Middle East Forum

09/03/2026

Less than 24 hours after Libyan delegates signed the U.N.-sponsored 4+4 framework agreement in Tripoli on August 30, 2026, infighting inside the Presidential Council put the deal at risk.

Writing for MEF Online, Amine Ayoub examines the agreement, which sets a 24-month roadmap to unify Libya's divided institutions and hold elections, and the dispute over overhauling the High National Elections Commission that erupted the next day. Against a decade of division between Tripoli and the eastern bloc under Khalifa Haftar, and the collapsed December 2021 vote, he argues that passive diplomatic support has run its course and that the United States must take a decisive role.

To Break This Pattern of Elite Stagnation, the United States Must Replace Passive Diplomatic Support with Decisive Leadership

09/03/2026

Turkey's Defense Ministry has stated in writing that it is preparing for scenarios ranging from crisis and heightened tension to outright war in its region.

Writing for MEF Online, Abdullah Bozkurt reports on an August 10 letter signed by Defense Minister Yasar Guler, sent in response to a parliamentary inquiry about the Greek military buildup near the Turkish coast and Athens' expanding defense ties with Israel. The letter says planning is coordinated across all units of the state, not the military alone, which Bozkurt reads as preparation for wide-ranging mobilization against what Ankara views as an emerging hostile axis in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean.

The Letter Cites Not Only Threats and Risks but Also Opportunities

09/03/2026

An antitrust fight becomes evidence of Zionist power. A man convicted of five counts of murder becomes a political prisoner.

Writing for MEF Online, Yuval David examines two campaigns unfolding in Hollywood this month, the opposition letter signed by more than 1,000 entertainment professionals against the Paramount-Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, and the drive to free Marwan Barghouti, sentenced in 2004 to five life terms plus 40 years. His argument is that celebrity activism is entitled to free speech but not to exemption from scrutiny, and that the same voices stay quiet on regimes in the region with far graver human rights records.

The Limousine-Liberal Wing of Hollywood Treats Israel as the One Government on Earth Whose Legitimacy Is Perpetually up for Debate

09/03/2026

“There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate.”

In “Is Islam Compatible with Western Values?”, author Ibn Warraq challenges one of the central assumptions shaping Western discussions of Islam: whether moderation among individual Muslims should be understood as evidence of moderation within Islamic doctrine itself.

He argues that the distinction matters—and that avoiding rigorous criticism of religious ideas ultimately weakens the broader debate over Islam, secularism, and Western values.

Watch the full MEF Podcast episode:
https://youtu.be/7jmWKraD-vY

09/03/2026

Twelve years after the Houthis seized Sanaa, Yemen's cell phone towers and all major internet service providers remain under their control, giving them visibility into calls and text messages nationwide.

Writing for the MEF Observer, Michael Rubin traces this to the pre-2014 centralization of Yemen's communications network in the capital, and argues the exile-based Presidential Leadership Council has failed to authorize independent infrastructure in the south because northern politicians and Saudi Arabia oppose it. His recommendation is to bypass those objections and double down on Starlink, which SpaceX agreed to launch with the Aden government two years ago without infrastructure following. The cost is a fraction of ousting the Houthis militarily.

Cell Phone Towers and All Major Internet Service Providers in the Country Are Under Houthi Control

09/03/2026

An Iranian-born imam in Dearborn Heights told his congregation in June that voting for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was wajib, as religiously obligatory as prayer, then invited him to campaign from the pulpit.

Writing for Focus on Western Islamism, Mahyar Entezari documents the event at the Islamic House of Wisdom, which was streamed to more than 32,000 Facebook followers on June 23 and later deleted. Federal law bars tax-exempt mosques from intervening in elections. Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi trained in Iran and once directed the Political-Ideological Bureau of the Islamic Republic's Navy.

The Islamic Republic Insider in Michigan Who Endorsed El-Sayed

09/03/2026

Saudi commentators argue that five billion dollars should fund the liberation of Sana'a rather than a Houthi payoff. Yemen has heard this before.

Writing for the MEF Observer, Khaled Alyemany counts four occasions since 2015 when a large sum was presented as the missing ingredient for victory in the north, each ending in collapse: the stalled advance through Nihm in 2015, the Naqil Jabara ambush in 2019, and the fall of Al-Jawf in 2020 after Islah-linked units withdrew without fighting. The south retook Aden in 2015 and Mukalla in 2016 with far less. Alyemany argues the difference was command cohesion, not funding, and calls for an independent audit.

A Recurring Funding Request by a Government That Prefers to Run Its Affairs from Exile Deserves Scrutiny, Not Promotion

09/03/2026

Kuwait says it is not a party to the U.S. war with Iran. It also hosts Ali Al Salem Air Base, Camp Arifjan, the forward headquarters of U.S. Army Central, and Camp Buehring.

In the Middle East Forum Observer, Radhika Lakshminarayanan argues that the real question is not Kuwait's declared neutrality but its limited agency over how the U.S. alliance is operationalized during conflict, which is what exposes its land and people to retaliation. Her prescription is multi-alignment rather than removal of U.S. forces: deeper defense ties with Britain, France, NATO's Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Pakistan, India, Turkey and China, plus national resilience in air and naval defense, cybersecurity and protection of energy, water and food supply, and national red lines defined in advance.

She notes the Gulf Cooperation Council has largely remained a spectator since 1981, and that Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz leaves no member insulated. Lakshminarayanan is the author of Small States Security Dilemma: Kuwait after 1991.

No Sovereign State Should Be Left to Manage the Consequences of Decisions Made by a Partner

09/02/2026

An alleged Mossad plan to topple the Iranian regime and install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sounds like a spy thriller. A former senior Israeli military intelligence officer explains what the logic got right.

Writing for Middle East Forum Online, Yossi Kuperwasser credits the plan with audacity and access, with reported meetings in third countries such as Guatemala and Hungary, and notes that Iran's fragmented opposition explains the appeal of a quasi-insider twice barred from the ballot by the Guardian Council. What was missing, he argues, is pragmatism, the trait a leader would need to actually change Iran's direction.

Ahmadinejad Appears to Be Missing One of the Most Critical Characteristics of a Leader Who Could Take Iran in a New Direction: Pragmatism

09/02/2026

Iran's parliament speaker conceded in Baghdad on August 20 that military power cannot sustain a state whose people are hungry.

Writing for Middle East Forum Online, Michael Rubin argues that the shortage now facing Iranians is qualitatively different from past sanctions episodes. During the Iran-Iraq war GDP fell more than 21 percent in a year and rationing set in, but Iranians did not starve. Today industry has been bombed, ports are degraded, and the Ayandeh bank collapse still reverberates. Rubin's warning: famine is avoidable, and the decisive actor is the regime itself.

Ordinary Iranians Are No Strangers to Sanctions, a Shaky Currency, or Deprivation, but What They Face Now Is Qualitatively Different