Policy Analysis

Conflicting priorities in the Syrian war have strained the U.S.-Turkish relationship since 2014, shaping Turkey's foreign policy in the country and the structure of its alliances. Turkey’s geopolitical identity and long-standing alliance with the United States, as well as its status in NATO, have come into question due to its

A territorial dispute between Moscow and Tokyo illustrates the challenge that midsize powers face in an era of great power competition.

The low price of oil and gas has not deterred Ankara from continuing to explore disputed waters around the divided island of Cyprus. The Turkish government’s upstream offensive—a combined effort of the state-owned Turkish Petroleum (TPAO) and the Turkish navy—in the East Mediterranean is clearly being driven by its Blue

What factors will shape Israel's decisionmaking, and how would unilateral annexation affect its relations with the Palestinians, Arab neighbors, Europe, and U.S. legislators?

A State Department official explains the latest sanctions against entities that do business with Assad, while two experts assess the regime’s current status and its susceptibility to foreign pressure.

A globalized world has meant that international media reactions to a policeman’s brutal killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, and the subsequent protests have been swift and comprehensive. Responses within the Arab media have shifted between attempts to explain to readers sociological fault lines and structural racism in

Recently, much attention has focused on Israel’s drift away from a two-state solution and toward annexation of the West Bank. But hard data shows that the Palestinian public has also clearly moved away from the classic compromise peace deal with its neighbors. When the Trump peace plan was announced in

The regime may eventually use larger vessels to project power beyond the Gulf, but even its more modest recent additions portend further confrontations and weapons proliferation in local waters.

One of Iraq’s most prominent public opinion analysts joins two American experts to assess the dialogue’s achievements and discuss what Baghdad and Washington can do to advance real reform.

To prevent the agency from issuing a noncompliance resolution, Tehran has been threatening to impede inspections, but this approach could easily backfire on the regime.

Although Moscow would face many challenges if it tries to establish permanent offensive and A2AD capabilities in Libya like it has in Syria, its covert actions thus far show a commitment to playing the long game against NATO in the East Mediterranean.

Despite the international praise Jordan has received for the measures it introduced to combat the spread of coronavirus, the country’s policy makers remain deeply worried about the likely dire economic fallout from the pandemic. In this context, the Israeli announcement that it plans to proceed with unilateral annexation of large

As soon as next month, Israel’s new government could approve plans to annex a substantial portion of the West Bank. The trigger for this comes from Washington—a shift by the Trump administration to recognize Israel’s new self-declared borders. But that still doesn’t explain why. What might Israel gain by discarding

By making what appears to be a politically motivated case, the prosecutor’s office runs the risk of undermining both the main Israeli-Palestinian legal framework and the ICC’s role as an unbiased agent of international law.

Qatar's break with Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors remains unresolved, and rumors circulate of bids to replace Tamim bin Khalifa al-Thani, Qatar’s forty-year-old emir, with one of his historically marginalized rivals.

President Donald Trump has said he plans to withdraw all U.S. troops (about 12,000) from Afghanistan by 2021 and that the United States should never have gotten involved there in the first place. Moreover, another 7,000 military forces from European countries would almost certainly leave if the United States did

New maps explore the scope of Israel’s potential moves next month, though domestic politics, unprecedented Gulf warnings, and other factors are raising questions about whether annexation will actually proceed.

A leading scholar of Islam explores the region’s crises and their effects on Western policy, assessing what has changed since the Arab Spring.