On July 25, Tunisians will vote on the new constitution drafted by President Kais Saied. The constitutional referendum comes during a difficult economic and political period in Tunisia. Economically, the country is reeling from high inflation, spiking unemployment, as well as sharply elevated commodity prices, and is in desperate need of an IMF deal—which the Tunisian government is currently negotiating. Politically, Kais Saied threw the country’s entire structure into chaos one year ago by suspending parliament and subsequently dissolving the legislature and suspending the constitution, which he has now redrawn to reflect a hyper-presidential system. 

Please join the Middle East Institute on Thursday, July 21, at 10:00 a.m. EDT, for a panel on the details of the new constitution, the opposition’s reaction to it, and what it means for Tunisia’s political future. 

 Speakers

Zaid Al-Ali
Senior Advisor, Constitution-Building for the Arab Region, International IDEA

Mouna Ben Halima
Founder and CEO, Hotel La Badira in Hammamet

Rafik Halouani
General Coordinator, Mourakiboun

Intissar Fakir, moderator
Senior Fellow and Director, North Africa and Sahel Program, MEI

Russia’s war against Ukraine is the largest military conflict Europe has seen since World War II, with 15 million people displaced and thousands of civilian casualties. Russia has waged a war of destruction not just against Ukraine, but also against the world. For months Moscow has prevented the export of Ukrainian grain that countries in the Middle East and Africa depend on. Half of the World Food Programme’s grain comes from Ukraine, meaning the Russian blockade has affected international humanitarian relief efforts. The devastating consequences of food shortages and increased prices are being felt around the world, leading to a heightened risk of famine in the coming months.

How is Russia waging a grain war in the Black Sea region? How are food shortages impacting Middle East countries that depend on Ukrainian grain? What role does the Crimean Peninsula play in Russia’s blockade? What can the international community do to ease the food crisis and prevent a major famine?

Speakers

Mirette Mabrouk
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Egypt Program, Middle East Institute 

Tamila Tasheva
Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in Crimea

Maria Tomak
Coordinator of the Media Initiative for Human Rights in Ukraine

Iulia Joja, moderator
Director, Frontier Europe Initiative; Project Director, Afghanistan Watch, Middle East Institute

The UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP27) will be held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in November. With the ever-clearer impact of climate change being brought home the world over, each successive COP takes on greater urgency. Last year’s event, COP26 in Glasgow, in the United Kingdom, was felt by climate change activists to have fallen short of what was needed for meaningful progress on this critical issue. This year, Egypt is the host and there has been a stated emphasis on the importance of adaptation, mitigation, and financial support for climate change work. What does it mean for an emerging economy to host this conference? What are the organizers hoping to achieve? And what are the stakes for emerging economies, which have contributed so little to climate change but are bearing the brunt of its impact?

Speakers

Ambassador Mohamed Nasr
Director of the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development Department, Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

Sarah El-Battouty
Non-resident Scholar, MEI; CEO, ECOnsult; UNFCCC Global Ambassador 

Hani Sewilam
Professor, Institute of Global Health and Human Ecology, American University in Cairo

Mirette F. Mabrouk, moderator
Senior Fellow and Founding Director of the Egypt Program, MEI

President Joe Biden makes a four-day trip to the Middle East this coming week where he will meet leaders of the region to discuss a long list of issues including regional security, Iran, Israeli-Palestinian relations and global economic and energy dynamics, among other issues. What can we expect from this visit, and how might it impact trends within the region and the impact the Middle East has on broader geopolitical dynamics?

Speakers

Khaled Elgindy
Senior Fellow and Director, Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs

Mick Mulroy
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Defense and Security Program

Alex Vatanka
Director, Iran Program; Senior Fellow, Frontier Europe Initiative

Karen Young
Senior Fellow and Director, Program on Economics and Energy

Brian Katulis, moderator
Vice President of Policy and Senior Fellow

Five Key Takeaways 

1. President Biden should focus on energy security over oil production: Karen Young recommended that President Biden should not ask Saudi Arabia to break with its OPEC+ partners and exhaust global spare capacity. Rather, the United States should focus on building a long-term energy partnership with the Gulf states to meet the broader needs of an emerging-market energy transition. However, this is an unlikely scenario since the trip agenda will likely focus on security matters.
2. The United States must remain consistent in its regional partnerships: Mick Mulroy argued that human rights should be an integral aspect of American foreign policy. In order to protect human rights on an international scale, the United States must remain a consistent partner to its foreign allies, including Saudi Arabia. This imperative has become more important as Russia and China continue to expand their reach in the Middle East. 
3. The Biden visit will uphold the status quo in Palestine and Israel: Khaled Elgindy explained that President Biden has not done enough to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel and that the Palestinian leg of Biden’s visit is ancillary. Biden has made little breaks with the Trump administration’s Palestine-Israel policy. On the other hand, the Israel leg is central to the trip since Israeli regional integration is one of Biden’s main goals. 
4. Iran does not hold high expectations for Biden’s visit: Alex Vatanka described that Tehran does not expect that Biden’s visit will result in the creation of a Middle Eastern NATO with Iran as its key nemesis, nor that the Arab Gulf states will become direct participants of the nuclear negotiations. However, Tehran feels threatened by the prospect of a U.S.-led integrated defense system and will lash out if the idea gains traction. 
5. Normalization is on the agenda, but don't expect major steps this visit: The scholars concurred that a key goal of the trip is to push normalization with Israel in the region, especially in pursuit of a collaborative security system. Young explained that there are already major regional initiatives including Israel on the energy front, especially regarding Eastern Mediterranean gas. Vatanka assured that Iran will not cut its budding relationships with Saudi Arabia and the UAE if normalization with Israel progresses further. However, it is unlikely that any formal commitments will materialize.

Four months have passed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and it has had wide-ranging implications for geopolitical and geo-economic trends in the Middle East. The war could lead to the emergence of new strategic vacuums in conflict zones across the region while reshaping Russian relations with energy players in the Middle East, including Iran. Beyond the immediate assumption that the war will create new opportunities for cooperation between revisionist powers like Iran and Russia, it has also given rise to new potential conflicts of interest.
 
In the second in a series of events dedicated to analyzing the implications of the war in Ukraine on Russia-Iran relations, the Middle East Institute (MEI) will bring together a panel of experts to provide a detailed picture of how the war might create new areas of competition and rifts between Moscow and Tehran. Renowned experts will discuss key questions, including: What do Moscow’s adjustments in Syria mean for Tehran, and how might they impact bilateral cooperation? How does Moscow see the future of its energy policy, and how could that affect relations with Iran? Can ideological and identity factors compensate for the security and economic conflicts of interest that the war has created between Moscow and Tehran?

 Speakers: 

Jakub M. Godzimirski
Professor at Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)

Diana Galeeva
Visiting Fellow, Oxford University

Hamidreza Azizi
CATS Fellow, SWP Berlin

Abdolrasool Divsallar, moderator
Non-resident Scholar at MEI

Ahead of Turkey’s 2023 elections, a six-party opposition bloc is working together to unseat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and restore the country’s parliamentary system. This comes against the backdrop of a growing economic crisis as public opinion polls show support for the president and the AKP is falling. How reliable are these polls? Can the opposition beat Erdoğan? What is its election strategy? Who is most likely to be the bloc’s presidential candidate? Despite the country’s growing economic, political, and social problems and the opposition's efforts to form a unified front, can Erdoğan still win? Please join us on Friday, June 10, at 11:00 am EST to discuss these questions and much more with an excellent expert panel.

Speakers:

Berk Esen
IPC-Stiftung Mercator Fellow, Center for Applied Turkey Studies, German Institute for International and Security Affairs; Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Sabancı University, Turkey

Ersin Kalaycıoğlu
Senior Scholar, Istanbul Policy Center; Professor, Sabancı University

Ali Çarkoğlu
Professor, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey  

Gonul Tol, moderator
Founding Director of Turkey Program; Senior Fellow of the Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI

During the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Turkey has engendered goodwill in the West by serving as a mediator between the two nations. However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's public warning that Turkey may block Sweden and Finland's bids to join NATO risks destroying that goodwill. How has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affected Turkey's standing and geopolitical calculations? Has Moscow's military blunder led Ankara to rethink its defense ties with Russia? Is this an opportunity for Turkey to take advantage of a more isolated Russia and advance its interests in places such as Syria and the South Caucasus? What does Erdoğan's stance on Sweden and Finland's bid mean for Turkey's own standing in NATO? Please join us on May 27th at 11.00 am EST to discuss these questions and much more.

Speakers:

Alper Coşkun
Senior fellow, Europe Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

General (Ret.) Philip Breedlove
Retired Air Force general and former supreme allied commander for Europe; distinguished professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Tech; distinguished chair, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI

Serhat Güvenç
Professor of international relations, Kadir Has University

Gonul Tol, moderator
Founding director, Turkey Program, MEI; senior fellow, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had profound consequences for politics across the Middle East, and this is especially true for Russia-Iran relations and security ties. While Tehran initially accepted Moscow’s rationale for the invasion and attempted to show its political support in the United Nations General Assembly, Iran has remained cautious about fully backing the war, even as it seeks to benefit from resulting trade and security opportunities. For its part, however, Moscow initially emerged as a spoiler in attempts to revive the so-called Iran nuclear deal. 

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is pleased to organize a series of expert panels to shed light on the complex relationship between Russia and Iran. The first panel in the series will bring together renowned experts to discuss key questions, including: How has Iran interpreted the Russian invasion and tried to adjust accordingly? What does Moscow expect from Tehran? How might uncertainties about Russia’s future role in the global order impact Iran's "look to the East” policy, both in general and toward Russia specifically? And how might the war change the foundations of Russia-Iran relations?

Speakers:

Vali Nasr
Professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Elaheh Koolaee
Professor of Political Science and Area Studies at the University of Tehran

Mark Katz
Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University

Alex Vatanka
Director of Iran Program and Senior Fellow at MEI

Abdolrasool Divsallar
Non-resident Scholar at MEI