Ali Hijazi

The problem with major wars is not simply that they leave questions unanswered, but that they often invite explanations that appear more complete than the evidence allows. The wider the war becomes and the more complex its trajectories grow, the more likely it is that narratives will emerge promising to explain it through a single cause. With repetition, that cause…

The military escalation between Washington and Tehran in June and July 2026 was neither merely a successive exchange of strikes nor simply the abrupt collapse of provisional understandings reached only weeks earlier. Framing the crisis exclusively through the lens of military operations produces an incomplete reading. What is unfolding in the Gulf extends beyond a contest over military targets or…

In the winter of 1950, Ankara dispatched a force of approximately 5,000 soldiers to the Korean Peninsula-a war that was not its own-for one reason alone: to convince a newly emerging Western alliance that Türkiye deserved membership. The price was steep. Nearly 700 Turkish soldiers lost their lives in exchange for an admission ticket that would not be granted until…

Introduction: Why Has Intelligence Become an Instrument of Regional Power? The Middle East is no longer governed, as it was during the twentieth century, solely through the balance of conventional armies, the size of military arsenals, or formal diplomatic alliances. The deeper transformation witnessed across the region over the past two decades lies in the shift of the center of…

What is actually advancing is a more disciplined style of decision-making organized around one overriding objective: protecting the regime. If that objective requires hardline policies, the system will produce hardline policies. If it requires negotiations, the system will produce negotiations. The overlap of authorities functions as a mechanism of survival rather than a sign of weakness. Ghalibaf’s importance lies in…

The hypothetical absence of Iran’s Supreme Leader can be understood as a potentially pivotal moment, though not necessarily as an automatic collapse of the regional balance of power. Since the 1979 revolution, the Iranian political system has not been constructed around a single individual; rather, it rests on a complex institutional–security–ideological architecture in which power is distributed among the religious…

The appointment of former Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor Akin Gürlek as Minister of Justice carries deep political implications, given his association with sensitive judicial files related to the opposition. The Turkish opposition interpreted the move as a politicization of the judiciary, while international analyses linked it to the redeployment of legal instruments in managing political conflict. The simultaneous change in…

The security architecture of the Middle East has, for several years, been undergoing profound and overlapping transformations that have reshaped the contours of the regional environment. The expansion of fragile states, the continuation of Israeli military operations and their repercussions for regional stability, coupled with the decline of U.S. engagement and the erosion of the effectiveness of the “security umbrella”…

The article examines the protests in Iran as a pivotal moment that differs from previous waves, as they coincide with a rapid transformation in the regional environment surrounding Iran. It starts from the premise that developments inside Iran are no longer a purely domestic matter, but a regional variable capable of reshaping security balances in the Levant, particularly in arenas…

The Policy and Society Institute has issued a new situation assessment paper entitled:“The Risk of Deteriorating Strategic Conditions in the West Bank: Intersections of Israeli Elections, Emerging Palestinian Leadership, and the Requirements of the Jordanian Response,”prepared by Dr. Ali Hijazi, Director of the Research and Studies Department at the Institute. The paper warns that the West Bank is undergoing a…