Regional Policies

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…

Introduction The Houthi movement’s military escalation against Saudi Arabia marks a major shift in the trajectory of the conflict in Yemen and in the relationship between the two sides, effectively ending the truce that had held since April 2022. The strikes on Abha airport (13 July) and on two oil tankers in the Red Sea (23 July)[1] were not simply…

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…

Report: Türkiye does not want Iran to collapse or Israel to become a dominant regional power, as both scenarios threaten its security and strategic interests. Report: Israeli expansion in Syria and Lebanon could become a direct strategic challenge to Türkiye after the war. Report: Ankara seeks to consolidate its role as a balancing power and regional mediator while keeping communication…

The war that began on 28 February 2026 has outlived its ceasefires. The pattern is now diagrammable:[1] Iran interferes with shipping near the Strait of Hormuz; the United States retaliates; Tehran hits American assets across neighbouring Arab states — including Qatar, even as Doha mediates; mediators urge restraint; talks resume; a temporary understanding is reached; the underlying disputes remain untouched;…

There is a kind of catastrophe worse than being blindsided: the one you were warned about, in plain language, by the people whose job is to know — and chose to discount. The 2026 war against Iran is of this kind. Its defining feature is not an intelligence failure but a failure of reception. The event the intelligence correctly predicted…

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 Politics and Society Institute has published a new policy paper entitled “Jordan and the Gradual Annexation of the West Bank: Threat Assessment and Policy Options” The paper draws on the findings of a specialized roundtable organized by the Institute, which examined the trajectory of the gradual annexation of the West Bank and its potential implications for Jordan, Palestine, and…

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 Politics and Society Institute has released a new policy paper titled “The King Hussein Bridge Crisis: From Managing Symptoms to Building a Sovereign Border Crossing System.” The paper examines one of the most pressing challenges affecting movement between Jordan and the West Bank and presents a practical framework for shifting from seasonal crisis management to a sustainable institutional model…