Regional Policies

Do organizations end with the assassination of their leaders? This question was raised by the world after the killings of Osama bin Laden and al-Baghdadi, and it resurfaces today with Trump’s announcement of eliminating the second-in-command of ISIS at the heart of Africa[1] in the Lake Chad region. But before analyzing the event as a victory or a failure, the…

As geopolitical and economic transformations accelerate across the Middle East, a new policy paper titled “Jordan and the Middle East: A Forward-Looking Strategic Vision” by senior researcher Ali Hijazi highlights the profound shifts reshaping the regional order through logistics corridors, energy networks, and cross-border supply chains. The paper argues that regional competition is no longer limited to traditional political influence.…

The Lebanese-Israeli negotiations have entered, after the third round, an entirely different phase from anything Lebanon has experienced since the April 1996 Understanding and the arrangements that followed the July 2006 war. The issue is no longer confined to localized security arrangements or the management of limited confrontations along the southern border. Instead, it has become part of a broader…

Military strikes are designed to achieve specific security objectives, but they also generate profound social meanings. The insights captured in the Politics and Society Institute’s report on Syrian digital discourse following the May 2026 Jordanian strikes on southern Syria reveal that the meaning constructed by the Syrian public extended far beyond Amman’s declared objectives. Syrians did not focus on drug…

The report tracked 18,000 interactions between May 2 and 10, 2026. 46.2% of the discourse was classified as neutral, compared to 30.9% supportive of the strikes and 22.9% opposed. The “neutral” segment was not fully neutral; Syrian accounts repeatedly reshared narratives linking the strikes to smuggling networks and al-Hajari’s militias without visible pushback — which the report reads as implicit…

Despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetoric about pressing ahead with a project of Israeli regional dominance, alongside political discourse centered on reshaping the Middle East and transforming Israel’s security doctrine from defense to regional influence, it is becoming increasingly clear that important reassessments are now taking place within Israel regarding the lessons drawn from the wars it has fought since October 7,…

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…

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s visit to Syria comes at a complex transitional moment in the region, not only because it represents the first visit of this level since the major transformations Syria has undergone, but also because it reflects the fact that Lebanese-Syrian relations are no longer merely in a formative phase. Rather, they have already entered a stage…

Sometimes, parties do not ally because they agree on the future, but because they fear the past. This is almost exactly what is happening today with Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid under the name “Beyachad/Together.” The two men, who were brought together by a short experience in government in 2021, are not returning today with a new political project as…

The historic turning point Hezbollah is experiencing today extends far beyond the scene of its ongoing, intermittent war with Israel, which has continued for nearly three years (with the exception of the ceasefire period and temporary truce, which was never a full truce but rather closer to de-escalation, particularly from the Israeli side). Another challenge, no less significant or dangerous…