Regional Policies

The central question is not merely whether Israel’s opposition can unseat Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition in the next election. More importantly, if such a political shift occurs, would it produce a substantive change in Israel’s policies toward the core Palestinian issues—particularly annexation, Palestinian statehood, and the E1 settlement project? This article begins with the hypothesis that an electoral…

The U.S.–Iranian understanding announced under Pakistani sponsorship has reopened the door to a new political phase in the Middle East. However, the Lebanese arena quickly emerged as the first practical test of this understanding’s ability to endure and translate into realities on the ground. While the agreement was expected to reduce tensions across the various fronts linked to the U.S.–Iran…

Japan’s Ambassador to Jordan, Asari Hideki, affirmed that peace and stability in the Middle East are of direct interest to Japan, given the close links between regional crises, international security, supply chains, energy security, and freedom of navigation. He stressed the importance of de-escalation and ensuring free and safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, describing it as a vital…

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.…

Hamas’s current elections are not merely a process of leadership replacement; they constitute a test of the movement’s ability to survive and reconstruct itself in the aftermath of the losses incurred since October 7. The internal competition within Hamas revolves around two principal approaches: one centered on resistance, alignment with Iran, and close ties to the military wing; and another…

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…