Chokepoints have become an increasingly important topic in international affairs discourse. Edward Fishman wrote recently about financial and economic chokepoints and how oil pricing mechanisms, tanker fleets, and maritime insurance markets enable the United States (US) and other actors to target major petro-states like Russia and Iran. However, as recent events have demonstrated, shadow fleets […]
A shift in the Gulf’s narrative from crisis diplomacy to postwar bargaining is beginning to take shape. The next phase of the Iran War is currently being negotiated through a US-Iran coercive bargain, in which military and economic pressures are exchanged for reciprocal concessions to suspend hostilities, rather than a comprehensive peace settlement which could […]
Soon after reentering office, President Donald Trump announced a renewed policy of sanctioning International Criminal Court (ICC) officials. Employing the considerable extraterritorial powers of the United States (US), Washington initially targeted individual Court officials and supporters before further escalating by sanctioning the ICC as an institution. This is part of an explicit policy to “dismantle” […]
INTRODUCTION The Arab region has experienced decades of political unrest, which is likely to persist; however, recent developments are indicative of the onset of a new regional order. Armed conflicts, shifting alliances, external interventions, and the increasing assertiveness of regional powers have produced a fragmented political order in which authority is dispersed among various state […]
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s comment at the Labour Party conference that the United Kingdom (UK) should consider options when it comes to its European Union (EU) ties, including rejoining the group, has ignited a debate that will be hard to shut down. Why did he make such a comment, and what are the options […]
WHAT ARE THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS & WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT? On November 3, 2026, the United States (US) will hold its midterm elections. Held two years into a president’s four-year term, the elections mark the halfway point of a presidency. They provide voters with the opportunity to elect the members of the two chambers of […]
Amid the shifting strategic landscape of the Middle East and the changing relationships shaping the region, Fiker Institute hosted Dr Lina Khatib, scholar of Middle Eastern geopolitics and security, Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, and Chatham House Associate Fellow, to discuss the implications of these pivots for regional security, diplomacy, […]
INTRODUCTION Although Fahrelnissa Zeid spent her life living and working in Türkiye, Europe, and Jordan, she did not see herself as belonging to any particular nation or faith.1 Instead, she understood her identity as an artist in universal terms, saying that she belonged “neither to a country, nor to a religion. I was born on this earth. […]
The 2026 United States (US)-Israel attack on Iran came as a profound shock to the Gulf states. Though far from a unitary actor, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states all shared to varying degrees three core assumptions: hosting US bases and cultivating close diplomatic ties to Washington would deter an attack by any hostile power; maintaining dialogue with […]
There is an ongoing debate about the rise of middle powers in the world, including in the Gulf, and where this rise fits in the mechanics of the international system. This debate sometimes places those middle powers in the context of what some observers see as rising multipolarity. But the notion of polarity itself, while […]
INTRODUCTION The imaginary construction of the West’s need to ‘save’ women outside its borders, backed by military power and political legitimization across decades, is what Edward Said invited us to reconsider in his seminal work Orientalism. Instead of focusing on how people in the Middle East are represented or misrepresented, he calls for us to consider the power-knowledge nexus […]