Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Iranian support for the Houthis has been marginal and does not shape their decisionmaking as much as local alliances and conflict dynamics do.
While the Rouhani administration tries to find the right balance of financial reforms, the banking sector challenges continue to hamper sustainable economic growth.
Regional competition and the lack of a cooperation strategy with its neighbors are compounding Saudi Arabia’s inability to act as an oil price setter.
Sada contributors share their take on what the extraordinary election of Donald Trump could mean for a region in turmoil.
As sanctions ease on Iran, it hopes to expand its petrochemical exports, putting it in direct competition with Saudi Arabia over emerging markets.
President Hassan Rouhani’s mixed record heading into the last year of his current term may alienate supporters and create an opening for opponents to challenge him in the 2017 elections.
The rise of the Islamic State has created both challenges and opportunities for Iranian trade networks in Iraq.
Hamas’s pivot to Saudi Arabia may help Khaled Meshaal isolate the military wing and obtain a credible truce with Israel.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is likely to hamper Rouhani’s economic reform agenda.
Although political considerations are the main drivers of Iran’s policy toward Syria, economic interests are playing an ever greater role.
In the Middle East, producers are facing different effects of the recent drop in oil prices. Four oil experts explore the impact of falling prices on the economies of key regional producers.
One year ago, Hassan Rouhani, a cleric running on a moderate platform, won the Iranian presidential election. How has he fared? Four Iranian experts discuss Rouhani’s policies and prospects for change.
Regional Shia support for the Assad regime is more geopolitical than religious in nature.
Due to divisions within Iraq’s Shia establishment, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is losing the allies he would need to achieve re-election in 2014.
As tensions rise between Baghdad and Najaf, Tehran is welcoming al-Maliki with open arms.
How has al-Maliki deflected the increasing challenges against his rule? And why are his opponents having so much trouble in their campaign to unseat him?
President-elect Obama’s administration must not give any inkling that Iraq is becoming less important to Washington if it wants to shore up real but fragile gains in Iraqi stability.
Not since the Iranian revolution has the issue of Shiite political development been of such interest to observers of Middle Eastern politics.
Ten days of raucous student demonstrations across Iran in June prompted fresh predictions of the Iranian regime's imminent demise. But by July, regime hardliners had regained the upper hand by arresting some four thousand people. This summer's back-and-forth is yet another indication that in Iran a highly contentious but gradual process of political change is more likely than revolution.
Since his release from prison late last year, the prominent Sudanese Islamist and former Speaker of Parliament Hassan Turabi has been busy preaching democracy as the best possible system for Muslim countries. Many might consider Turabi's ardent espousal of democracy highly suspect, given his repressive record during the decade when he was Sudan's de facto ruler (1989-1999).