Middle East & North Africa

Mohammad Tabaar argues that the attacks on Red Sea ships unintentionally advance the Houthis agenda by allowing it to claim that it is fighting imperialism, and the attacks help Iran by fortifying its political foothold in the Middle East. Washington should therefore cease the strikes. It should, instead, work to halt the war in Gaza. The United States should also try to strengthen the region's diplomatic agreements and shore up its security framework. Otherwise, the Houthi-Iranian partnership will only grow stronger, as will Tehran's leverage in the region.

Assaf Zoran argues for all regional nations and international players to engage in continuous dialogue with the involved and fighting parties in order to mitigate the risk of escalation. Such talks should establish political, economic, and military disincentives for further escalation while fostering opportunities for de-escalation.

Abolghasem Bayyenat argues that without the JCPOA restrictions in place, Iran's nuclear program will expand and continue to acquire irreversible technical knowledge and competencies.

Abolghasem Bayyenat argues that rather than insisting that the JCPOA be restored strictly in its original form and implemented per its letter, the parties should seek to redress the agreement's imbalance in regard to its enforcement mechanisms and delivery of its economic benefits.

Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow Abolghasem Bayyenat addresses the following questions in a Foreign Policy in Focus interview: How Iran and the United States should go about reviving the nuclear agreement and what realistic strategy the Biden administration should adopt toward nuclear talks with Iran.

Abolghasem Bayyenat and Sayed Hossein Mousavian advise the United States and Iran to aim for reaching a modus vivendi that keeps their political conflict within manageable limits. Otherwise, another round of dangerous mutual escalation in the illusory hope of building leverage and extracting more concessions from each other is inevitable.     

Miscalculation is unlikely when open conflict would come with high costs for both countries, costs that neither their leaders nor their publics are willing to accept.

Although Trump did not outline his legal basis for imposing the tariffs, several analysts anticipated that he was seeking to use the authorities granted him under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—the legal basis that presidents rely on to impose financial and economic sanctions against WMD proliferators, terrorist organizations, narco-traffickers, and human rights abusers. Mixing trade and immigration policy under the guise of a national security threat, however, may end up deflating Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaigns against Iran and North Korea.