Middle East Forum

While analysts and policymakers remain focused on the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon crescent, a parallel westward corridor now emerges into Egypt and perhaps into oil-rich Libya. Unlike the Iranian axis network, usually composed of ideological non-state actors, the new network’s primary mechanism relies on a transactional geopolitical architecture.

The June 14, 2026, agreement between Washington and Tehran has rendered one conclusion inescapable: Israel no longer can anchor its security to a patron whose priorities shift with every U.S. administration. Reopening the Strait of Hormuz, restoring financial flows to the regime, and launching new nuclear talks have bolstered Iran’s confidence and given renewed resources that revive Iranian networks across the West.

On May 13, 2026, Israeli State Comptroller Matanyahu Engelman issued a report that found Israel entered the current war with weakened domestic weapons-production capabilities, stockpile deficiencies, and growing dependence on foreign suppliers for critical raw materials and munitions. The findings have already prompted a response: Israel established a National Armament Council and launched an effort to rebuild defense production after what officials describe as a lost decade.

For years, Donald Trump and his supporters often said that Iran never wins wars, but never loses negotiations either. This critique was often made about U.S. administrations, particularly the Obama administration and the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump called one of the worst agreements in American history. However, under Trump’s leadership, recent events suggest a different, even ironic, outcome. It seems Trump has lost both the military confrontation with Iran and the negotiations that followed.

As a companion to my previous interview with an analyst based in Israel regarding the recent U.S. and Israeli war against Iran and the subsequent ‘memorandum of understanding’ (MoU) between the U.S. and Iran, I present this interview with a contact who resides in the Iranian city of Qom (known as a centre of religious learning). He has resided in Iran since 2012, having originally come there from Syria, and I have known him for many years.

As the US House Armed Services Committee debates whether to pass Section 224 of the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a provision that would formally bind American and Israeli defense technology sectors through joint research, co-production, and shared industrial infrastructure, Israel has quietly moved past the argument entirely. While Reps.

For two decades, every power that wanted a military foothold in the Horn of Africa went to Djibouti. The United States leased Camp Lemonnier, France stationed 1,500 troops in Djibouti, and Japan established its only overseas base there, soon joined by Italy. Then China arrived.

As the 60-day period of negotiations stipulated by the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreed between Iran and the US gets under way in Switzerland, the issue of Lebanon is fast emerging as a central bone of contention between them. It is also revealing significant differences in the stances of America and Israel.

Two years after their attacks on the administration and regents of the University of Michigan, 8 members of the Ann Arbor “Student Intifada” have finally been indicted on various charges of conspiracy and property destruction and now face hefty fines and years in prison. Predictably, most of the media is siding with them.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — June 25, 2026 — The Middle East Forum is pleased to announce the release of Gregg Roman’s The Closing Window, a literary espionage thriller that explores the cost of war, the machinery of power, and the human lives trapped inside political decisions made far from the battlefield. A 39-day war between the United States and Iran ends the way modern wars often do: not in surrender, but in a memorandum. The guns go silent, the money is promised, and the world exhales.