Middle East Research and Information Project: Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971
Saudi Arabia and Russia cooperated for years to maintain the value of their chief export—oil. This month, that collusion collapsed into a price war with both countries unexpectedly boosting production. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and China’s decreasing oil demands, fears of an uncertain future are shaking the fossil fuel economy.
As Iraq now confronts the arrival of COVID-19, its war-damaged medical infrastructure and degraded environment will make it harder to combat the virus. In 2019, Omar Dewachi explained how these same conditions transformed innocuous bacteria into dangerous drug-resistant strains.
Iran’s parliamentary elections in February handed the conservative supporters of the Supreme Leader a major victory. Abedini and Armin explain how and lay out why the regime is poorly positioned to deal with popular discontent, crushing US sanctions and the spreading coronavirus.
UCSC graduate student workers are striking for a cost of living adjustment (COLA) to their salaries. International students are particularly vulnerable both to the high cost of housing and to punitive measures by the university.
The recent US assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Soleimani has had dire consequences for the Iraqi protest movement and its calls for substantive changes in the Iraqi political system.
The Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century” for peace between Israel and Palestine is being compared to South African apartheid. Palestinians are questioning the usefulness of this analogy.
The 9/11 case at Guantanamo is the last active front in the battle for truth about US torture. Official secrets, lies and myths are exposed and challenged, motion by motion, witness by witness.
Over the past few years, students and staff at the American University in Cairo have joined forces with faculty against the increasingly draconian measures taken by the AUC administration.
Why did Abu Dhabi build an ambitious eco-utopian planned city called Masdar City and what does it all mean?
We mourn the passing of the great Palestinian artist, Kamal Boullata, who died on August 6, 2019. Kamal was a dear friend and colleague, and closely associated with MERIP from its earliest days. We offer the following tribute.
Peteet’s main theoretical contribution is to show how the violent territorial expansion of Israeli settler-colonialism has developed mobility regimes that govern and restrict Palestinian movement through space.
Jared Kushner unveiled the economic side of President Trump’s “deal of the century” for Palestinians in June 2019. In addition to its economic flaws is a technocrat’s aversion to confronting Israel’s entrenched occupation.
The Middle East is increasingly awash with fake news and misinformation campaigns. Russia has become a major vector of these disinformation campaigns, affecting virtually every major flashpoint in the Arab world. It just opened a new info-war front in Libya.
Hayoun identifies himself as a Jewish Arab and traces his family history to show how Jewish Arabs were maliciously separated from their societies and how their identities were used in a game of colonial domination.
Turkey’s authoritarian President Erdoǧan’s attempt to manipulate Istanbul’s recent mayoral election led to a humiliating defeat. Despite the tight grip Erdoǧan and the AKP appear to have over Turkish politics, Turkey’s population is much more fractious and agitated by the regime than previously known.
A military-industrial complex is growing in the Gulf states. In May 2018, a British researcher Matt Hedges was arrested in the UAE and charged with espionage for researching this industry as a spy, not a scholar. His colleague Shana Marshall explains why.
Hanieh’s book is valuable for anyone interested in understanding the growing power of Gulf monarchies across the Middle East.
Behind President Trump’s fervent embrace of Israel are millions of Christian Zionists who believe that the establishment of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine is a requirement for the fulfillment of end-times prophecies. But a growing movement of Christians is challenging this controversial theology.
Anti-government protests have rocked Sudan since the beginning of 2019, with police crackdowns leaving dozens of dead and many wounded. Large crowds have taken to the streets across the country to denounce a government decision in December to triple the price of bread and to demand the end of President Omar al-Bashir’s regime.The following articles and interviews offer accounts of earlier protests and regime repression as well as an overview of US policy toward Sudan leading up to the secession of South Sudan in 2011.
(Photo of protesters in Khartoum, April 8, 2019 by Lana Haroun.)
Egypt’s President Sisi has acquired sophisticated technological capabilities to block internet activity, passed restrictive internet legislation and now surveils users and censors content on a scale never seen before. Much of this has been facilitated by Western allies who have been more than happy to sell potentially repressive technologies to the authoritarian regime, emboldening Sisi’s attempts to eliminate freedom of expression in Egypt.
