Middle East

Operation Absolute Resolve, which resulted in the removal of Nicolás Maduro and his spouse Cilia Flores on Jan. 3, 2026, constituted a watershed moment in the history of 21st-century geopolitical warfare. While initial indicators point to a seemingly limited regime change within Venezuela, the strategic repercussions of the operation inflicted severe damage on Iran’s forward-operating capabilities. For nearly two decades, Venezuela was not merely a diplomatic partner of Tehran; it served as an indispensable logistical bridgehead and a secure sanctuary in the Western Hemisphere. Through this platform, the Iranian regime was able to circumvent international sanctions, project asymmetric influence, and sustain a critical financial lifeline through illicit trade.

The structural foundations of the global video game economy are undergoing a profound transformation that extends well beyond the traditional triad of dominance in North America, Japan, and China. Strategic gravity is increasingly shifting toward the Gulf region, propelled by unprecedented capital inflows led by sovereign wealth funds across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This momentum marks a pivotal inflexion point in the investment doctrine of these institutions, most notably Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), alongside Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and ADQ, and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Collectively, they have moved beyond passive portfolio management focused on the accumulation of safe-haven assets such as US Treasury securities and real estate, toward active, operational ownership in high-growth technology sectors.   Within this context, the gaming industry, currently valued at over $200 billion and projected to surpass $300 billion by 2028, has emerged as a central pillar of this strategic shift. Its distinctive convergence with media ecosystems and artificial intelligence positions it as an ideal vehicle for advancing the economic diversification objectives embedded in national development visions.   Gulf engagement in this domain extends well beyond purely financial considerations into the realm of geopolitics. Through the acquisition of intellectual property, distribution networks, and digital infrastructure, these states are seeking to establish a form of “digital sovereignty” as an alternative to the historical dominance of hydrocarbons within their economic models. This objective is being pursued through differentiated strategies, ranging from Saudi Arabia’s vertically integrated approach to the United Arab Emirates’ ecosystem-building model and Qatar’s strategy of strategic linkage and connectivity.   Accordingly, understanding this investment domain requires situating it within the context of broader macroeconomic transformations. Successive price shocks in global oil markets, most notably in 2014 and during the 2020 pandemic and its aftermath, have exposed the limitations of the traditional petrodollar-based model in ensuring long-term wealth sustainability. By contrast, the gaming sector offers a structural response to pressing demographic challenges: it generates a jobs multiplier that exceeds that of many other sectors and absorbs the “youth bulge” that constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population, transforming it from a consumer base of foreign content into a national productive base that consolidates the principles of a new economic nationalism

On Dec. 4 2025, Netanyahu decided to appoint his Military Secretary, Major General Roman Gofman, as the Director of the Mossad. Gofman will replace the current Mossad head, David Barnea, whose five-year term ends in June 2026. This decision signals a key leadership change in the country’s most important intelligence agency, particularly given Gofman’s lack of intelligence experience and aggressive decision-making approach. Moreover, this movement indicates Netanyahu’s broader pattern of politicising the appointments of high-ranking officials in security agencies, where loyalty to him appears to be a decisive factor. Accordingly, the politicisation of Mossad raises serious questions about the future of Israel's intelligence.

Since Brexit, the United Kingdom (UK) has been experiencing a governance issue, as the Conservative Party suffered from instability due to numerous leadership changes, while the recently elected Labour Party lacks the ambition and confidence needed to effectively govern. Combined with the shocks stemming from Brexit, COVID-19, and the Russia-Ukraine War, the UK has experienced economic stagnation and the deterioration of public services, which has resulted in British nationals migrating abroad.   One of these locations is the UAE, more specifically, Dubai. There are approximately 240,000 British nationals currently living in Dubai, with more to join as there was a 420% increase in internet searches in the UK centered on moving to Dubai. Those are staggering statistics, and the number is only going to grow as more British nationals across the socio-economic spectrum continue to migrate to Dubai. However, the reasons explaining British migration to Dubai are not as simple as lower taxes, security, and great weather. One can argue the rise of British migration to Dubai can be attributed to a desire to break from a ridged class system, declinism, and emotional turmoil brought on by the cost-of-living crisis.

The National Security Strategy (NSS) defines the guiding vision of American power and provides a window into how the United States understands the international environment, identifies its priorities, and determines the political, military, and economic tools it will rely on to protect national interests. Accordingly, the NSS shapes defence planning, informs foreign policy doctrine, guides inter-agency action, and signals to allies and adversaries the direction of U.S. engagement in an evolving global landscape.   The 2025 NSS, issued by the Trump administration in November 2025, is a clear articulation of how this administration intends to position itself in a world marked by rising geopolitical fragmentation, sharpening competition, and growing domestic constraints. Its core purpose is to translate the administration’s worldview into a coherent framework that defines what the United States will prioritise, what it will deprioritise, and under what conditions it will expend political capital, economic leverage, or military force.   For the Middle East, understanding the 2025 NSS is essential because it captures the principles shaping America’s evolving posture toward the region. The strategy’s emphasis on burden-sharing, reduced military exposure, and transactional partnerships signals a shift in expectations for regional actors, while its focus on energy security, counterterrorism, and strategic competition with external powers continues to define the contours of U.S. interests. As a formal expression of how the administration interprets threats and opportunities, the NSS provides the clearest available roadmap of Washington’s intentions—and the framework within which its decisions toward the Middle East will be made in the years ahead.

The escalating water crisis in the Iranian capital, Tehran, portends profound strategic repercussions that strike at the heart of national security and internal stability. Field indicators and updated international data up to 2025 point to the city reaching a stage of “absolute water stress.” This reality is manifested in the sharp and unprecedented decline in surface and groundwater reserves, as an inevitable result of the combination of long-term drought waves with decades of structural mismanagement and excessive depletion of resources, which has led to a decrease in the levels of strategic reservoirs to critical levels that directly threaten the continuity of drinking water supplies for millions of residents. The official warnings, hinting at the possibility of the capital drying up within weeks unless emergency measures are taken, are acquiring serious demographic and social dimensions. The danger transcends mere water scarcity, raising grave concerns about widespread social unrest, the need to adopt drastic policies such as forced displacement, or even the serious discussion of relocating the capital. Therefore, a comprehensive reform of water resource management policies, the strengthening of dilapidated infrastructure, and the adoption of sustainable solutions are imperative to contain the crisis and avert the looming scenarios of economic and security collapse.

This investigative study adopts a rigorous, systematic analytical methodology to examine the true dimensions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wealth, illuminating substantial structural discrepancies between his officially declared income and his accumulated assets. Utilizing evidence-based financial investigation, the research identifies sustained and deliberate efforts to obscure financial transparency, primarily through sophisticated mechanisms such as offshore banking, the purchase of assets via shell or limited liability companies, and the use of aliases. Furthermore, the study deconstructs the institutional networks and patterns of quid pro quo influence that facilitate the continuous recirculation of privileges, economic benefits, and power among elite government officials and leading actors in the Israeli defense industry.   The study underscores the instrumental role of political crises, particularly The War on Gaza, as strategic junctures that enable the executive to maximize discretionary authority and circumvent traditional oversight mechanisms. Empirical findings indicate that Netanyahu directly benefited financially from the war by leveraging his expanded emergency powers to authorize high-value defense contracts outside standard competitive bidding processes. This approach resulted in an unprecedented windfall for defense sector entities closely associated with his inner circle. The war context also facilitated the diversion of public resources to support the interests of this network, ultimately institutionalizing mechanisms for influence-sharing among policymakers and leaders in the military-industrial complex. Consequently, the aggregate value of contracts executed during states of emergency surged dramatically, exemplifying the organic convergence of political and economic power within Netanyahu’s administration. The systematic exploitation of crises thus emerges as a central feature in the amplification of personal wealth and the consolidation of elite privileges within a closed governance structure.

China has a long-term goal to be a global leader in technology. To achieve such ambition, the country has taken serious steps widening its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) traditional infrastructure projects to incorporate digital infrastructure projects embodied in the Digital Silk Road (DSR). The DSR was initially launched in 2015 by the government as an idea on paper and during the opening ceremony of the First Belt and Road Forum in May 2017, China’s President Xi Jinping, adopted the DSR term officially and it was incorporated in the government’s BRI strategy as the digital dimension.   The DSR initiative focuses on building digital infrastructure and exporting its technology to the beneficiary countries, it includes telecommunications infrastructure, like 5G networks, overland fibre-optic cables, data centres, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), as well as applications that support e-commerce and mobile payments, along with smart cities and surveillance technology.  Additionally, the DSR provides support to Chinese tech companies, like ZTE, Huawei, and Alibaba, to carry on the work with the beneficiaries.   The DSR aims to enhance Beijing's global digital influence as it creates opportunities for a wide range of cooperation and partnerships between Chinses tech companies and other beneficiaries around the world in areas of digitalization and AI. China’s DSR encompass a variety of projects in 5G deployment, e-commerce platforms, and AI applications, such as DeepSeek which is an alternative model to ChatGPT.   China signed DSR cooperation agreements with several countries in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. The cooperation takes place between scientists and engineers from the recipient country and Beijing, like opening a training centre or in research and development (R&D). The areas of cooperation are wide, including smart cities, AI and robotics, clean energy, and surveillance capabilities, like data localization. GCC countries are considered one of the important partners to China’s DSR, where it is closely integrating in the GCC digitalization goals.

The tools of twenty-first-century warfare are no longer confined to conventional weapons such as missiles, tanks, and aircraft. They have expanded to encompass cloud-computing platforms, artificial-intelligence systems, and data-processing capabilities developed and managed by major U.S.-based technology corporations, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. These companies have become central pillars in the conduct of modern digital warfare, with their decisions and policies exerting profound geopolitical influence and forming an integral component of contemporary global power dynamics.   In this context, the relationship between commercial technology corporations and the Israeli military has undergone a profound transformation, moving beyond the traditional model of supplying hardware and software to establish digital infrastructure as a central instrument in the management of modern conflict, most notably during the war on Gaza. A new paradigm of integration between the military and the private sector has emerged, in which commercial digital systems have become an inseparable component of military capability, blurring the boundaries between market-driven services and state security architectures.   The management of the global narrative surrounding humanitarian catastrophes, including the confirmed famine and persistent reports of atrocities, has become inseparable from the content-governance policies imposed by major digital platforms controlled by technology conglomerates. These platforms frequently amplify official narratives while minimising or obscuring the magnitude of famine and conflict. At the same time, they enable advanced surveillance mechanisms that restrict or silence independent media operating within conflict zones.   The war in Gaza has underscored the dual and increasingly intricate role of major technology corporations, particularly Google (Alphabet Inc.) and Microsoft Corporation, in both modern warfare and global information control. These entities operate within a mutually reinforcing dynamic, providing specialised cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence infrastructure that enables unprecedented levels of lethal military operations and mass surveillance across Gaza and the occupied territories. Concurrently, they deploy advanced mechanisms of information control, encompassing internal content moderation, algorithmic bias, and data suppression, to recalibrate public narratives and shield corporate power from accountability.   This analysis, therefore, examines the role of technology corporations in shaping the dynamics and repercussions of the conflict in Gaza, exploring how they contribute to the engineering of the informational, political, and humanitarian landscape within the framework of contemporary warfare. In this process, these corporations are transformed from ostensibly neutral service providers into active participants within the conflict’s infrastructural ecosystem.

Iran’s nuclear file is witnessing a rapidly escalating trajectory, underscored by its potential decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This move could redefine the very architecture of global nuclear governance. Should this course of action materialise, it would mark the first precedent of its kind since North Korea’s withdrawal from the same treaty in 2003, transforming what might initially appear as a mere negotiating stance into a profound strategic turning point with far-reaching implications for the policies of the Middle East and the wider international order.   These Iranian threats, which began escalating in June 2025, did not emerge in a vacuum; instead, they were a direct reaction to a series of successive strategic developments. The U.S.–Israeli military strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 significantly deepened the complexity of the situation, while the crisis further intensified when the European troika (E3) announced in September 2025 the activation of the “snapback mechanism,” thereby reimposing UN sanctions on Tehran. Taken together, these measures led Iran to conclude that the economic and political value of adhering to international treaties had effectively evaporated.   The gravity of the situation extends beyond political dimensions to encompass highly sensitive technical and legal aspects. Technically, Iran possesses between 400 and 450 kilograms of uranium enriched to roughly 60%; a stockpile that places it only weeks away from producing weapons-usable fissile material if enrichment were elevated to about 90%. Legally, Iran’s invocation of Article X of the NPT would trigger an immediate cessation of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) oversight and remove the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement from the equation, paving the way for near-total diplomatic isolation. Consequently, the fallout from withdrawal would transcend the confines of Tehran’s nuclear programme and create a broad regional security dilemma.

Since the launch of the first satellite in 1957, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) has undergone a profound transformation from a near-empty frontier into a congested and polluted environment shaped by decades of human activity. Non-functional satellites, spent rocket stages, and fragmentation debris from collisions and explosions have accumulated to a mass exceeding 14,700 tons. Critical events have amplified the scale of the problem, most notably China’s Anti-Satellite Test (ASAT) in 2007 and the 2009 collision between the U.S. Iridium-33 and Russia’s Kosmos-2251, which together generated nearly one-third of all catalogued debris in LEO.   This material is unevenly distributed but highly concentrated between 750 and 1,000 kilometres, an orbital belt central to Earth Observation and communications. Objects in this altitude range can persist for centuries, while in the Geostationary Orbit (GEO) debris may remain indefinitely, underscoring the long-term persistence of the hazard. Consequently, orbital space has shifted from an open frontier to a finite and polluted resource requiring collective governance.   This study examines the economic and political dimensions of space debris. It assesses the direct costs borne by operators, the cascading risks to terrestrial infrastructure such as Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and weather forecasting, and the disproportionate challenges facing developing nations. It concludes by analysing potential responses, ranging from mitigation strategies to Active Debris Removal (ADR), within the broader framework of international governance and global equity.

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) managed to achieve a noticeable electoral victory against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the latest local elections that were held on 31 March 2024. However, the joy of victory did not last long, as the Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was arrested for corruption charges before being ousted from his position as the Mayor of Istanbul. The investigation into corruption charges revealed that the CHP leadership elections held on 4–5 November 2023, which resulted in the election of Özgür Özel as the party’s leader, might have involved illegal activities that could have jeopardised the transparency of the outcome. As a result, the Turkish judiciary is investigating this issue at the moment. On Monday, Sept. 15 2025, a Turkish court in Ankara held a hearing in a case questioning the legitimacy of the CHP’s 2023 leadership election (the 38th Congress), alleging irregularities like vote-buying, meaning that the outcome of the CHP leadership elections may be invalidated. If it happens, the impact on the CHP and electoral map in Turkey could be massive.