Middle East

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Cashing in the chips at the Trump casino

Big moves in the Middle East often seek to take advantage of a favourable political climate in Washington. And there has rarely been as favourable time in Washington for some Middle East leaders as under the Trump administration. But in pro-US capitals across the region, leaders are no doubt bracing

By Rodger Shanahan

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Syria: Thumbs down

Back in December, US President Donald Trump signed the National Defence Authorisation Act, which included was a set of measures known as the Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act, or Caesar Act. It was so labelled after the codename of a Syrian defector who had exposed evidence of Syrian government

By Rodger Shanahan

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With Syrian prosecutions, a rare case of universal jurisdiction

With so much else going awry in the world, it’s perhaps easy to forget that the Syrian civil war is rolling on into its tenth year. Scholars and policymakers have long been despondent about the prospects for an end to the conflict and the bloodshed it has caused. Bombs continue to fall on schools

By Craig Hershowitz

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In Yemen, a deadly concoction of arms sales, conflict and Covid-19

In April, the UN Security Council issued a statement endorsing the UN Secretary-General’s call for a ceasefire in Yemen to better enable a response to Covid-19. The Council recognised that the humanitarian crisis in Yemen made the country “exceptionally vulnerable”, and that any further

By Rebecca Barber

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Need To Know: Ben Hubbard on the Mohamed bin Salman power grab

In his recently published book, MBS: Mohamed bin Salman and the Rise to Power, New York Times Beirut Bureau Chief Ben Hubbard details how the favoured son of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has upended the kingdom’s ultraconservative society and reimagined its place in the world – but not

By Lydia Khalil

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Need To Know: Brett McGurk on America’s strategy to defeat ISIS

Given the increasingly familiarity of video conferencing during working from home arrangements, we thought to take the opportunity to commence a new series of interviews with key policy makers and observers in world affairs. To kick off, we were fortunate to interview Brett McGurk, currently a

By Rodger Shanahan

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A Yazidi genocide trial commences – a Hezbollah ban contemplated

Remarkably, for all the international attention on the plight of the Yazidi back in 2014 as Islamic State ravaged Iraq, it has taken until now, six years later, to bring the first charges of genocide. A trial commenced last month in a German court of a man accused of murdering a Yazidi girl traded

By Rodger Shanahan

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Denials, delays, and conspiracy theories: Iran’s Covid mismanagement

Iran’s initial reaction to the coronavirus pandemic was sluggish, and its fight with the outbreak has been chaotic and inefficient. US sanctions undeniably played a role in cutting off Iran’s access to medical equipment and expertise, medicine, and tests, but the crisis has also displayed the

By Mahmoud Pargoo

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The high price of cheap oil for Saudi Arabia

The ramifications from the oil war that has pitted Saudi Arabia against Russia but also dragged in the United States may end up being most significant for Riyadh. To misquote Oscar Wilde, “To lose one war may be regarded as misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.” Having already

By Rodger Shanahan

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ISIS looks to prosper in a world distracted by the virus

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the heart of Europe. The severity of the virus has forced policymakers to shift their priorities almost exclusively to the home front. As a result, international security concerns, particularly the fight against the remnants of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which had until

By Kareem Salem

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Washington could win hearts and minds in Iran

Originally published in The Australian

By Rodger Shanahan

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Coronavirus in conflict: The fight has hardly begun

The War on Covid-19 In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mobilising language of war is being used by leaders from UN Secretary-General António Guterres and World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to France’s President Emmanuel Macron and British

By Eleanor Gordon, Florence Carrot

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Middle East dispatch: MBS purge, dam dispute, refugees in jeopardy

Vulnerable cases Early efforts to contain Covid-19 focused on quarantining those travelling by air, leaving the impression of coronavirus as a disease mostly affecting stable and industrialised nations with busy transport networks. Of course, the danger was always more widespread, particularly in

By Lauren Williams

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Iran: Sanctions vs sympathy

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown up some serious moral questions for society, including ones to do with decisions on treatment priorities for health workers under severe pressure. But another moral issue has arisen in the international relations field – in the midst of a pandemic, how appropriate

By Rodger Shanahan

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Saudi Arabia is not offside on gender equality

Little has surprised me more than spending my Saturday night Googling how to buy tickets to watch a game of football in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – perhaps only that it was for a female football league announced by the Saudi sports authorities just last week. That I might stand in a stadium in

By Erin Watson-Lynn

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Europe under threat

The novel coronavirus Covid-19 dominates not only the media headlines in Europe but the everyday life of just about anybody. In the federalist European Union, it is still up to the individual states, often also their parts – Bundesländer, Départements, Provincie, or whatever they are called –

By Daniel Woker

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Syria: What the UN can do, and must do

As the Syrian Government intensifies its offensive against Syria’s Idlib province, the final opposition stronghold in the nine-year old war, diplomats and UN officials are running out of words in their attempts to convey the severity of the crisis to the UN Security Council. The UN Emergency

By Rebecca Barber

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Syria: The battlefield rules

The Syrian conflict has once again shown just how complicated it can be, along with the ramifications if one side seeks too much change to the status quo. Syrian government forces, with Russian assistance, have been waging a months-long campaign to capture key parts of rebel-controlled Idlib

By Rodger Shanahan

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Lebanon contemplates defaulting on its debt – and a greater cost

In the inner-urban Beirut suburb of Gemmayze, the Friday lunch crowd walks past Syrian child beggars on their way into a popular French restaurant. The beggars are ignored by the diners and shooed away by the wait staff, as the diners’ Range Rovers and Porsche Cayennes are parked by a

By Eliza Harvey

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Australia and Israel should be partners in Asia

The rise of Asia and growing superpower competition pose serious challenges for countries such as Australia and Israel, and they should face them together. On the one hand, Asia’s economic dynamism offers access to new and growing markets; on the other hand, changing regional dynamics in Asia have

By Gedaliah Afterman

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Israel’s democracy: a systemic problem

Israel has often been called the only democracy in the Middle East. This is not quite true. The Economist’s Global Democracy Index for 2019, which ranks 167 countries by five democratic criteria, lists Israel as a “flawed democracy”.* Israel scores well on electoral process/pluralism and

By Ian Parmeter

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The New Wave of Middle-East Media Repression

In an opinion piece published in Project Syndicate, Lydia Khalil describes how the governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia have suppressed unfavorable information to hold on to power. But the experiences of Iraq and Lebanon suggest that this approach has limits in political systems that depend on

By Lydia Khalil

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Middle East dispatch: A paper closes, a rift opens, Syria slips

Out of print In the latest casualty of Lebanon’s ongoing political crisis, the country’s only national English-language newspaper, The Daily Star, has temporarily ceased publishing its print edition. In an announcement, the editors cited financial challenges and a drop in advertising revenue

By Lauren Williams

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Middle East Peace Plan: A once in a lifetime deal, not in a good way

For close observers of business in Australia, one particular moment has become folklore, the time Australia’s then richest man Kerry Packer sold off television station Channel Nine for $1 billion – a price seen far in excess of its value at the time in the 1980s – to a man who would later go

By Rodger Shanahan

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Q&A: Jason Rezaian on Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s nightmare in Iran

Jason Rezaian was correspondent for the Washington Post in Iran from 2012 to 2016 – only for more than 18 months of that time, he was unjustly held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, in the same wing where Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert is presently locked away on accusations of

By Daniel Flitton

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Russia makes its presence known in Iran crisis

Recent revelations make it clear that Iran’s willingness to confront the US following the strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad was not driven just by a mix of domestic considerations and a compelling desire to retaliate. Iran’s bluntly open challenge to the US may have been

By Alexey Muraviev

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The Kurds are again caught in the crossfire, now between US and Iran

In the immediate aftermath of the Soleimani strike, Iran’s first act of retaliation was to launch 22 missiles against the US base at the Ain al-Assad airbase, in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar province. Less publicised were the seven simultaneous Iranian strikes against targets

By Lauren Williams

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The impact of accuracy

Of all the unfortunate events of last week’s hostilities between Tehran and Washington, the most tragic was undoubtedly Iran’s use of a surface-to-air missile to shoot down an airliner, killing 176 people. But this accident was not the most strategically significant development of those days

By Victor Abramowicz

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In Tehran, a tragic error threatens political wreckage

The briefing provided by the aerospace commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC) regarding the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was revealing for both what it told and what it didn’t tell us. To begin with, the incident appears to have been a tragic operator

By Rodger Shanahan

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Trump walks away clean from Soleimani fallout

The US drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani dominated the political discussion in Washington last week. President Trump’s decision to target Soleimani – an escalatory move in the ongoing confrontation with Iran – was an unexpected development. The conventional wisdom was

By Erin Hurley

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Could Afghanistan be the stage for US-Iran conflict?

The killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike on 3 January in Baghdad has sparked fears of a regional war between Washington and Tehran. Iranian military commanders have declared that Iran was in no hurry to retaliate and would choose its targets

By Syed Fazl-e-Haider

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Ending Iran’s regional ransom

Criticism of Donald Trump’s brazen assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassim Soleimani has rightly focussed on the unprecedented nature of the killing and the escalation in the conflict between the two countries it presents. Imaginations have run wild with the scale and horrors

By Lauren Williams

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“Maximum pressure” demands diplomatic off-ramps

With Donald Trump facing an impeachment trial in the Senate and a tough re-election battle, some US rivals see the president as politically weakened, risk-averse in exerting military pressure, and incapable of delivering on diplomatic commitments. The American drone strike killing General Qassim

By Leif-Eric Easley

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Trump’s unpredictability confounds his allies, and now his enemies

For a region where the security environment was already fragile, Donald Trump’s decision to kill the head of Iran’s Quds Force, along with a senior Iraqi militia leader, has increased tensions with Iran to a point not seen in many years. And while Trump took office displaying little to no

By Rodger Shanahan

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Will Trump win big from killing Soleimani?

In assessing the consequences of President Donald Trump’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, the key is the Iraqi government’s reaction. The Iraqi parliament’s resolution overnight demanding expulsion of the US military

By Ian Parmeter

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Middle East protests: Careful what you wish for

Popular protests in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran once again mark the level of dissatisfaction that much of the Middle East has with their governments. Calls for freedom and human rights, jobs, and an end to corruption are themes familiar to those both inside and outside these countries. In the case of

By Rodger Shanahan

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Iran: When maximum pressure collides with indefinite defiance

From the burning of Iranian diplomatic outposts as part of massive months-long protests in Iraq, to slogans admonishing Iranian interference as part of anti-sectarian demonstrations in Lebanon, along with deadly rallies across cities at home in Iran, it’s been a bad month for the regime in

By Lauren Williams

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When price hikes pour fuel on the fire

The word “protest” has become part of the common vocabulary in the last few months, with demonstrations in Hong Kong, the Middle East, India, and across Latin America making headlines around the world. The recent protests in Iran, particularly, have brought into focus a longstanding issue:

By Vani Swarupa Murali

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Sistani: The (not-so) hidden hand behind Iraqi politics

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has been a consistently powerful and decisive force in Iraq’s ongoing political transition. His role in Iraq has been closely observed over the years by those seeking to understand Iraq and to divine its future political fortunes. Representing the “quietist”

By Lydia Khalil

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How the regime extinguishes Iran’s “Petroleum Protests”

Iran is amid a new round of unrest once again, which has claimed at least 106 lives, according to Amnesty International. It started after the Rouhani government announced a three-fold increase in petrol prices, effective immediately. Iranian Mehr News Agency has reported that around 400 bank

By Mahmoud Pargoo

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Erdoğan’s treachery can’t sway Trump’s affections

Even by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s standards, the diplomacy – if you can call it that – on show at his meeting with US President Donald Trump last Wednesday was brazen. US Republicans and pundits alike were rightly baffled by the warm reception offered to the Turkish strongman,

By Lauren Williams

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Shifting alliances in the Gulf a boon to China

In the wake of escalating US-Iran tensions in the Persian Gulf, the geopolitical realities of the Asian region are rapidly changing. New strategic alliances are being formed as old partnerships give way. A good example is the trouble surrounding a three-way transit agreement between Iran, India,

By Syed Fazl-e-Haider

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Typology of Terror — The Backgrounds of Australian Jihadis

In order to better understand what motivates Australian radical islamists to join or support a terrorist group it is first necessary to get a better understanding of who they are. This working paper examines data sets from 173 Australian citizens and residents to paint a picture of our own

By Rodger Shanahan

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Protests in Lebanon are a problem for Hezbollah

After two weeks of unprecedented protests in Lebanon, the Western- and Saudi-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri bowed to pressure and resigned on Tuesday. The President, Michel Aoun – a Christian – now says he is seeking to abolish Lebanon’s confessional government and replace it with

By Lauren Williams

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October in Syria: Podcast out now

October 2019 saw two major new developments in Syria which have shifted the geopolitics of the region: US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from north-east Syria, abandoning its allies the Kurds and allowing Turkey to invade; and the death, days later, of the Islamic State

By Kelsey Munro

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The worrying precedent of Turkey’s “safe zone”

There is a reason the Kurds say they have “no friend but the mountains”. Time and again human rights atrocities have been perpetrated against them, and they are not strategically important enough for any country to take their side. News of death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

By Rebecca Barber

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Trump’s troop withdrawal and what’s next for Islamic State

Sceptical of US interests in the Middle East, averse to military deployments and non-committal to the value of alliances, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he will pull US troops out of Syria. As he puts it: “We want to protect the Kurds but I don’t want to be in Syria forever. It’

By Lydia Khalil, Daniel Flitton

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Sparks fly in Lebanon

Tyres are once again burning on the streets of the Lebanese capital Beirut, while in the country’s north, wildfires are raging. The two happenings may seem unrelated, but the dramatic events in Lebanon of the past week represent a culmination of chronic economic mismanagement, corruption,

By Lauren Williams

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Iraq protests: The cost of corruption and failed reforms

Since the start of October, large-scale protests have rocked Iraq, killing more than a hundred people and wounding thousands. Iraqis are frustrated with high unemployment, the dismal state of Iraq’s essential infrastructure, and the long-standing corruption seen as the fundamental cause for the

By Jon Norling

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Turkey’s “safe zone” may prove costly

On 9 October, Turkey launched a military operation, code-named Operation Peace Spring, against US-allied Kurdish forces in north-eastern Syria. Ankara described the goal as creating a “safe zone” along the Turkish-Syrian border, 480 kilometres long and 32 kilometres deep, stretching from the

By Xiaoli Guo

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