Regional Policies

The study examines the trajectory of the Islamic Group in Lebanon as a process of transformation between the da‘wa, political, and military spheres within a complex Lebanese and regional context. The U.S. decision to designate the Muslim Brotherhood—including the Islamic Group in Lebanon-constituted a strategic turning point that redefines its position within the regional order and imposes existential choices upon…

Ramadan is approaching amid escalating challenges imposed by the Israeli police inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Police and administrative measures are intensifying in ways that are no longer read as temporary security steps, but rather as accumulated tools producing a new status quo. In this context, the slogan “custodianship does not mean sovereignty” is not advanced merely as a legal…

The security architecture of the Middle East has, for several years, been undergoing profound and overlapping transformations that have reshaped the contours of the regional environment. The expansion of fragile states, the continuation of Israeli military operations and their repercussions for regional stability, coupled with the decline of U.S. engagement and the erosion of the effectiveness of the “security umbrella”…

Muscat, the capital of Oman, hosted last Friday a new round of “indirect” U.S.–Iran negotiations—an attempt to identify common ground that might pave the way for an agreement capable of defusing a potential war. Such a confrontation could erupt if the United States were to launch a military strike against Iran, a move that would likely compel Tehran to respond…

The Nature of Protests and Internal Transformations in Iran Despite their recurrence since 2009, protests in Iran cannot be read as a movement aimed at overthrowing the regime, but rather as a broad reformist pressure mechanism seeking to redistribute power and wealth and to achieve greater developmental justice. Although calls for “regime change” have appeared at specific historical moments, they…

Masoud Pezeshkian’s experience embodies a living manifestation of the reformist’s predicament when he is summoned after the moment has passed—not as a project of structural transformation, but as an instrument for managing deadlock and reducing the costs of systemic collapse. The legacy of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri represents a latent horizon of internal transition, one that may still allow for…

The American researcher and one of the most prominent scholars in international relations and U.S. foreign policy, Jeffrey Sachs, does not hesitate, in his commentary on the American campaign against Iran, to state that Israel today fully leads America in the Middle East. This is something many now regard as one of the core assumptions in analyzing U.S. foreign policy.…

In recent months, debate inside Israel has intensified over the future of exemptions granted to the Haredi community, amid demographic and sociological transformations that render the old arrangement increasingly untenable. This debate is not confined to the question of conscription or the distribution of economic burdens; rather, it reflects a deeper crisis in the structure of Israel’s social contract, which…

President Lai Ching-te National Day address on October 10, 2025, marked a clear shift in priorities compared to his previous speeches. It reflected a more cautious and pragmatic approach to cross-strait relations, alongside stronger emphasis on domestic national identity, national defense and internal security, and Taiwan’s global standing. This contrasted with the previous year, when his remarks strongly underscored Taiwan’s…

There are entrenched “rules of the game” that Iraqi political forces have consistently sought to institutionalize with every electoral cycle—rules that have ultimately produced a political system some scholars classify as a form of competitive authoritarianism. Iraq’s political arena has thus become confined to a limited set of actors who continuously reproduce the status quo, reducing elections to little more…