Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Since October 2026, discussions in Washington about using the GBU-43, known as the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ (MOAB), against Iranian nuclear sites and energy infrastructure have raised a question about how the United States could scale back its military involvement. The case for a large strike rests on the assumption that Washington could point to a tangible military result and use it to begin drawing down its forces. Yet a strike intended to end the mission could extend it. If Iran can repair the damage or move its activities elsewhere, U.S forces may have to stay in the region to prevent it from restoring those capabilities.   The costs of sustaining the results of a strike arise in three areas. First, surface damage is easier to document than the fate of nuclear material and activities protected underground, which may require on-site verification. Second, continued defensive operations put pressure on both budgets and stockpiles. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that replacing missile defence interceptors expended through 1 August 2026 would cost about $13.1 billion, compared with $7.3 billion for land-attack cruise missiles. Third, risks to commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the exposure of energy markets can persist regardless of the damage to any one nuclear facility.   Whether a strike makes disengagement easier depends on the military, verification and maritime commitments it leaves behind. A temporary halt could give Washington time to secure inspection arrangements and reduce tensions at sea, allowing a gradual drawdown. If maintaining that halt requires a continued military presence, the strike could further deplete defensive inventories and narrow the options available to the United States and governments in the region.

The Middle East is undergoing rapid geopolitical and military changes that have reshaped the decades-long confrontation between Iran, on the one hand, and the United States and Israel, on the other. After years dominated by "shadow wars", cyber operations and indirect confrontations involving allies and armed groups, the conflict has expanded into direct military confrontation. As US–Iran negotiations have approached an impasse, reports have proliferated suggesting that US President Donald Trump may be preparing a new military campaign against Iran following the midterm elections.   These developments have coincided with Israel providing the United States with intelligence concerning alleged nuclear activity at a facility beneath Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz, alongside allegations of Iranian plots to assassinate Trump and assessments of Tehran's possible readiness to use chemical weapons. These claims have, however, prompted disagreement within the US administration, amid growing suspicions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to use these threats to persuade Trump to resume the war. This is particularly significant given the circulation of proposals and claims concerning the possible use of a nuclear weapon against the Pickaxe Mountain facility.   Among the principal military dilemmas driving this debate is the extent to which Iran's deeply buried, hardened facilities can be neutralised using conventional weapons, including the US GBU-57 bunker-busting bomb. Uncertainty persists over the effects of earlier strikes and the extent of Iran's remaining nuclear capabilities. Open-source estimates suggest that the Pickaxe Mountain facility may lie between 80 and 100 metres below the surface, while some intelligence-related speculation places the tunnels at depths of approximately 300 metres. Their precise depth and internal configuration remain difficult to verify.   This raises a particularly sensitive strategic question concerning the limits of the force Washington might employ to achieve its objectives towards Tehran and the possibility of moving beyond conventional weapons if confrontation resumes or efforts to contain it falter.   Against this background, the analysis adopts an "Only If" framework to examine the determinants that keep nuclear weapons within the range of possible options and the critical conditions that might prompt US decision-makers to employ them in the ongoing conflict with Iran. It also considers the potential consequences of a transition from conventional confrontation to nuclear use for Middle Eastern security and international stability.

On 16 October 2026, Elon Musk unveiled what he called the “world’s first flying car” at a Tesla event in Texas. In a dramatic demonstration, the Roadster drove up a curved ramp before using SpaceX rocket thrusters to flip, fly, and land. Musk’s claims about the vehicle’s capabilities and the practicalities of flying it remain open to scrutiny, but the spectacle revived a compelling question. What happens when personal flight moves from science fiction into everyday life?   The idea is already attracting interest beyond Tesla. In the United Arab Emirates, Chinese company Aridge is preparing for potential aircraft testing as early as 2027. Meanwhile, an inventor in China has drawn attention with a homemade electric flying skateboard. These projects differ substantially in their capabilities and technological maturity, yet they point towards growing experimentation with ways to make flight more accessible.   For the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this emerging frontier presents both opportunity and risk. As regional states explore advanced air mobility, new flying technologies could reshape transport while creating challenges for airspace management, infrastructure protection, and public safety. The question is whether governance and security arrangements can keep pace with this changing aerial landscape.

AI investment has become a strategic priority for governments, even as leading researchers and technology executives warn that advanced systems may pose severe risks. Drawing on the public debate surrounding former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon, alongside warnings from Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, this study asks whether governments should slow the pace of their AI investment.   It argues against a blanket retreat from AI. Instead, governments should distinguish between public-service capability, domestic research and infrastructure, and high-risk financial stakes or inflexible compute commitments. Focusing on the Arabian Gulf, the study assesses sovereign AI strategies, regulatory capture, historical technology bubbles and the security dilemma. It concludes that governments should continue competing while changing the composition and staging of investment: prioritising domestic know-how, Arabic data, research and adaptable infrastructure; applying rigorous financial and technology-transfer tests; and pausing or conditioning development and deployment when severe safety risks cannot be adequately mitigated.

Iran’s October 2026 threat to target submarine fibre-optic cables, cloud computing hubs, and artificial intelligence (AI) data centres in the Arabian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz has introduced a critical new security dimension to regional stability calculations, given how vital this infrastructure is to the continuity of financial markets, supply chains, and the energy sector across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. The severity of this threat stems from the shallow bathymetry of the Gulf and the narrow shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, which leave subsea cables and coastal landing stations highly vulnerable to hybrid "grey-zone" warfare—such as anchor-dragging by "shadow fleet" vessels under the guise of plausible deniability or sabotage via unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and midget submarines—as well as direct missile, drone, and cyber strikes against onshore facilities. Nevertheless, this threat remains constrained by a strategic "boomerang effect", as Iran and its Asian partners rely heavily on the very same subsea arteries.   To ensure continuity of connectivity and essential services during subsea cable disruptions, this paper proposes an integrated four-pillar framework of geographical and technological alternatives. These include maritime bypass routes utilising cable landing stations located outside the Strait of Hormuz along the coasts of the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea (in Fujairah, Kalba, Barka, and Salalah), alongside expanding the capacity of terrestrial fibre-optic "land bridges" across the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq towards Europe to circumvent maritime chokepoints. The proposed alternatives also encompass deploying sovereign and commercial multi-orbit satellite networks to secure command-and-control links and critical sectors, in parallel with activating "digital islanding" protocols, sovereign cloud infrastructure, and national internet exchange points (IXPs) to maintain the autonomous operation of domestic economic and public services.   Alongside these contingency alternatives, the paper details proactive prevention and protection mechanisms designed to deter attacks or neutralise their impact before a crisis unfolds. This involves transforming the Gulf seabed into a monitored operational domain through machine-learning-enabled Distributed Acoustic and Temperature Sensing (DAS/DTS), physical double-armoring and deep burial of cables, and hardening coastal landing stations and data centres with integrated air defence systems, whilst integrating maritime protection and intelligence-sharing within the framework of Combined Task Force 152 (CTF-152). Finally, the paper stress-tests this dual architecture of prevention and redundancy by simulating three escalatory crisis-management scenarios and defining protocols for immediate traffic rerouting, bandwidth-sharing agreements, and armed naval escorts for cable-repair vessels to restore damaged infrastructure.

On 8 and 9 October 2026, Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič sat down in Beijing and emerged with a sixteen-point list, one item of which recorded an "understanding" on trade in hybrid cars. Three days later, Der Spiegel published a figure that appears in no official text: a cap of 350,000 Chinese hybrid cars a year. The question soon travelled from Brussels to the markets of the region. If the European door narrows, where will China's surplus cars go? Will the Gulf, Egypt and Morocco become their next destination, with all that this implies for lower prices and stiffer competition for local manufacturing plans? The question looks simple, but answering it requires separating what was officially agreed from what the press reported, and what trade data actually show from what scenarios assume. It also requires an understanding of the rules of origin that determine when a car assembled in Egypt or Morocco remains Chinese in the eyes of European customs.   This analysis therefore aims to read what was agreed in Beijing against both the official text and the press account, to test whether trade data reveal a diversion of Chinese exports towards Arab markets, and then to assess the likely effects on prices, local assembly, rules of origin and rare-earth supplies in the Gulf, Egypt and Morocco, arriving at quantitative estimates of what could happen if the understanding becomes an enforceable instrument.

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is driving a parallel expansion of the infrastructure on which it depends. Data centres consumed around 415 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, roughly 1.5% of global demand, and the International Energy Agency's base case projects about 945 TWh by 2030. Governments in the Gulf and Europe have responded by treating data centres as strategic assets while remaining committed to decarbonising their energy systems. Yet a commitment to clean energy does not necessarily amount to clean data centres.   This distinction is becoming increasingly important because the timelines differ so sharply. A data centre can be built in one to two years, whereas transmission takes far longer and new clean generation, nuclear in particular, longer still. When demand arrives before supply, the gap tends to be filled by gas. Ireland illustrates the dilemma: data centres accounted for 23% of its metered electricity in 2025, up from 5% in 2015, and the regulator now requires new large facilities to bring their own generation or storage. The central question, therefore, is whether AI infrastructure and the green transition can advance together.

Longevity is moving beyond the domain of medical research to become a potential source of economic and strategic power. Advances in genomics, regenerative medicine, cellular reprogramming, and AI-enabled drug discovery are attracting growing private investment and government attention, even as evidence for dramatic extensions of healthy human lifespan remains limited. Against a backdrop of population ageing and declining fertility, even incremental improvements in healthspan could reshape labour markets, pension systems, healthcare demand, and national productivity.   However, longer healthy lives present a fundamental paradox. While they could expand individual freedom, preserve human capital, and create opportunities for education, creativity, and multiple careers, they could also extend working lives at the expense of personal choice, delay inheritance, compound wealth, and allow political, corporate, and scientific elites to retain influence for longer. If access to longevity interventions remains concentrated among wealthier individuals, existing inequalities could deepen across both generations and societies.   The geopolitical implications are equally significant. The United States, China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore represent different approaches to building longevity research, investment, regulatory, and biotechnology capabilities. Countries that develop and deploy effective interventions could strengthen their human capital and technological competitiveness, while those lacking research infrastructure or access to advanced therapies risk greater dependence on external suppliers. The convergence of AI and biotechnology adds further concerns surrounding biological data, dual-use capabilities, cybersecurity, and the concentration of technological power.   This Special Edition identifies the signals that could indicate a transition from scientific promise to systemic change, outlines plausible future scenarios, and examines how governments can prepare. Its central argument is that the strategic consequences of longevity will depend not only on scientific progress, but also on how societies distribute additional healthy years, regulate emerging technologies, and adapt the institutions governing work, wealth, retirement, and political authority.  

Europe is seeking to strengthen its defence capabilities and reduce its long-standing reliance on the United States. This has encouraged European states to increase defence spending, expand domestic production and diversify their procurement partnerships beyond traditional suppliers. Yet diversification does not necessarily amount to strategic independence. Replacing reliance on one external supplier with reliance on several others may reduce concentration risk without giving European states full control over the technologies on which their defence capabilities depend.   This distinction is becoming increasingly important as modern military systems become more dependent on software, data and interconnected command-and-control architectures. A country may possess the physical hardware of a weapons system while remaining dependent on a foreign supplier for critical software, upgrades, maintenance or technological integration. The question of who controls these underlying technologies can therefore be as important as who manufactures or owns the weapon itself.   The recent Achilles Shield agreement between Greece and Israel provides a useful illustration of this dilemma. The €3 billion agreement will establish a multilayered Greek air and missile defence network incorporating Israeli systems alongside a Greek-controlled command-and-control architecture. However, a dispute over access to the systems' source code has raised questions over the extent of Greece's technological control. The case highlights a broader issue for European defence: can greater diversification deliver genuine independence if critical elements of military capabilities remain technologically dependent on external powers?

In recent years, the Eastern Mediterranean has witnessed growing attention to air defence, maritime security and infrastructure protection. Against this backdrop, on 31 August 2026, Greece and Israel signed an agreement to develop an integrated air and missile defence network, known as ‘Achilles Shield’, at a cost of approximately €3 billion. The project aims to strengthen Greece’s capacity to detect and intercept aerial and missile threats through a unified early warning, command and control system.   The project forms part of the comprehensive modernisation of the Greek armed forces and does not replace Athens’ commitments within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or its alliances with the United States and the European Union. The decision to establish this system reflects the changing character of regional military threats, particularly the growing reliance on unmanned aircraft and precision missiles, alongside the continuing development of Turkey’s defence industries in reconnaissance and unmanned maritime and aerial systems.   This analysis therefore examines the implications of the Greek–Israeli agreement and its place within military modernisation programmes. It assesses its potential impact on the deterrence balance between Greece and Turkey, as well as its implications for security cooperation and managing regional tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean in the period ahead.

Israel’s 27 October 2026 election is shaping into a contest defined less by a clear ideological choice than by fragmentation, coalition arithmetic, and unresolved national crises. Held in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attack, prolonged multi-front conflict, and an unfinished confrontation over the judiciary, the vote will determine not only who governs but also how Israel addresses accountability, military service, state institutions, Gaza’s future, the Palestinian issue, and relations with Washington.   Neither Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc nor the opposition led by Gadi Eisenkot appears consistently capable of securing the 61 Knesset seats needed to form a government. The outcome is especially sensitive to smaller parties hovering around the 3.25% electoral threshold: whether these lists enter the Knesset or waste their votes could shift several seats between the rival camps. Arab parties, projected to hold roughly 11–14 seats in several polls, may become decisive coalition actors even as both major blocs remain politically reluctant to openly rely on their support.   Netanyahu’s campaign rests on five interlocking principles: shifting responsibility for 7 October toward the military and intelligence institutions while claiming credit for subsequent security achievements; consolidating right-wing lists to prevent wasted votes; portraying an Arab-supported alternative government as illegitimate; postponing divisive issues such as Haredi conscription and post-war Gaza governance; and turning institutional reforms, media influence, and ties with Washington into electoral assets. The central objective is not necessarily to resolve these contradictions before election day but to keep them from breaking apart his coalition.   Eisenkot’s opposition camp has a credible shared objective—removing Netanyahu and restoring institutional accountability—but remains less unified on the policies that would follow. Its internal divisions are most visible over universal service, religion and state, relations with Haredi parties, the role of Arab parties, and the West Bank. The likely post-election challenge for either side will be translating deliberately vague campaign positions into binding coalition commitments.   The most plausible result is therefore a fragmented Knesset without a stable governing majority. The decisive political struggle may begin after ballots are counted, when both blocs must confront the compromises, they have deferred throughout the campaign.

The Memorandum of Understanding did not constitute a comprehensive or definitive settlement of the nuclear issue. Rather, it served as a temporary truce to freeze military strikes and maritime and nuclear threats, buying time to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that would address the enrichment crisis at its roots. These developments come in the wake of the collapse of the 2015 nuclear agreement following the United States' withdrawal in 2018, which gave Tehran considerable room to expand uranium enrichment, restrict international inspections and accumulate large quantities of uranium enriched to levels approaching those required for the production of a nuclear weapon.   Against this backdrop, the nuclear programme stands out as the Iranian leadership's principal bargaining chip. Although Tehran does not currently possess a nuclear weapon, it has accumulated the technical expertise, established the necessary infrastructure and secured the enriched uranium needed to produce one within a relatively short period should the political decision be taken to do so. This reality underscores that Iran's leverage at the negotiating table is no longer merely theoretical. It is tangible leverage, rooted in Tehran's ability to move rapidly towards weaponisation.   On the operational front, despite US and Israeli strikes targeting nuclear facilities inside Iran, assessments have confirmed only limited damage. Tehran is still strongly believed to retain substantial capacity to continue uranium enrichment. However, experts remain divided over the true extent to which the attacks have set back its nuclear programme. These assessments indicate that military action alone has failed to resolve the nuclear issue, naturally increasing the likelihood of an eventual resumption of negotiations and a return to the diplomatic track.   Against this complex backdrop, a fundamental question remains: will the terms governing the nuclear issue be revised in any future memorandum, or will they remain unchanged from those set out in the "Islamabad Memorandum"? If the parties move towards introducing new amendments, how far can each side go in making concessions to negotiate an end to this chapter?