Arab countries pledged $22 billion to help Egypt avert a currency crisis resulting from the Russian war on Ukraine. The Egyptian pound l…

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MbS) rise to power has resulted in what are arguably some of the most significant political transformations …

This is likely to be Turkey’s year of normalization with regional counterparts, as 2021 was one of diplomatic restoration for Turkish foreign policy. While in …

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) toured the five smaller Gulf states between December 6, when he visited Oman, and December 10, when he arr…

On October 25, 2021, Sudan’s General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan staged a coup, declared a state of emergency, dissolved the power-sharing Sovereign Council, sacked…

Turkish officials celebrated the November 24 visit of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to Ankara as the beginning of “a new era” between Tur…

On October 29th, Riyadh cut diplomatic ties with Beirut and suspended Lebanon’s imports into Saudi Arabia. These actions were aimed to force the resignation of…

During his years in the Nixon White House in the 1970s, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sought to manage the US-Soviet rivalry by creating arenas of …

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan traveled to Riyadh on September 27 and was accompanied by US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking. The visit highl…

Talks in Baghdad between officials of Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have been held periodically since April, have fueled speculation that these two regional pow…

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) appears to be approaching another unwelcome rift, this time between its two most vocal and influential members, Saudi Arabia…

Out on the campaign trail in 2019, presidential candidate Joe Biden made it clear that when it came to a principled US foreign policy, he intended to be the an…

A flurry of diplomatic outreach involving Iran, Syria, and Turkey, and a continuing warming of relations with other Gulf countries, have sparked questions over…

People in the Arab world have gazed at the stars with curiosity and genius for centuries. The first observatory was built in the 8th century by Abbasid Caliph …

The Biden Administration’s release on February 26 of a declassified intelligence report implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) in the assassi…

Egypt and Saudi Arabia continue to be strategic partners in the Middle East, buoyed by shared interests and certain threat perceptions. Saudi Arabia values Egy…

It finally happened: the GCC crisis is seemingly over. The 41st summit meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) succeeded in surmounting the three-and-a-h…

Once again, Arab solidarity with the Palestinian cause suffered a setback. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) reportedly met with Israeli Pr…

Signed at the White House on September 15, the new peace agreements between Israel on the one side and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain on the other …

Nabeel Khoury contends that the lack of trust between Yemen’s Hadi government and southern secessionists is likely to at least delay the implementation of the …

With a speed rarely seen in history, the Gulf Arab states have evolved from mere afterthoughts of colonialism to advanced countries. Located in a strategic reg…

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) will most likely weather the political, economic, and health storms generated by COVID-19. Prompted by th…

With President Hadi too weak to respond to the self-rule declaration by the UAE- supported Southern Transitional Council, and Saudi Arabia too economically tro…

Because the health of the US economy is critical for Donald Trump's reelection hopes, Marcus Montgomery asks if the recent Saudi-led OPEC+ cuts will contribute…

Imad K. Harb argues that Mohammed bin Salman’s chaotic and authoritarian stewardship of Saudi domestic and international affairs may well impede the establishm…

Saudi Arabia's reputation remains on the line despite the whitewashing and the convoluted twists of Khashoggi’s killing. For now, at least, in Jamal’s case “ju…

A limited reconciliation between parties to the GCC crisis is likely to take place during the upcoming summit in Riyadh. However, certain thorny and serious po…

Ibrahim Fraihat argues that the September 14 attack on Aramco has had a significant effect on Riyadh and has forced Saudi Arabia to revise its policies toward …

The Riyadh Agreement’s success will depend in large part on the local parties’ conviction that it serves their purposes at this time more than continued war do…

Daniel Brumberg writes that against the background of the White House’s escalating conflict with Tehran, Washington seems unwilling or unable to break its habi…

The UAE's backing of Yemen’s southern separatists has angered Saudi Arabia and helped lead to a reevaluation of American policy toward the conflict. More volat…

Over the last decade, stories about the potential for freedom of the press in the Arab world have alternated between hopeful and hopeless. The 2011 Arab uprisi…

The UAE’s withdrawal from Yemen highlights the serious problems facing the war effort there. This situation puts Saudi Arabia in a difficult position and force…

With the American retreat from the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt are presenting themselves as reliable allies. However, they are pursuing an ag…