Regional Policies

Southern Lebanon is entering a more complex phase in which developments on the ground are increasingly outpacing the political track. Three interconnected issues are now shaping the next stage: Israel’s attempt to establish new military facts ahead of the eighth round of negotiations, growing U.S. pressure over Hezbollah’s weapons, and the search for a new security arrangement in southern Lebanon…

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…

On Thursday evening, August 6, 2026, the city of Jaramana in the Damascus countryside witnessed an improvised explosive device (IED) blast inside a public minibus operating on a local transit route near Al-Rawda intersection in the city center. Casualties reported during the initial hours varied; while preliminary reports indicated two fatalities and 13 injuries, the Directorate of Health in the…

The letter sent by more than one hundred former British and French diplomats on Palestine deserves close attention, not only for what it says, but perhaps even more importantly for who is saying it. These are not activists from pro-Palestinian solidarity movements, nor figures traditionally associated with the European left. They are former politicians, ambassadors and diplomats who spent many…

A recent study published by the Politics and Society Institute on Jordanian-Indian relations, titled “Jordan and India in a Changing Regional Order,” draws attention to an issue that goes beyond its immediate subject. While examining the trajectory of relations between Amman and New Delhi and the prospects for developing them, the study raises a broader question: to what extent do…

The question today is no longer whether Israel’s war on Gaza has changed Israel’s image in the West — that much is already evident in opinion polls, on university campuses, in the streets, and in the media, and most clearly among younger generations. The more important question is: has this shift moved from the moral and protest arenas into the…

The results of the seventh round of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations show that the track has entered a phase far more complex than a simple dispute over a ceasefire or withdrawal from specific points. The core of the problem is now bound up with the shape of the security arrangements Israel wants to impose in south Lebanon, and with the limits of…

Al-Hol After ISIS: Closing the Camp and Redistributing the Burden A Study of Residents’ and Detainees’ Futures, Legal Responsibilities, and Evolving Risks for Jordan and the Region Executive Summary This study examines the transformations undergone by the Al-Hol camp. It traces its establishment in 1991 to receive Iraqi refugees, up through its conversion following the fall of ISIS’s last pocket…

The Iraqi government has recently intensified its rhetoric about its intention to “restrict arms to the state” once the withdrawal of the US-led international coalition forces from Iraq is completed by September 30 of this year, alongside Baghdad’s repeated rejection of Iraq being used as a launchpad for attacks on regional states or as an arena for proxy war. These…

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…