Middle East Forum

Libya's grand mufti, Sadiq al Gharyani, went on state-funded television in Tripoli and urged Muslim pilots to hijack aircraft and attack Israel. "If three or four pilots had gone out and crashed their planes, they would have won and been honored," he said. Why it matters: Michael Rubin, writing for MEF Online, argues that Gharyani is upheld by the Turkish-backed government of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, which also gives safe haven to remnants of Ansar al Sharia, the militia that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi in 2012. The mufti spoke days after the failed attack on FlyDubai Flight 1073. Rubin's conditions for Dbeibeh are plain: expel Gharyani, extradite everyone involved in the Benghazi attack to the United States, and disarm and disband the militias. If he cannot, Rubin writes, he is not worth negotiating with. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dqfyu3pQ #Libya #Counterterrorism #AviationSecurity #Turkey #Benghazi #MiddleEastForum

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In most polls ahead of Israel's October 27 election, neither bloc reaches 61 Knesset seats without the Arab parties, and every key leader has publicly ruled out a government that depends on them. Why it matters: Jonathan Spyer, writing for MEF Online, sets out a campaign shaped by the worst security disaster in Israel's history. Former chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot's Yashar party now outpolls Likud in most surveys; he would be the first Israeli Jew of recent Middle Eastern origin with a realistic chance at the premiership. Channel 14 gives Netanyahu's bloc 63 seats; two Channel 13 polls a few days apart reversed each other, 54 to 52 for Netanyahu's bloc, then 54 to 50 for Eizenkot's. Spyer's read: a deadlock is possible and even probable, which means another round of voting, a minority government with tacit support from Ra'am, or Netanyahu drawing defectors from the opposing bloc. Until a new government forms, Netanyahu stays in office. Behind the near tie, he finds two camps living in entirely different realities. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dvJFfhwf #Israel #IsraelElections #Knesset #Netanyahu #MiddleEast #MiddleEastForum

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Tehran now treats the United Arab Emirates less like an Arab neighbor and more like Israel. Why it matters: Shay Khatiri shows in MEF Observer how two September incidents set off an Iranian campaign against Abu Dhabi. On September 25 an Emirati official renewed the UAE's claim to Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tonbs. On September 28 Mohamed bin Zayed confirmed that Benjamin Netanyahu had visited Abu Dhabi at his invitation. Nour News, close to the Supreme National Security Council, called the Emirates a military dimension of "the enemy," and other outlets called it a "legitimate target." Tehran once handled Abu Dhabi and Dubai cautiously because of large Iranian investment there. Khatiri concludes that ideology now outweighs pragmatism, and that Abu Dhabi should prepare for greater attacks in future conflicts. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dzTHW_b3 #Iran #UAE #Israel #PersianGulf #MiddleEast #MiddleEastForum

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On July 12, 2023, a Forum paper presented in the Knesset warned that "the enemy may make better use of the time strategically." Eighty-seven days later, Hamas murdered about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. Why it matters: in a special Long View edition of Middle East Insider for the third anniversary, MEF Executive Director Gregg Roman argues that the next warning concerns the alliance between Israel and the United States. Pew found in April that 60 percent of Americans view Israel unfavorably, up from 42 percent in 2022, and 104 House members voted in July to cut the $3.3 billion in military financing. Israel votes on October 27 and the United States on November 3. Eighty-seven days from October 7 is January 2, the last full day of this Congress. His case, drawing on what Seoul did in 1970 and Taipei in 1979: sign a successor to the aid agreement before it lapses, build weapons together on American soil, expand interceptor production for a long war, add partners from India to Morocco, and put daylight on the governments that take American protection and shelter Hamas. Read more: https://lnkd.in/djw_Jwm8 Photo: the Nova festival memorial near Kibbutz Re'im, November 2025. Oren Rozen, CC BY-SA 4.0. #October7 #Israel #UnitedStates #MiddleEastInsider #MiddleEastForum

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A failure teaches nothing by itself. It is information, and it is useful only to someone who reads it. Why it matters: In the Sunday Long View of Middle East Insider, MEF Executive Director Gregg Roman applies the Forum's standard of accountability to his own record first: a program he designed that did not take, a partnership that was not a good match, and a forecast on the war against the Islamic Republic that events did not bear out. Drawing on ten scholars of failure and recovery, among them Carol Dweck and George Bonanno, he sets out a plain discipline: say what was expected, say what happened, find the assumption that broke, and change a practice. The essay then turns to the war, the Gulf, the near disaster on the September 30 Dubai to Tel Aviv flight, and what changes at the Forum. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dra4M73e #MiddleEastInsider #Leadership #Accountability #Iran #MiddleEastForum

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The Middle East Forum today opened its research to the public on 17 new sites. Five to start with: Iran Ledger: 959 regime profiles checked against the sanctions lists of 5 governments. MEF Map: MEF data layers on one map, from Iranian energy sites to designated vessels. Government Graph: who holds office across 17 Middle East governments. Campus Watch Map: $75.80 billion in campus foreign gifts from 555 U.S. institutions. Shia Militia Tracker: 7,438 dated events since 1989. Each site links every figure to the public record it comes from. Read the release: https://lnkd.in/dgNv3sXX #MiddleEast #Iran #Sanctions #ForeignInfluence #PolicyResearch

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San Diego's official definition of "Islamophobia" was drafted in the local office of CAIR. The resolution does not say so. Why it matters: On September 15 the San Diego City Council voted 8 to 0 to adopt the definition and send it to every city department, including the police. In an investigation for MEF's Focus on Western Islamism, MEF Executive Director Gregg Roman uses 1,956 pages of city records obtained under California's public records law to show that the council's definition is CAIR's sentence with three words added, followed by CAIR's first ten examples in the same order. Six months earlier the same council adopted a definition of antisemitism and named its author in the title. This time it named none. Federal prosecutors listed CAIR as an unindicted coconspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas-financing case, and the governors of Texas and Florida have designated it a terrorist organization, designations CAIR is contesting in court. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dnmsF5xs #SanDiego #CAIR #Islamophobia #Islamism #FWI #MiddleEastForum

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Israel and Turkey now sit on opposite sides of almost every flashpoint in the region, and Jonathan Spyer argues the contest is zero-sum. Why it matters: Writing in MEF Online, Spyer notes that Prime Minister Netanyahu has ordered a legal case against President Erdogan at the International Criminal Court over Turkey's treatment of its Kurds and its hosting of Hamas. Neither state recognizes the court, so the case may go nowhere, but it is the first time Jerusalem has used the Kurdish issue against Ankara. He maps the other fronts: Turkey rebuilding the new Syrian regime's forces, a Turkey-Libya maritime claim that cuts across Israeli and Greek gas and cable plans, Hamas's office in Istanbul, and rival bets on Somaliland and Mogadishu on the Red Sea. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dmhNW-gz #Israel #Turkey #Syria #EasternMediterranean #MiddleEast #MiddleEastForum

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An imam whose federation France's Interior Ministry links to the Muslim Brotherhood sat at Pope Leo XIV's interfaith meeting in Metz on September 28. Why it matters: Writing for MEF's Focus on Western Islamism, Jules Gomes reports that Makhlouf Mamèche, president of Musulmans de France and rector of the Grand Mosque of Lille, celebrated the invitation on Facebook. The Interior Ministry's May 2025 report identifies Musulmans de France as the French branch of the Brotherhood and names Mamèche. In a 2021 sermon he urged French Muslims to "work gently, without raising alarms or causing an uproar." Florence Bergeaud-Blackler told FWI the invitation confers a recognition the French state withholds, just as a bill against Islamist entryism is debated. Mamèche denies any Brotherhood links and says his words were taken out of context. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dJAbWSSU #France #MuslimBrotherhood #Vatican #Islamism #FWI #MiddleEastForum

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Oil through the Strait of Hormuz is back to 13.1 million barrels a day, about 77 percent of pre-war levels. Over the same period, Kpler data show flows through the Bab el-Mandeb have fallen by more than half, to 2.53 million barrels a day. Why it matters: in MEF Online, Michael Rubin argues the rebound is being misread as proof that the U.S. blockade of Iran is working. The blockade was the right decision, he writes, but it leaks through the Caspian Sea and Iran's land borders with Azerbaijan, Turkey and Turkmenistan. What changed, in his reading, is Saudi behavior: after Iraqi militia drones struck the East-West Petroline, Riyadh said most of its tankers would sail south through the Houthi-threatened Bab el-Mandeb to China rather than north through Suez to Europe. Rubin traces a long pattern of Saudi accommodation of the Houthis and warns that any money reaching Iranian or Houthi interests would pay for resupply and further attacks. His prescription: keep the pressure on Tehran, and sanction any government, company or official that pays off the Houthis, directly or indirectly. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dJyQKC4h #StraitOfHormuz #Iran #SaudiArabia #Houthis #Oil #MiddleEastForum

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Hamas is still holding internal elections in Gaza. In the vote for head of its Gaza political bureau, enough delegates cast blank ballots that the first round produced no winner, and the runoff was halted when veteran Nizar Awadallah filed a procedural appeal. Why it matters: in MEF Online, Amine Ayoub argues the deadlock is a fight over who commands what remains, not a turn toward pragmatism. Ali Al Amoudi speaks for the local wartime network built under Yahya Sinwar in Khan Younis; Awadallah for the founding generation that ran against Sinwar in 2021. "One faction executed October 7; the other built the ideology that demanded it." Ayoub's conclusion: a group that can still run ballots and file appeals under fire has an intact organizational skeleton, and Israel should dismantle it rather than wait for the factions to compromise. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dA8J4zwA #Hamas #Gaza #Israel #Counterterrorism #MiddleEast #MiddleEastForum

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Turkey showed FATF no terrorist-financing investigations, prosecutions or convictions involving groups it does not designate, such as Hamas. The only activity in that category was two replies to foreign requests for information. Why it matters: Ankara is pointing to its technical score, compliant or largely compliant on 38 of FATF's 40 recommendations. In MEF Online, Abdullah Bozkurt reads the 337-page September 2026 report for what those rules actually produce. Turkey rated only "Moderate" in eight of 11 effectiveness areas and was placed in enhanced follow-up with a three-year roadmap. Of 19,276 transactions MASAK postponed between 2021 and 2025, worth about €1.138 billion, only 612, or 3.2 percent, led to a seizure. And by the end of the onsite assessment in November 2025, Turkey had not implemented the UN sanctions on Iran restored on September 27, 2025. First published by Nordic Monitor. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dj-V7CwX #Turkey #FATF #TerrorFinancing #Hamas #Iran #MiddleEastForum

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The first handwritten note attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei since he was declared Iran's Supreme Leader is signed and dated August 1, 2026. Its last line, in brackets, appears to say a copy was given to a "representative" on July 28. Why it matters: in MEF Observer, Potkin Azarmehr argues that each attempt to prove Mojtaba is alive and in charge produces new inconsistencies. The note, a thank-you to IRGC Aerospace Force chief Majid Mousavi for maintaining a "supply chain," was released six weeks late. A second letter in his name, said to date from 1986, carries markedly different handwriting and a signature that is hard to reconcile with the first. Then there is Ayatollah Mohsen Heydari al-Kathir of the Assembly of Experts. On Al-Araby television he said Mojtaba was injured on February 28, injured again when the hospital was bombed, and pulled from the rubble, yet was in perfect health when Heydari first proposed him as Supreme Leader. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dKRQiJCc #Iran #Khamenei #IRGC #IranianPolitics #Succession #MiddleEastForum

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After October 7, Israel took apart Iran's proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime, before turning to Tehran. Iran is now running that playbook in reverse, striking the Arab states that host U.S. forces, from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, to push America out of the region. Why it matters: in MEF Online, Hussein Aboubakr Mansour and JINSA's Blaise Misztal argue that the Houthi seizure of Bab el-Mandeb and Iraqi militia strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure show the ring of fire has shrunk but not gone out. Riyadh's hedge, an Islamic alliance with Pakistan and Turkey, did not stop the attacks. Their answer is more American security, not less: Washington bringing together Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UAE, the one state with a record of ground success against the Houthis, to fight the fires together and at once. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dcDjKnH2 #Iran #Houthis #RedSea #SaudiArabia #Israel #MiddleEastForum

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On September 16, Israel and Morocco announced plans to upgrade their missions to embassies. Thirteen days later, King Mohammed VI named Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri Morocco's first woman prime minister, with 97 of 395 seats and a coalition still to build. Why it matters: in MEF Online, Amine Ayoub argues the change in Rabat will not touch the Abraham Accords. Morocco's constitution leaves foreign policy and defense with the king, so ties with Israel now run through state-to-state channels rather than through any one cabinet. His case for making the relationship last is practical: water, food security, cybersecurity and apprenticeships. Mansouri inherits 37.2 percent youth unemployment and an election turnout of about 38 percent, and cooperation judged by measurable savings in water, energy and jobs, he writes, can survive political cycles. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dkcqzVFF #Morocco #Israel #AbrahamAccords #NorthAfrica #MiddleEastForum

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A third U.S. carrier group, led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt, is bound for the Middle East, and Axios reports two more Patriot batteries now guard a Saudi oil facility and a Qatari natural gas facility. Why it matters: in Issue 057 of Middle East Insider, MEF Executive Director Gregg Roman notes that Saudi and Qatari leaders lobbied in August against strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure, fearing retaliation against their own sites. The President told Time that more strikes are "possible" after the November 3 midterms, and Reuters reports Tehran is reviewing plans to widen its targets to countries that support U.S. operations. MEF's take: Washington is right to refuse a ceasefire that lifts the blockade first and leaves the nuclear program for later talks. The weeks before the ships arrive are the time to strengthen defenses at the Gulf's energy sites and American bases. Also in the brief: a fifth tanker strike in the Strait of Hormuz this week, Iraq's June 30, 2027 deadline for militia weapons, and a Hamas fundraising indictment in New York. Read the brief: https://lnkd.in/dWY8FHnk #Iran #Gulf #SaudiArabia #Qatar #StraitOfHormuz #MiddleEastInsider

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Somaliland sits 37 miles from China's naval base in Djibouti. It has governed itself for 35 years and embraces Taiwan and Israel, while Somalia leans toward China and Turkey. The State Department still blocks cooperation with Hargeisa, citing respect for the status quo. Why it matters: in MEF Online, Michael Rubin argues that the United States cannot win on freedom of navigation or counterextremism while it rebuffs its partners. He points to South Yemen, whose Southern Forces were the only effective Yemeni army against the Houthis, to the Kurds who fought the Islamic State at Washington's request, and to Afghan allies left behind when the Taliban took over. His recommendation: embrace those partners, even if that means recognizing Somaliland and South Yemen. Goods will only flow freely through the chokepoints, he writes, when the U.S. has partners that share its values. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dXw7wXp2 #Somaliland #Yemen #RedSea #USForeignPolicy #Kurds #MiddleEastForum

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Benjamin Netanyahu spent six hours in New York for this year's U.N. General Assembly, the shortest visit since he first spoke there in 1998. His plane avoided Irish airspace and landed at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, about 100 kilometers from the city, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian moved around unchallenged. Why it matters: in MEF Online, Giulio Meotti reads the visit as a measure of Israel's isolation. Delegates walked out as Netanyahu began. Allies that condemn Israel in public, he writes, thank it in private, a point Netanyahu made himself: "Many later thanked us in private. Hypocrites." Meotti sets the speech in a line of General Assembly moments: the maps of Auschwitz in 2009, the red line on Iran's bomb in 2012, forty seconds of silence in 2015, and an address to Iranians in Persian in 2017. His conclusion is that the greater shame belongs to a West that has lost its moral bearings. Read more: https://lnkd.in/d2te3Km3 #Israel #Netanyahu #UnitedNations #UNGA #Iran #MiddleEastForum

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Four days after Israel recognized Somaliland in December 2025, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stood beside Somalia's president in Istanbul and declared that preserving Somalia's unity "in all circumstances" held special importance for Turkey. Why it matters: in MEF Observer, Siyad Madey asks why Ankara still keeps a consulate in Hargeisa, a few hours' drive from Berbera, while its navy defends Somali waters under a 2024 defense framework and its government calls Israel's recognition illegitimate. He notes there is no public evidence the post gathers intelligence. He weighs the case for keeping it: visas for Somalilanders, a reputation for honoring consular norms, and no gift to Mogadishu's claim that Somaliland is an Israeli client. His proposal: under the Vienna Convention, close Berbera's port, airport and coastline to foreign consular staff and demand a reciprocal Somaliland office in Turkey. If Ankara refuses, close the consulate. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ddWeTRqV #Somaliland #Turkey #HornOfAfrica #RedSea #Israel #MiddleEastForum

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More than 170 people, nearly all Israelis, spent eight hours on the ground in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, after the co-pilot of flydubai flight 1073 stabbed the captain and the jet fell nearly 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds, Reuters reported. Why it matters: Saudi Arabia has no diplomatic relations with Israel. Its airport took the plane in, a Saudi hospital is treating the captain, and the passengers were given food and medical care. Riyadh also refused an Israeli request to send military transports, two security sources told Reuters. The passengers flew home that evening on a second flydubai aircraft. In Issue 056 of the Middle East Insider, MEF Executive Director Gregg Roman reads it as the relationship as it stands, without recognition: help in an emergency, and no Israeli military presence on Saudi soil. The motive is still unknown, and the interrogation is Riyadh's. The issue also covers Iran's reading of Washington's reply, three ships struck in the Strait of Hormuz, and the militias' answer to the American exit from Iraq. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dmcdHD5m #MiddleEastInsider #SaudiArabia #Israel #AbrahamAccords #Aviation #MiddleEastForum

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