The armed escalation that began in April 2019 with the General Command of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces’ (LAAF) attack on Tripoli led to an escalation in the Sirte area and risked international confrontation in the broader Sirte region. Sirte is pivotal in the conflict and has local, regional and international dimensions.[1] [2] [3] Therefore, […]

Within a year of the Covid-19 epidemic starting in Tunisia, the North African country has turned from a widely praised example of efficient crisis management to the “bad boy” of the Arab region and of the African continent. While the lightning spread of the virus in the country is putting a strain on an already […]

As part of its efforts to provide a nuanced understanding of the conflict’s dynamics and trends, the ‘Wartime and Post-Conflict in Syria’ (WPCS) team of the Middle East Directions Programme has collectively reflected on the mass of research on Syria produced in the past decade. For the purposes of this blog, we defined ‘research’ in […]

On 2 February 2021, the Middle East Directions Programme hosted Giovanni Romani, Sanam Vakil, Tytti Erästö, and Mahsa Rouhi as part of its Regional Security Initiative. Moderated by Luigi Narbone and Abdolrasool Divsallar, the event (see more details here) explored the possibility of military de-escalation measures in reducing tension between the US and Iran. This […]

Place de le République, Paris, 21 February 2021. As they have done every Sunday in the last year, Algerians and French-Algerians gathered in solidarity of the Hirak Movement in the French capital. Last Sunday, however, was different from the others. Among the many Algerian and Amazigh flags there were several banners recalling  with renewed emphasis […]

The international community, a longtime supporter of the Lebanese government, is adopting a new modality to channel reform-inducing aid to the country after the complete erosion of domestic and foreign trust in its state institutions. After the explosion at the Beirut port on 4 August 2020, the country’s largest donors rallied their support for the […]

Returning to the JCPoA Iran-US relations might witness a turnaround. The main challenge for the Biden administration will be to recreate trust in the Iranian government. The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal has left a deep sense of mistrust which is likely to persist given the lack of guarantees that a new deal would […]

As the new Biden administration seeks to re-engage with the global community and revisit US Middle East policies, including the Iran nuclear deal, in the new polarised and multipolar Middle East regional powers have stepped up their presence and fault lines have deepened. The regional cold war between Iran and its Arab rivals rages along […]

The future of so-called rentier states, countries with their economies based on extractive resources such as oil, gas and minerals, is under severe pressure. The impact of the Covid-19 black swan event, the resulting oil and gas demand destruction and a possible moving forward of peak oil demand scenarios are causes for concern in the […]

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the long-time head of Iran’s nuclear and missile development programs, has set off a major debate on how country should respond. Top Islamic Republic officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have called for definitive punishment of those responsible. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force Commander, General Qaani, vowed to […]