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Executive Summary This paper argues that, after 2026, Jordanian foreign policy entered a phase that requires a shift from managing balances to managing Jordan’s own position within the regional conflict system. Over the past decade, Amman succeeded in preserving stability, defending its red lines on Palestine and Jerusalem, and consolidating security and economic partnerships that gave the state a high…

When the name Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is mentioned, the mind often turns to his final image — leaving Tehran in the winter of 1979, aboard a plane carrying him into long exile, as the “Islamic Revolution” prepared to open a new chapter in the history of the country and the region. Yet this image, for all its symbolic weight, compresses…

The Middle East is not returning to its old order, nor has a new one fully emerged; it is passing through a prolonged transitional phase. Gregory Gause correctly warns against confusing military victories with political transformation, but underestimates the depth of structural regional change. Regional Security Complex Theory offers a more convincing framework for understanding the ongoing reconfiguration of the…

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…

In major wars, some developments appear, at first glance, almost impossible to believe—especially when they overturn long-held assumptions about individuals and states. Yet wars, particularly those dominated by intelligence operations, are not always conducted according to ideological alignment. Rather, they are driven by calculations of utility, vulnerability to penetration, and the ability to cultivate alternative leadership from within the very…

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…

The Politics and Society Institute has released a new policy paper entitled “Jordan and the Day After the War: A Strategic Assessment of Regional Transformations and the Requirements of National Security.” The paper examines Jordan’s strategic position in the aftermath of the Israeli–U.S. war against Iran and analyzes the complex regional transformations it has generated, arguing that these developments require…

Since the signing of the U.S.–Iran Memorandum of Understanding, a far more consequential debate has been unfolding across the Gulf than the agreement itself. The central question is no longer whether the war has ended or who emerged victorious. Instead, it concerns whether the conflict has fundamentally altered one of the most deeply embedded assumptions in Gulf politics over the…

The Jordanian Politics and Society Magazine (JPS) examines the impact of the American-Israeli-Iranian war on Gulf digital discourse concerning relations with the United States. The study analyzed 55,600 digital discussions across the Gulf region, generating more than half a million interactions. Less than 1% of Gulf discussions expressed support for the security partnership with the United States. 76.6% of Gulf…

In recent weeks, a series of brief remarks by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have conveyed important signals about the nature of the unspoken disagreements within the structure of the Iranian political system. During a limited meeting with a group of intellectuals and elites, the president stressed the importance of preventing any single institution from monopolizing decision-making during this sensitive period.…