CONTENT

● Overview
○ Sunni-Shia Islam
○ History of colonialism
○ Current diplomatic relations
○ Arab Spring
● Israel-Palestine
○ Israel-Palestine War
■ Claims to land
■ Broad overview
■ Israeli settlements
■ Nakba and Palestinian settlements
■ Peace process
■ The Intifadas
○ Domestic politics
■ Israeli nationalism and Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition
■ Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Hamas
○ US relations with Israel
● Yemen
○ Yemen War
● Saudi Arabia
○ Monarchy
○ Wahhabism
○ Qatar-Arab diplomatic crisis
● Iran
○ Iranian Revolution 1979
○ Iran Nuclear Deal
● Iraq and Syria
○ Saddam Hussein
■ The 2003 Iraq War
○ Syrian Civil War
■ Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIS)
● Egypt
○ Nasser, the Suez Canal Crisis, and the pan-Arab project
○ 2011 Revolution, Morsi, and the Muslim Brotherhood
● Algeria
○ French-Algeria relations
■ Military ties and French citizenship
■ National identity (i.e. language, post-colonialism)
● Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
○ 2014 Oil crisis
Overview
The Middle East is one of the most complex regions, headlining as a region fraught with
religiously-fuelled conflict and political intrigue. To better understand how our contemporary
conception of the Middle East came to be, we must understand the long roots of Islamic
tradition, the historical significance of Ottoman and Western imperialism, and the rise and fall
of pan Arab nationalism.

Sunni-Shia Islam
Islam is a monotheistic religion (like Christianity and Judaism) which involves the worship of
and submission to one all-powerful God. Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad
(570-620 CE) is the final prophet sent by God and that the Koran is a religious text that
contain his revelations. The Koran differs from other religious texts such as the Bible in the
sense that it is far more instructive (less narrative), and has supposedly remained
unchanged since its conception (i.e. it is forbidden to distort the direct words of God). Like
other religions, Islam has supplementary religious texts called hadiths that are not written by
the Prophet Muhammad but are secondary reports describing the words, actions, and habits
of him. They vary in credibility and therefore vary in importance to different sects of Islam.

Sharia details the body of law within Islam though there is no one homogenous set of laws
within the Ummah Muslim community (note: the Ummah community is the community of
believers that transcends all ethnic, racial, or gender ties, a radical idea back in
Muhammad’s time). Unlike Jesus, Muhammad existed as an important religious, military,
and political figure– there is no clear segregation between civic and religious law as they
were always intertwined in Islam. Therefore, after the Prophet’s death, there was not
necessarily a religious vacuum, but a political one. There were two factions: one that
believed that Muhammad’s successor and the first caliph should be his father-in-law: Abu
Bakr, while the other believed that it should be his son-in-law: Ali ibn Abi Talib. Though the
divide was mainly a political one at first, over time, the clash between the two intensified into
divergent doctrines and practices.
Sunni and Shia Muslims both accept Muhammad as the last prophet of God, and follow the
five pillars of Islam: strict monotheism, five ritual prayers a day, fasting during the month of
Ramadan, charity where non-poor Muslims must give a percentage of their income to the
needy, and a pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims must try to fulfill at least once in their lives.
However, Sunnis tend to stress the primacy of the Sunnah (i.e. ​verbally transmitted record of
the teachings, deeds and sayings, silent permissions or disapprovals of the Prophet
Muhammad)​, while Shiites tends to follow the teachings of their respective ayatollahs (high
ranking clerics).

History of colonialism
Pre-WW1, the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire which was partitioned between
the Allied Powers after the war. The partitioning was planned in several agreements early in
the course of the war, most notably the Sykes-Picot Agreement which outlined the British
and French mandates in the region. After the war, the League of Nations mandates granted
France the mandates for Syria and Lebanon, Britain the mandates for Mesopotamia (now
Iraq) and Palestine; all other possessions of the Ottoman Empire were annexed into modern
day Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

This conspiracy to split up the Middle East between colonial powers was resented by the
local Arabs who were implicitly promised a pan-Arab state in a series of correspondences
between the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and the widely
recognized Muslim leader in the Middle East, Sheri Hussein. The Arabs, in exchange for the
British assisting the Arabs in making a united state out of the Arab lands of the Ottoman
Empire would help tie down Turkish forces in Arabia using guerilla tactics during the war.

The West helped to install pro-West governments within their respective mandates in the
vested interest of securing oil resources in the region. Generally, though many Middle
Eastern countries saw a general rise in economic growth and prosperity in their country, they
also saw political complicity in the increased corruption and inequality, leading to a rise in
secular pan-Arab nationalism…

In the aftermath of WW1, the ‘Arab nation’ emerged as a pertinent concept and Arab
nationalism gradually took the form of a political movement. Education played a vital part in
glorifying the past, in raising political consciousness, and in kindling a nationalist spirit in a
generation of young Arabs. There were many attempts at a united Arab state; in February
1958, the United Arab Republic was established by the merger of Syria and Egypt in part
due to the overwhelming popularity of Nasser, the Egyptian President at the time, for his
heroics against the West during the Suez Canal Crisis. In July the same year, a bloody
military coup destroyed the monarchy in Iraq and transformed the country into a radical
republic and Iraq was expected to join the UAR. However, the movement eventually lost
steam, disunity becoming apparent between the countries and a military coup causing Syria
to withdraw from the union. However, the strong reactions and resentment of the Middle
East to Western interventions within the region continue to resound today.
Current diplomatic relations
The interference of powers such as Russia and the US as well as the long histories of
political interactions between Middle Eastern countries have led to a convoluted web of
diplomatic ties that can be summarised below…

Arab Spring
The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions
that spread across North Africa and the Middle East in the early 2010s. In began when street
vendor in Tunisia self-immolated (i.e. set himself on fire) when a local official attempted to
confiscate his vegetable cart and publicly humiliated him. This event soon became a symbol
for regional frustrations with corruption, government suppression of human rights, high
unemployment, and increasing inflation and income inequality. It sparked a local revolution
where public outrage took people to the streets.

The effects of the Tunisian Revolution spread strongly to five other countries: Libya, Egypt,
Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, where either the regime was toppled or major uprisings and
social violence occurred, including riots, civil wars or insurgencies. Sustained street
demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Iranian Khuzestan, Lebanon, Jordan,
Kuwait, Oman, and Sudan. Minor protests occurred in Djibouti, Mauritania, the Palestinian
National Authority, Saudi Arabia, and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.

The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid-2012, as many Arab Spring
demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities, as well as from
pro-government militias, counter-demonstrators and militaries. These attacks were answered
with violence from protestors in some cases. Large-scale conflicts resulted in some
countries: the Syrian Civil War, the Iraqi insurgency and the following civil wa, the Egyptian
Crisis, coup, and subsequent unrest and insurgency, the Libyan Civil Wa, and the Yemeni
Crisis.

A power struggle continued after the immediate response to the Arab Spring. While
leadership changed and regimes were held accountable (e.g. Mubarak in Egypt, Ali Abdullah
Saleh in Yemen, Ben Ali in Tunisia), power vacuums opened across the Arab world.
Ultimately it resulted in a contentious battle between a consolidation of power by religious
elites and the growing support for democracy in many Muslim-majority states. The early
hopes that these popular movements would end corruption, increase political participation,
and bring about greater economic equity quickly collapsed in the wake of the
counter-revolutionary moves by foreign state actors and local regimes.

Though the results of the Arab Spring were disappointing, many analysts were optimistic
about how modern technologies were used by youths to fight government oppression. Social
media played such an integral role in organising protest that states, such as Tunisia, cut off
Internet services entirely before major rallies.

Israel-Palestine
The Arab-Israeli conflict still remains one of the most violent and politically treacherous areas
in contemporary history. With the radical creation of the new state, Israel, by the UN Partition
Plan (Resolution 181(II) of the General Assembly), the region collapsed into chaos and
tensions. With over 7.2 million displaced Palestinians, there is no clear nor eminent solution
in sight.

Israel-Palestine War

Claims to land
The Israel-Palestine War stems from competing claims over the same piece of land,
Palestine.

Jews can trace their history in Palestine in the Bible which tells how God promised Abraham,
a Jewish prophet, and his descendants the land of Canaan, known as ‘Palestine’. However,
a famine forced the Jews to leave Canaan and settle in Egypt where they lived for six
hundred years as slaves. As Moses led the Jews out of Egypt into the Sinai, the Bible tells of
how God renewed the agreement made with Abraham and the Jews were led back into the
‘promised land’. Their settlement in Palestine was disrupted many times until they were
finally expelled by the Romans in 135 AD after a failed rebellion against their Roman rulers.
In the next 200 years, many of them would immigrate to every part of the Roman Empire. In
the Middle Ages, Jews continuously face anti-Semitism and were expelled from much of
Western Europe until they settled in Poland and Russia where they were persecuted. For
hundreds of years, many Jews believed that the only place where Jews could be safe from
persecution was within a political state of their own and after WW1 broke out, many agreed
that it would have to be Palestine. Those who believed in a Jewish national home were
called ‘Zionists’ and between 1880 and 1914, 60,000 Zionists settled in Palestine.
On the other hand, according to the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad was miraculously taken
from Mecca to Jerusalem at the end of his life. From a rock on a hill in the city (i.e. Dome of
the Rock), Muhammad ascended to the seven stages of heaven and five years after his
death, the Muslims captured Jerusalem from the Byzantines, gaining control of Palestine.
Jerusalem became one of the most significant centers of Islamic faith and the Arabs
contributed much to the society in the form of science, infrastructure, and culture. However,
in 1518, the Turks conquered Palestine and claimed it as part of the Ottoman Empire until
WW1 (1914-1918). The Turkish joined the Great War on the side of Germany and
Austria-Hungary thus becoming an enemy of Britain and its Allies. The Arabs, who wanted
freedom from their Turkish oppressors, agreed to help Britain fight the Ottoman Empire.
Through a series of letters, it was suggested that the Arabs would rebel against the Turks in
exchange for united Arab state composed out of the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire. The
Arabs assumed that Palestine would be part of their new state although the
Hussein-McMahon letters didn’t state this explicitly. The Arabs revolted as promised in 1916
and with guerilla warfare, helped tie down Turkish forces in Arabia.

However, unbeknownst to the Arabs, during the same time In 1917, the British Foreign
Minister, Arthur Balfour, promised the establishment if a Jewish national home in Palestine
with the whole-hearted assistance of the British government even though it conflicted with
implicit promises the McMahon made to Hussein.

Broad overview
During the British mandate of Palestine, the number of Jewish immigrants increases as
anti-semitism in Europe increases. There is a growing Zionist sentiment amongst powerful
Jewish lobbies in the US and the UK– though there is backlash to the occupying British
powers for allowing high numbers of Jewish immigrants into Palestine, the UK feel
increasing international pressure for the creation of a Jewish state. This peaks after the
Holocaust.

Unable to retain their control over many of their past territories, the British hand Palestine
over to the newly formed international organisation, the United Nations. The UN General
Assembly passes a resolution to separate Palestine into two states, with Jerusalem as a
neutral territory. Before the creation of Israel is officially enacted, Arab states begin
conscripting huge numbers of soldiers to attempt to take Jerusalem before it fell into UN
control, leading to a bloody conflict between Zionist paramilitary groups, Arab military forces,
and Palestinian civilians.

The day the state of Israel was born in 1948, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan
invade. However, due to the suspected complicity of pro-Western militaries in many Arab
states and the vast military experience of the Jews within Israel post-WW2, the Israelites
easily fend off the attack and managed to seize even more land. In 1949, Israel signs
separate armstices with the invading powers and occupies more than 80% of Arab territory.
During the conflict, Palestinians are driven out of their homes and displaced into the
Egypt-controlled Gaza Strip, and the Jordan-occupied West Bank.
Many similar conflicts ensue (e.g. the Yom Kippur War, the 6-Day War), and more and more
Palestinians are displaced without any sign of success against Israeli military power. The
exodus of more than 7 million uprooted Palestinians into surrounding states and occupied
territories is known as Nakba (translated: the catastrophe). Though UN Resolution 242
specifies that Israel must one day return all captured territory, there seems to be no
foreseeable future in which Palestinian refugees can return home. Peace processes are
fraught with difficulty, concerning issues such as Jewish settlements, the refugee crisis, the
question of disputed areas such as Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, terrorist
attacks by extremist Palestinian factions, and the decades of resentment in both sides of the
conflict.

Israeli settlements
The Oslo accords (1993-1995) are some of the more recent agreements struck between the
Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel. The Oslo Accords created a
Palestinian Authority tasked with limited self-governance of parts of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip; and acknowledged the PLO as Israel's partner in permanent-status negotiations
about remaining questions. The most important questions relate to the borders of Israel and
Palestine, Israeli settlements, the status of Jerusalem, Israel's military presence in and
control over remaining territories after Israel's recognition of Palestinian autonomy, and the
Palestinian right of return.

As seen in the picture, the Oslo accords split the West Bank up
into three main parts. Area A and B (coloured in orange) are
home to a majority-Arab population. The Palestinian Authority
administrates over these areas. However, in Area C (coloured
in white), which makes up 60% of the West Bank, is fully
administered and secured by Israel. The green line marks the
extent of Israel’s territorial control after the six-day war in 1967.

In 2002, during the second intifada (i.e. the second Palestinian

uprising), Israel began building a wall to separate itself from
the West Bank. But rather than following the green line, it
made deep incursions into the West Bank in order to protect
Jewish settlements around the border (shown by the red line).
Israel has announced even further segments in the future.

In 2019, there are officially 131 official Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank,
housing around 425,000 Jews (coloured in blue). Possibly the most significant territory is
East Jerusalem, home to 220,000 Jews and 345,000 Arabs, and the proposed capital of the
future state of Palestine. Proposed settlements near Jerusalem will fragment Palestinain
areas into northern and southern sections. This complicates hopes for a peace deal… A
two-state solution would likely require the removal of settlers in Palestinian territory. Israel
had already had challenges evicting 8,000 Jews from Gaza in 2005, and there are more than
fifty times as many in the West Bank. Even excluding East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel, the
number of Jews east of the green line has risen from 110,000 in 1993 to 425,000. New
home approvals nearly quadrupled from 5,000 in 2015-16 to 19,000 in 2017-18, according to
Peace Now, a pressure group.

Some still have hope for a ‘two-state solution’ where a Palestinian state is made in most of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But uncertainty still remains high. Today, Palestinians are
mostly shut off by security barriers, and divided. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank
refuses to negotiate with Israel but co-operates on security. Its Islamist rival, Hamas, which
runs Gaza, has not risked another war (for now). Israel, on the other hand, faces a trilemma.
Ideally, it would want to occupy all these territories, maintain a Jewish electoral majority, and
continue to be a democratic state. However, it seems only two of these three goals is
achievable at any one time.

Nakba and Palestinian settlements

The 1948 Palestinian exodus, also known as the Nakba (Arabic for disaster, catastrophe, or
cataclysm) occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs — about half of prewar
Palestine's Arab population — fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948
Palestine war. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were sacked during the war, while
urban Palestine was almost entirely extinguished. ​The precise number of refugees, many of
whom settled in refugee camps in neighboring states, is a matter of dispute but around 80%
of the Arab inhabitants of what became Israel (half of the Arab total of Mandatory Palestine)
left or were expelled from their homes. The causes are also a subject of fundamental
disagreement between historians. Factors involved in the exodus include Jewish military
advances, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare, and fears of another
massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre, which caused many to leave out
of panic; direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities; the voluntary self-removal of the
wealthier classes; ​collapse in Palestinian leadership and Arab evacuation orders; ​and an
unwillingness to live under Jewish control. Afterwards, there is evidence that the Israeli
government has systematically scoured Israeli archives to remove documents evidencing
Israeli massacres of Palestinian villagers in 1947 and 1948 that led to the Palestinian exodus

Many Palestinains who fled were prevented from returning by the Prevention of Infiltration
Law, which disallowed both armed and non-armed Arabs from entering Israel out of fear of
terrorism. The abandoned Palestinian properties slowly were absorbed and played an
enormous role in making Israel a viable state. In 1954, more than one third of Israel's Jewish
population lived on absentee property and nearly a third of the new immigrants (250,000
people) settled in urban areas abandoned by Arabs. Of 370 new Jewish settlements
established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property.
Nakba, and its re-iterations throughout time, is a point of collective trauma for Palestinians.
In their narrative, it is an example of the consistent attempts to colonise and subjugate the
Palestinian state and its people. Israeli narratives are mixed– there is a critical self-reflection
on the exodus and the events leading up to it, but there is also a desire to parallel it with the
Jewish exodus from Arab state (the accuracy of this analogy is debated).

Palestinians are now dispersed into neighbouring states and settlements in the Gaza Strip
and the West Bank. The loss of their assets, as well as the flight of the most wealthy
Palestinians, means that the population is fractured and impoverished, making resettlement
or any sort of mobility difficult. Life in these settlements is harsh– more than a million
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are moderately to severely food insecure, and due to heavy
restrictions placed on the movement, supplies and people are unable to flow in and out of
these areas easily. The Israeli army only allows travel out of Gaza in “exceptional
humanitarian cases”, and in 2019, only approved 60% of permit applications from
Palestinians seeking medical treatment outside Gaza. Piped networks of water are often
poor quality; children do not get consistent schooling; and there is a shortage of electricity
which compromises hospital and sanitation operations.

Israeli military forces are also seen to use disproportionate violence when policing
Palestinian settlements; most notably, in response to a Hamas terrorist threats that
precipitate humanitarian crisis in which the Israeli army blockades and bombs the Gaza Strip
with little discrimination. As of November 2018, the UN has found that lethal force by Israeli
forces resulted in the killing of 252 and injuring of 25,522 Palestinians in Gaza. Most of the
killings took place in the context of protests, where Israeli forces, following orders from
senior officials, used live ammunition against people who approached or attempted to cross
or damage fences between Gaza and Israel.

Peace process
The peace process in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict refers to intermittent discussions held
during the ongoing violence which has prevailed since the beginning of the conflict. Since
the 1970s, there has been a parallel effort made to find terms upon which peace can be
agreed to in both the Arab–Israeli conflict and in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Some
countries have signed peace treaties, such as the Egypt–Israel (1979) and Jordan–Israel
(1994) treaties, whereas some have not yet found a mutual basis to do so. Consecutive
administrations have found it near-impossible to negotiate a peace deal that would end the
Israeli-Palestinian land dispute, so this section will just give you a broad overview of some of
the main efforts made.

Current issues to resolve to achieve lasting peace include: borders and division of the land;
strong emotions relating to the conflict on both sides; Palestinian concerns over Israeli
settlements in the West Bank; status of Jerusalem; security concerns over terrorism, safe
borders, incitements, violence; right of return of Palestinian refugees living in the Palestinian
diaspora.

After the 1967 Six-Day War (in which Israel invaded Egypt to reopen the Straits of Tiran, an
Egyptian shipping route), UN resolution 242 was accepted by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt but
was rejected by Syria until 1972. The resolution affirmed Israel’s right “to live in peace within
secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” More formal attempts
to negotiate a peace deal to end the Arab-Israeli violence (e.g. Rogers Plan) were rejected
by both sides, even though they used this resolution as a basis.

A breakthrough occurred in 1993 in Oslo. Israeli PM Rabin, Chairman of the PLO Yasser
Arafat negotiated the Oslo accords which guaranteed self-government in Palestinian
settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This brought optimism and both Rabin and
Yasser won a Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. However, this process was halted with the
assassination of PM Rabin in 1995. Later suicide bombings from Palestinian militant groups
and the subsequent retaliatory actions from the Israeli military made conditions for peace
negotiations untenable. Things got worse when Benjamin Netanyahu was elected as Prime
Minister in 1996. He declared a tit-for-tat policy which he termed ‘reciprocity, whereby Israel
would not engage in the peace process if Arafat continued with what Netanyahu defined as
the Palestinian revolving door policy (i.e. incitement and direct or indirect support of
terrorism). This uncompromising position left little room for negotiation.

US administrations have been heavily involved in the peace process. The Clinton
administration attempted and failed with the Camp David 2000 Summit; the Obama
administration attempted to revive talks by getting both parties to agree to direct
negotiations; and the Trump administration has so far appointed Jared Kushner, the
president’s son-in-law, to mediate a peace deal.

The Intifadas
The intifadas were two Palestinian uprisings against Israel, the first in the late 1980s and the
second in the early 2000s. The intifadas had a dramatic effect on Israeli-Palestinian
relations; the second, in particular, is widely seen as marking the end of the 1990s era
negotiating process and ushering in a new, darker era in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

The first intifada was a largely spontaneous series of Palestinian demonstrations, nonviolent
actions like mass boycotts and Palestinians refusing to work jobs in Israel, and attacks
(using rocks, Molotov cocktails, and occasionally firearms) on Israelis. Palestinian fatalities
dramatically outpaced Israeli ones, as the Israeli military responded to the protests and
attacks with heavy force.

The second, and far bloodier, intifada grew out of the collapse of the peace process in 2000.
Negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
broke down, and the intifada began shortly afterwards. Typically, Israelis blame a conscious
decision by Arafat to turn to violence for the intifada’s onset, while Palestinians point to an
intentionally provocative visit to the contested Temple Mount by Israeli politician (and soon to
be Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon. While both Arafat and Sharon played some part, the central
cause was likely a basic mistrust between the two sides that made war inevitable after peace
talks broke down.

It began with Palestinian demonstrations that Israeli soldiers fired on. Palestinian militants
subsequently escalated to broader violence, and the Palestinian authority refused to
condemn their actions.
Unlike with the first intifada, Palestinian tactics centered on suicide bombings, rocket attacks,
and sniper fire— which Israel met with even deadlier force. The conflict petered out in 2005,
but not before about 1,000 Israelis and 3,200 Palestinians were killed.

The second intifada, together with the wave of rocket fire from Gaza after the Hamas
takeover, had a transformative effect on Israeli attitudes toward the conflict. The Israeli
peace camp’s traditional argument, that Israel would be eventually rewarded for trading land
for peace, became significantly less popular. Skepticism of the peace process grew,
complicating future efforts to arrive at a two-state agreement.

Domestic politics
Israel’s election is a free for all: instead of two major parties, there’s a whopping total of 40
parties competing at the ballot box. Israelis vote for parties, not individual candidates (the
candidates are chosen by the parties, some through primaries). The more votes a party gets,
the more seats it has in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset. A government is formed
by a coalition of like-minded parties that captures more than 60 seats.

In broad strokes, the government operates under a proportional representation system, and
elections are held every four years (unless they are called earlier, which they often are when
a coalition breaks down). To gain a seat in the Knesset, a party needs to win at least 3.25
percent of the vote. Whoever wins at least 61 seats controls the government. No party has
ever won more than 60 seats so the Israeli government is a coalition structure.

In the last elections, held in March 2015, the Netanyahu-led Likud won 30 seats and formed
a coalition with smaller right-wing and religious parties (Jewish Home, United Torah
Judaism, Kulanu and Shas, with Israel Beiteinu joining a year later). The coalition fell apart
when a minister from Israel Beiteinu resigned, disgusted by a ceasefire with Gaza militants.

A new election has been called for September 2019 but it isn’t clear who will win since
Netanyahu has recently fell into a series of corruption charges. Likud’s main competitor is a
centrist coalition called ‘Blue and White’ led by former military Chief of Staff Benny Gantz.
It’s not clear where Gantz stands on many issues, but the Blue and White platform
emphasizes global collaboration on security issues and true Israeli democracy that
recognizes Israeli Arabs as equal citizens and requires religious Jews to serve in the IDF.

The Israeli left has been losing ground since 1999. The two main leftist parties are Labour
and Meretz. Back in its hay-day, Labor’s platform of social democracy, community spirit, a
strong defense posture and negotiations with the Palestinians was popular. The party leader
Ehud Barak had defeated Netanyahu in the election, became PM, and was pushing toward a
peace treaty with the Palestinians. But negotiations failed and the second intifada began —
an unprecedented wave of terror attacks in Israel that led to a clampdown on Palestinians in
the West Bank and the downfall of the Israeli left.

Israeli nationalism and Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition

Israeli politics has a strong presence of rightist parties. Be careful not to simplify the
spectrum of rightist parties; there are Orthodox Jewish parties that protect the interests
conservative religious life (e.g. opposing military service for Orthodox Jews), hawkish militant
parties that call for an iron-fist against Israel’s enemies (e.g. the New Right; Jewish
Home/Jewish Power), a free-market libertarians who are focused on economic issues (e.g.
Kulanu and Zeirut). Presently, Israel is governed by a rightist coalition which has passed
laws that critics say have codified discrimination against Arabs living in Israel. These include
laws that support Jewish settlement, or using Hebrew as the state’s official language while
demoting Arabic to a “special status”. PM Netanyahu has often relied on nationalist
sentiments for his success. In 2015, he galvanised voters by rallying them to “protect the
state of Israel” against “the Arab voters moving in droves to the polling stations.”

In February 2019, Netanyahu helped broker a pact between an extreme right-wing party,
Jewish Power, and the more moderate right-wing Jewish Home. By combining forces, the
parties would have a better shot at winning Knesset seats, thus contributing more to a
right-wing coalition. Critics have said that this move legitimised the ideology of Jewish Power
and of its late leader, Meir Kahane, who extolled hate speech. Kahane’s followers have
perpetrated acts of terror in his name– most infamously the American-born Baruch
Goldstein, a doctor who murdered 29 Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in
1994 before survivors killed him. He’s buried in the Meir Kahane Memorial Park in the West
Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba.

Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Hamas

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is the national representative of the
Palestinian people. It runs the Palestinian National Authority (PA), the semi-autonomous
government tasked with managing the Palestinian territories until it makes a deal with Israel.
Fatah, the secular nationalist political party that’s dominated Palestinian politics for decades,
controls the PLO and PA.

In practice, the PLO runs the government in the West Bank but not in Gaza, which is
governed by Hamas. It also conducts peace talks on behalf of the Palestinians, but its
authority to implement those deals has in the past been hampered by poor relations with
Hamas.

In the first decades after its 1964 creation, the PLO sought to destroy Israel and replace it
with an entirely Palestinian state. Fatah’s founder, Yasser Arafat, employed military tactics
toward this end, including attacks on Israeli civilians. This changed in 1993 with the Oslo
accords, when the PLO accepted Israel’s right to exist in exchange for Israel recognizing it
as the legitimate representative of Palestinians. That was the beginning of real peace
negotiations between the two sides.

The PLO’s current chair is the relatively moderate Mahmoud Abbas, whose opposition to
violence played a role in de-escalating the second intifada. Frustrated by the failure of peace
talks, particularly Secretary of State John Kerry’s push in 2013 and early 2014, Abbas is also
pursuing international recognition of Palestinian statehood. As a result, Palestine now has
non-member state status at the UN; it also joined the International Criminal Court on April 1,
2015.
Hamas, on the other hand, is a Palestinian Islamist political organization and militant group
that has waged war on Israel since the group’s 1987 founding, most notably through suicide
bombings and rocket attacks. It seeks to replace Israel with a Palestinian state. It also
governs Gaza independently of the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel. It was revised in 2017 to allow for
acceptance of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip rather than the entire
territory, though Hamas still refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli state.
Hamas used suicide bombings against Israel in the 1990s and 2000s, though in recent
years, it has shifted to using predominantly rockets and mortars. The organisation also offers
Palestinians a robust network of social services, which it developed as an alternative to
deeply corrupt PA institutions.

In 2006, Hamas won a slight majority of the seats in the Palestinian Authority legislative
elections. This would have put Hamas in a commanding position for both the West Bank and
Gaza, but there was a problem: Hamas refused to accept previous deals that the PA had
made with Israel. That lead Western powers to freeze out aid, which the PA depends on, to
any Hamas-led PA. Tensions between the PLO and Hamas eventually escalated to outright
war between the two factions, which ended up with Hamas governing Gaza independently
from the West Bank–based PLO.

Unity talks between Hamas and the PLO have broken down repeatedly, which means there
is no unified Palestinian authority, complicating peace talks significantly. In late 2017, the
two sides reached a preliminary unity agreement, but it’s still unclear whether this will lead to
an actual united government of any kind.

US relations with Israel

American support for Israel really is quite extensive. The US has given Israel $118 billion in
aid over the years (about $3 billion per year nowadays). Half of all American UN Security
Council vetoes blocked resolutions critical of Israel. Though American support for Israel
really is massive, including billions of dollars in aid and reliable diplomatic backing, experts
disagree sharply on why. Some possibilities include deep support for Israel among the
American public, the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, and American ideological affinity with
the Middle East’s most stable democracy.

The two countries were not nearly so close in Israel’s first decades. President Eisenhower
was particularly hostile to Israel during the 1956 Suez War, which Israel, the UK, and France
fought against Egypt. But as the Cold War dragged on, the US came to view Israel as a key
buffer against Soviet influence in the Middle East and supported it accordingly. The
American-Israeli alliance didn’t really cement until around 1973, when American aid helped
save Israel from an Arab invasion.

Since the Cold War, the foundation of the still-strong (and arguably stronger) relationship
between the countries has obviously shifted. Some suggest that a common interest in
fighting jihadism ties America to Israel, while others point to American leaders’ ideological
attachment to an embattled democracy. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that polls have
shown the American public has, for a long time, sympathised with Israel far more than with
Palestine.

One very controversial theory, advanced by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen
Walt, credits the relationship to the power of the pro-Israel lobby, particularly the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Critics of this theory argue that AIPAC isn’t as
strong as Walt and Mearsheimer think. AIPAC’s failure to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal
during the Obama administration underscored the critics’ point.

Despite this fundamentally close relationship, there are occasionally tensions between Israeli
and American officials. This was particularly true under US President Barack Obama and
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; the two leaders clashed regularly over issues
like settlements and Iran. The relationship reached a particularly nasty point when
Netanyahu planned, with congressional Republicans, a March 2015 speech to a joint
session of Congress that was highly critical of Obama’s approach to Iran. The Obama
administration was furious over what it saw as Netanyahu conspiring with Obama’s domestic
political opposition to undermine his policies.

The Trump administration has led to renewed warmth in the Israeli-American relationship,
culminating in Trump’s December decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s
capital. The stark difference between Obama and Trump approaches to Netanyahu reflects
a growing partisan gap inside the United States, with Republicans taking an increasingly
hard-line “pro-Israel” position. If Democrats end up concomitantly becoming more willing to
criticize the Israeli government, Israel may well end up a partisan issue in America — which
actually would threaten the foundations of the US-Israel alliance.

Yemen
Despite its ancient roots as the crossroads of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the modern
Republic of Yemen is a relatively new state. It was created after communist South Yemen
merged with North Yemen in 1990, following years of strife, but tensions have never been far
below the surface.

A fresh wave of protests in 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt,
forced President Ali Abdallah Saleh to resign. In the ensuing turmoil, the Houthis seized
much of the north and west of the country, while Saudi-led forces intervened to support the
internationally-recognised government based in the south. By 2015 Yemen had plunged into
civil war and a grave humanitarian crisis, exacerbated by the presence of the al-Qaeda and
Islamic State jihadist groups.

Yemen War
Yemen has been troubled by civil wars for decades, but the current conflict intensified in
March 2015 when a Saudi-led coalition intervened on behalf of the internationally recognised
government against Houthi rebels aligned with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The war is widely regarded as having turned a poor country into a humanitarian catastrophe.
The Saudis expected its air power, backed by regional coalition including the UAE, could
defeat the Houthi insurgency in a matter of months.
Instead some reports suggest nearly 100,000 people have died. Others put the death toll
much higher, but fighting this year alone has displaced 2.8 million people. There are more
than 30 active front lines. A total of 80% of the population– more than 24 million people–
need assistance and protection, including 10 million who rely on food aid to survive.

The Yemen war’s roots lie in the Arab spring. Pro-democracy protesters took to the streets in
a bid to force the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to end his 33-year rule. He responded with
economic concessions but refused to resign. By March 2011, tensions on the streets of the
capital city, Sana’a, resulted in protesters dying at the hands of the military.

Following an internationally brokered deal, there was a transfer of power in November to the
vice-president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, paving the way for elections in February 2012– in
which he was the only candidate to lead a transitional government. Hadi’s attempts at
constitutional and budget reformswere rejected by Houthi rebels from the north.

The Houthis belong to a small branch of Shia Muslims known as Zaydis. They captured the
capital, forcing Hadi to flee eventually to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. The Houthis are
backed by Iran while the Hadi government loyalists are backed by the Saudi-led coalition
(Sudan, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain) and the US. The Houthi
rebels opposed Hadi’s government on the basis that Shia Muslims were being discriminated,
but many in the region see the conflict as a backdrop of a much bigger proxy war between
Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes have been under heavy criticism for its high number of civilian
casualties. They’ve hit schools, hospitals, marketplaces, and even a funeral (which killed 120
people). In August 2015, they bombed al-Hudayah, a crucial seaport that sourced much of
Yemen’s food and supplies. While the UN is investigating war crimes in the region, the
Western powers that are supporting the Saudi coalition have also come under huge
criticism. The US, in particular, is the biggest arms dealer to Saudi Arabia and actively trains
its military on how to use American-manufactured planes and weapons. American fuel
tankers are also responsible for re-fuelling Saudi planes so their air campaigns can last
longer and be more lethal.

The US’ motivations here numerous. In 2015, the Obama administration was brokering the
Iran Nuclear Deal that would restore much of Iran’s political and economic power. This made
Saudi Arabia anxious about Iran’s regional soft power and it demanded US support in the
Yemen conflict. It’s also concerned about one of the most radical branches of al-Qaeda,
located in Yemen, using the power vacuum to plot attacks against the US. But there is also a
long protected relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia with roots all the way back in
the Cold War when Saudi Arabia was a buffer against Soviet influence. Since then, the
country has been an important proxy for US foreign policy.

Press releases and leaked documents have shown that the US is concerned about war
crimes and have attempted to take steps to mitigate them. In 2013, an international court
case concerning Sierra Leone found international powers providing encouragement,
practical assistance, or moral support to war criminals could be charged with war crimes
themselves. In order to avoid this, the US issued a no-strike list to the Saudis that included
known hospitals, universities, schools, and cemeteries. But the Saudis seem to be ignoring
this.

Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the main players in the Arab world. Its stature is built
on its prestige as the custodian of the birthplace of Islam, and its status as an one of the
world's largest oil producers. Its importance as an oil exporter has made economic
interdependence with the West– where the main consumer demand is found– a necessity.
This, in turn, has led to strong political and military relationships that at times have been a
source of awkwardness for both sides.

It stands out for its espousal of a puritan version of Sunni Islam, including harsh
punishments such as public beheadings, and its restrictions on the rights of women.

Monarchy
The royal family dominates the political system. The family's vast numbers allow it to hold
most of the kingdom's important posts and to have an involvement and presence at all levels
of government. The number of princes is estimated to be anything from 7,000 upwards, with
the most power and influence being wielded by the 200 or so male descendants of King
Abdulaziz (the founder and first monarch of modern Saudi Arabia).

The key ministries have historically been reserved for the royal family, as are the thirteen
regional governorships. Long term political and government appointments result in the
creation of "power fiefdoms" for senior princes. Examples include: King Abdullah, who was
the Commander of the National Guard from 1963 until 2010, when he then appointed his son
to replace him; ​Crown Prince Sultan was Minister of Defense and Aviation from 1962 to
2011; Prince Nayef was the Minister of Interior from 1975 until his death in 2012; Prince
Saud had been Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1975 to just before his death in 2015.
The royal family is politically divided by factions based on clan loyalties, personal ambitions
and ideological differences regarding policies and the speed of reforms.The most powerful
clan faction is known as the 'Sudairi Seven', comprising the late King Fahd and his full
brothers and their descendants.

In 2015, the Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud (MBS) was appointed as the
country's DPM (the title of PM being held by the king) and in a way, became the country’s
de-facto leader. He’s known to be the main driver of Saudi Arabia’s more recent progressive
reforms and relaxing of strict religious laws (e.g. allowing women to drive and stripping Saudi
Arabia’s religious police of the power to make arrests). His rise to power has been swift. In
2017, he arrested more than 100 of his relatives for corruption– embezzling public oil money
to fund extravagant lifestyles. With this crackdown, MBS branded himself as a fiscally
responsible, anti-corruption leader.

However, MBS has come under criticism for several incidents including: Saudi war crimes in
the Yemen War; imprisoning activists and instigating a diplomatic conflict with Canada after
it condemned Saudi Arabia’s actions; the increased number of executions (especially of Shia
minorities); the Qatar-Arab diplomatic crisis; and the “corruption” purge.

Wahhabism
Saudi political life can be seen in two areas: the Saudi royal family and the Wahhabi clerics.
In exchange for giving them religious legitimacy, the Sauds allow the Wahhabi clerics the
ability to enforce puritanical versions of Islam.

The intertwined history between the two originates all the way back to the country’s
founding. The Wahhabi mission started as a revivalist movement in the remote, arid region
of Najd. It was founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the 17th centur. The "pivotal
idea" of al-Wahhab's teaching was that people who called themselves Muslims, but who
participated in modern technological, social, cultural, or political innovations, were not just
misguided or committing a sin, but were "outside the pale of Islam altogether", as were
Muslims who disagreed with his definition. This included not just lax, unlettered, nomadic
Bedu, but also Shias and Sunnis such as the Ottomans. He preached that these infidels
should be killed after being given a chance to repent.

al-Wahab was expelled from Najd, but was soon recruited by a ruler of a nearby town,
Muhammad Ibn Saud. In 1744, a pact was made between the two: Ibn Saud would protect
and propagate the doctrines of the Wahhabi mission, while ibn Abdul al-Wahhab "would
support the ruler, supplying him with glory and power". Whoever championed his message,
al-Wahhab promised, "will, by means of it, rule the lands and men". With the aid of Saud,
Wahhabism was part of the indigenous local faith in the area, insulated from Ottoman and
Egyptian influence by the borders of Najd.

In 1901, Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, a fifth generation descendant of Muhammad Ibn Saud, began
a military campaign that led to the conquest of much of the Arabian peninsula and the
founding of present-day Saudi Arabia, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. King
Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud enforced Wahhabism as the state religion. The result was not
bloodless, as 40,000 public executions and 350,000 amputations were carried out during its
course, according to some estimates.

Wahhabism was spread to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and after the discovery of
petroleum near the Persian Gulf in 1939, the Saud family had access to oil export revenues,
revenue that grew to billions of dollars. This money– spent on books, media, schools,
universities, mosques, scholarships, fellowships, lucrative jobs for journalists, academics
and Islamic scholars– gave Wahhabism a "preeminent position of strength" in Islam around
the world.

Wahhabi clerics have gained control over education, law, public morality and religious
institutions in the 20th century, while permitting as a "trade-off" doctrinally objectionable
actions such as the import of modern technology and communications, and dealings with
non-Muslims, for the sake of the consolidation of the power of its political guardian, the Al
Saud dynasty. However, the preaching of ISIS have made many Saudis doubtful of
Wahhabism and the current crown prince has relaxed religious laws, eroding a lot of the
clerics’ powers.

Qatar-Arab diplomatic crisis

The 2017–19 Qatar diplomatic crisis began in June 2017, when Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, the Maldives, Mauritania, Senegal, Djibouti, the Comoros,
Jordan, the Tobruk-based Libyan government, and the Hadi-led Yemeni government
severed diplomatic relations with Qatar and banned Qatari airplanes and ships from utilising
their airspace and sea routes along with Saudi Arabia blocking the only land crossing.

To understand the motivation behind the boycott, we have to look at the ambitions of Sheikh
Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who came to power in 1995. The royal family believed that
Qatar could evolve to be a rival power to Saudi Arabia, and it did this through numerous
ways– one of the most significant is the establishment of Al Jazeera, the leading news outlet
in the region. Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador to Doha from 2002 to 2008 to try to
pressure Qatar to curb its individualistic tendencies. This approach broadly failed.

The Arab Spring also left a power vacuum which both Saudi Arabia and Qatar sought to fill,
with Qatar being supportive of the revolutionary wave and Saudi Arabia opposing it. But
since both states are allies of the United States, they avoid direct conflict with one another.

Qatar has had differences with other Arab governments on a number of issues: it broadcasts
Al Jazeera; it is accused of maintaining good relations with Iran; and it has supported the
Muslim Brotherhood in the past. These all culminated into the basis for the boycott.
Numerous countries accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and of media incitement, and
demanded that it shut down Al Jazeera and other news outlets, reduce its diplomatic
interactions with Iran, and align itself with other Gulf countries (led by Saudi Arabia). Qatar
has acquiesced to barely any of these demands.

Qatar has suffered limited economic impacts thanks to its vast hydrocarbon reserves and its
quick sourcing of alternative supplies for food. Its food supplies have been supplemented by
Turkey and Iran, or re-routed from other Arab states. Qatar's hydrocarbon wealth has
expanded its economy despite the embargo. Its economy grew by 1.6% in 2017, and the
rate of expansion is expected to rise to 2.4% in 2018 and 3.1% in 2019. It is currently the
largest natural gas exporter in the world.

Iran
Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979, when the monarchy was overthrown and clerics
assumed political control under supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranian revolution
put an end to the rule of the Shah, who had alienated powerful religious, political and popular
forces with a programme of modernisation and Westernisation, coupled with heavy
repression of dissent.

It has suffered heavily from years of international alienation due to its nuclear program.
Though the Obama administration temporarily lifted sanctions, this was swiftly put to an end
by the Trump presidency.
Iranian Revolution 1979
The 1979 Iranian Revolution shook the entire Islamic world and has since left a deep political
legacy in the region. Millions of Iranians took to the streets in a popular movement against
the shah of Iran and against a regime they saw as brutal, corrupt, and illegitimate.

The shah of Iran maintained a pro-Western foreign policy which secured their oil interests
within the region. The UK first helped Reza Shah Pahlavi establish a monarchy in 1921.
Along with Russia, the UK then pushed Reza Shah into exile in 1941, and his son
Mohammad Reza Pahlavitook the throne. In 1953, as Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq
nationalized British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil (which later became BP) and his supporters
ousted Mohammad Reza Shah. The US and the UK orchestrated a coup against
Mosaddeq’s government and restored the shah to secure access to oil (sowing the seeds of
the shah’s illegitimacy).

With US assistance, Iran’s shah was able to carry out a national development program
called the White Revolution that included the construction of road, rail, and irrigation
networks. It helped to eradicate diseases like malaria and supported industrial growth and
land reform, providing literary support to Iran’s large and isolated rural populations.

Despite this, the shah still faced much domestic opposition based upon his autocratic rule,
the corruption within his government, and the unequal distribution of oil wealth. Opposition to
the shah’s policies were accentuated in the 1970s, when world monetary instability and
fluctuations in Western oil consumption seriously threatened the country’s economy, still
directed in large part toward high-cost projects and programs. A decade of extraordinary
economic growth, heavy government spending, and a boom in oil prices led to high rates of
inflation and the stagnation of Iranians’ buying power and standard of living. Many Iranians
also believed that the rapid westernisation within their country was antithetical to Islam. Their
dissent was suppressed by the shah’s secret police, the Savah.

An exiled Shia cleric: Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, criticised the shah, and promised
socio-economic reform and a return to traditional religious values. This appealed to many
Iranians who then joined in popular and violent protests against the shah, successfully
unseating him and replacing him with Khomeini.

After the revolution, Iran saw a revivalism of traditionalist Islamic values. Elements within the
clergy promptly moved to exclude their former left-wing, nationalist, and intellectual allies
from any positions of power in the new regime, and a return to conservative social values
was enforced. The Family Protection Act , which provided further guarantees and rights to
women in marriage, was declared void, and mosque-based revolutionary bands known as
‘committees’ patrolled the streets enforcing Islamic codes of dress and behaviour and
dispatching impromptu justice to perceived enemies of the revolution.

Paranoid of a Western-orchestrated coup, the militias and the clerics suppressed all Western
influence and many of the educated elite fled the country, fearing persecution.This
anti-Western sentiment eventually manifested itself in the November 1979 seizure of 66
hostages at the U.S. embassy by a group of Iranian protesters demanding the extradition of
the shah, who at that time was undergoing medical treatment in the US. Through the
embassy takeover, Khomeini’s supporters could claim to be as “anti-imperialist” as the
political left. This ultimately gave them the ability to suppress most of the regime’s left-wing
and moderate opponents.

The revolution also prompted the Iran-Iraq War; Khomeini criticized the leader of Iraq,
Saddam Hussein, to be a Sunni tyrant and expressed his hopes to see him toppled. For
Saddam Hussein, the war’s purpose was pre-emptive: topple the Khomeini regime before
that regime toppled him. The war was devastating with the use of chemical weapons against
Iranians and the Iraqi Kurds by Hussein. Neither side achieved their aims, neither regime
was overthrown and both countries saw their economies drained severely by the cost of war.

Iranian Nuclear Deal

In the 2000s, the revelation of Iran's clandestine uranium enrichment program raised
concerns that it might be intended for non-peaceful uses. The IAEA launched an
investigation in 2003 after an Iranian dissident group revealed undeclared nuclear activities
carried out by Iran. In 2006, because of Iran's noncompliance with its NPT obligations, the
United Nations Security Council demanded that Iran suspend its enrichment programs. This
led to Iran being placed under severely crippling economic sanctions by the West, limiting its
access to industrial equipment and scientific expertise that could allow it to enrich and
weaponise uranium.

In 2015, powers such as the US, UK, France, Germany, China, and Russia agreed to lift
these sanctions with specific limitations on Iran’s nuclear program. Any uranium stockpiles
were to be limited, spent fuel was to be exported with no reprocessing, and Iran needed to
allow access to all international inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) for monitoring. However, Trump has expressed his desire not to re-certify the Iran
nuclear deal and re-imposing economic sanctions on Iran.

The differences between the Obama and Trump administrations come down to a difference
in goals and paradigms. Obama tried to deal with Iran’s nuclear program without addressing
other complaints about Iranian policies, like its pursuit of advanced ballistic missiles or its
support for allied militias in other countries around the region (including in Lebanon, Syria,
Iraq and Yemen as well as Gaza in the Palestinian territories).

By ending Iran’s diplomatic and commercial isolation from the West, the hope was that new
found relations might build incentives for Tehran to be less belligerent toward its neighbors
and the US. The Iranians and their American-backed Arab rivals might find some sort of
‘cold peace’ (not exactly friendly, but non-violent). Under the 2015 deal, Obama got Iran to
dismantle key pieces of its nuclear program and submit to intrusive inspections. But much of
the deal was temporary. The limits on Iran’s development of nuclear centrifuges expire in
2025, and the limits on its enrichment of uranium expire in 2030.

However, Trump and other critics argued, with some evidence, that Iran was exploiting the
opportunity to fortify its conventional military and to build up its allied militias around the
region. Convinced that Iran’s theocratic rulers would remain implacably hostile to the United
States and its allies, critics argued that Iran would emerge with greater resources to race
toward a nuclear weapon, once the deal’s provisions on nuclear fuel enrichment had
expired. Here, the White House seems to be aiming for something more radical– a forced
change of theocratic government.

As for Iran’s response to Trump’s shift in policy– in 2019, the IAEA has confirmed that Iran
resumed enriching uranium to higher levels than permitted by the 2015 accord after Trump
reimposed sanctions.

Iraq and Syria

Iraq has been a battleground for competing forces since the US-led ouster of President
Saddam Hussein in 2003. The mainly Shia-led governments that have held power since
have struggled to maintain order, and the country has enjoyed only brief periods of respite
from high levels of sectarian violence.

Instability and sabotage have hindered efforts to rebuild an economy shattered by decades
of conflict and sanctions, even though Iraq has the world's second-largest reserves of crude
oil.

Neighbouring Iraq is Syria/ A country of fertile plains, high mountains and deserts, it is home
to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Christians,
Druze, Alawite Shia and Arab Sunnis, the last of whom make up a majority of the Muslim
population. Modern Syria gained its independence from France in 1946, but has lived
through periods of political instability driven by the conflicting interests of these various
groups.

Since 2011 political power, long held by a small mainly Alawite elite, has been contested in a
bitter civil conflict initially sparked by the Arab Spring that turned into a complex war
involving regional and international powers.

Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein was President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading
member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based
Ba'ath Party and its regional organization the Iraqi Ba'ath Party— which espoused
Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and socialism—Saddam played a key role in the 1968
coup (later referred to as the 17 July Revolution) that brought the party to power in Iraq.

The Ba’ath party, when Hussein first joined in 1957 as a low-level thug and gunman, was
formed in Syria with the ultimate goal of unifying the various Arab states. At this time, the
Ba’ath party was the most revolutionary underground party operating in Iraq (which was
controlled by a pro-British government). Hussein was heavily involved in the plot to kill the
country’s PM, Abd al-Karim Qasim. When he fled to Egypt after the failed assassination
attempt, he was called back only when the Ba’ath party had successfully overthrown
Qasim’s government.
However, the Ba’ath administration was unstable– the group suffered from infighting and
coups from various factions, one of which got Hussein imprisoned. Upon his escape, Ahmed
Hassan al-Bakr (a member of the party) elected Hussein to Deputy Secretary of the
Regional Command. Hussein then slowly climbed up the chain of command and eventually
served as head of the secret police. Him and Bakr worked together to overthrow the
government-in-charge, and Bakr became the president while Hussein became his deputy.

Though Hussein was the deputy, he was more or less the behind-the-scenes driving force of
the party. He brutally expelled any political opponents, even those who had aided his ascent
to power, and took a leading role in addressing Iraq’s domestic tensions while expanding the
party’s following, Long before Hussein, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious,
and economic fault lines: Sunni versus Shia, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban
merchant, nomad versus peasant. The desire for stable rule in a country rife with
factionalism led Hussein to pursue both massive repression and the improvement of living
standards.

He modernised the economy and, most importantly, nationalised the country’s vast oil
reserves. The 1973 global energy crisis led to a spike in oil prices, so Iraq was flush with oil
money that Hussein used to invest in public education, accessible healthcare, and
agricultural subsidies. In 1972, he signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the
Soviet Union, which enraged to US– they subsequently attempted to orchestrate a Kurdish
uprising in Iraq and failed. Their plan backfired because Hussein’s swift quashing of the
Kurdish coup gained him more popularity. By 1979 when Hussein forced an ailing Bakr to
resign, he was a well-liked politician who had a strong following in the country’s rural areas,
owing to some modernisation programs that mechanised agriculture.

As a sign of his consolidation of power, Saddam's personality cult pervaded Iraqi society. He
had thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals erected in his honor all over Iraq. His
face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports, and shops, as well as
on Iraqi currency. He even held two show elections which were all rigged in his favour.

The 2003 Iraq War

In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Hussein’s government had demonstrated a history of
belligerence towards its neighbours. Iraq had been involved in a devastating war of attrition
with Iran, in which chemical weapons were deployed and Iraq had funded extremist militants.
Iraq also had significant tensions with Kuwait because the latter spearheaded opposition in
OPEC to Hussein’s proposal. He had wanted oil-producing countries to cut back on
production in order to raise prices.

On 2 August 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait, initially claiming assistance to "Kuwaiti

revolutionaries," thus sparking an international crisis. On 4 August an Iraqi-backed
"Provisional Government of Free Kuwait" was proclaimed, but a total lack of legitimacy and
support for it led to an 8 August announcement of a "merger" of the two countries. On 28
August Kuwait formally became the 19th Governorate of Iraq. After Saddam's seizure of
Kuwait, a UN coalition led by the United States drove Iraq's troops from Kuwait in February
1991. From then on, the US and other major players perceived Hussein as a dangerous
tyrant.

In his January 2002, in state of the union address to Congress, President George W. Bush
spoke of an "axis of evil" consisting of Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. Moreover, Bush
announced that he would possibly take action to topple the Iraqi government, because of the
threat of its weapons of mass destruction (though an IAEA inspections revealed no such
stockpile). The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning
of the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on 20 March. By the beginning of April, US-led forces
occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army either crumbled or
shifted to guerrilla tactics, and it appeared that Saddam had lost control of Iraq. When
Baghdad fell to military forces on 9 April, marked symbolically by the toppling of his statue,
Saddam was nowhere to be found. He was later discovered in December 2003, hiding in a
spider-hole.

The Syrian Civil War

The Syrian Civil War is an ongoing multi-sided armed conflict in Syria fought between the
Ba'athist Syrian Arab Republic led by President Bashar al-Assad, along with domestic and
foreign allies, and various domestic and foreign forces opposing both the Syrian government
and each other in varying combinations. The war is currently the 2nd deadliest of the 21st
century– over 370,000 have been killed, at least 110,000 of them are civilians.

The al-Assad family has ruled Syria since Hafez al-Assad became President of Syria in 1971
and established an authoritarian government under the control of the Ba'ath Party. After his
death in 2000, his son Bashar succeeded him. Many trace the roots of the Syrian Civil War
to the ‘Alawite regime’ established by the Assad family. However, this would be an
oversimplification– it implies that the Alawite minorities were single-handedly ruling over
Syria’s Sunni majority. When Hafez al-Assad assumed power after a deeply fractured and
unstable government, he reserved top positions in the military and intelligence services to
those he most trusted: Alawite party members who were from his native region. However,
Assad also co-opted a large number of wealthy Sunni families and businesses. At one point,
Sunnis constituted the majority of the ruling Ba’ath Party and rank-and-file army and held
high government positions.

Nevertheless, Alawite families over time cemented their hold on the security apparatus,
securing privileged access to state power. This generated resentment among many Sunnis,
especially religious fundamentalists who regard Alawites as non-Muslims (especially
considering that the Assad family depicted themselves as mostly secular), but also among
the Alawite dissidents critical of the Assad family.

As part of the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War began as a series of popular uprisings that
youths took part in, protesting the socio-economic inequality and lack of human rights in their
country. They also protested the privilege of Alawites in Syria. Assad’s government cracked
down on the mostly peaceful protests, and used chemical weapons (sarin gas) on a live
crowd. The protests slowly escalated as some joined organised militant rebel groups such as
the Free Syria Army. The fighting got messy as different rebel groups splintered with
diverging aims about who they wished to replace Assad’s government.

International actors became quickly involved. Rebel groups were armed and funded by
Saudi Arabia, while Iran and Russia back the Assad regime. Russia, in particular, had
vested interests in ensuring that the pro-Russia Assad family remained in power– the only
one of Russia’s main warm water ports in the region was in Syria.

Despite efforts by Putin and the international community to broker peace deals, the fighting
quickly spread and exacerbated. Radical terrorist groups such as ISIS were formed in an
effort to exploit the instability to seize power. The war has led to a massive refugee crisis–
bordering countries of Lebanon and Jordan were struggling to absorb the high influx of
people fleeing conflict while preventing the infiltration of terrorists. Those who could afford it
attempted to flee to Europe.

So far, 13.1 million people have been displaced– 5.5 million of them are living as refugees in
Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. 33% of housing across the country has been destroyed.
2.75 Syrian children are out of school, and 66% of all children have lost a family member.
The Syrian Civil War is not only an armed conflict, but is also one of the greatest
humanitarian crises of the century with many people living without access to clean water,
food, or medical aid.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
or by its Arabic language acronym Daesh is a jihadist militant group and former
unrecognised proto-state that follows a fundamentalis doctrine of Sunni Islam. The group
has been designated a terrorist organisation by the UN and many individual countries. ISIS
is widely known for its videos of beheadings and other types of executions of both soldiers
and civilians, including journalists and aid workers, and its destruction of cultural heritage
sites. It also committed ethnic cleansing on an historic and unprecedented scale in northern
Iraq.

ISIS’ stated goal is to restore the old Islamic empire, called the caliphate, which extended all
the way to Spain. It began as an al-Qaeda splinter group, then gain prominence in 2014
when it drove Iraqi government forces out of its key cities, followed by its capture of Mosul.
By the end of the year, ISIS controlled more than 34,000 square miles in Syria and Iraq, from
the Mediterranean coast to south of Baghdad. It kept thousands of women and children as
slaves, from villages where soldiers had killed the men (i.e. the Yazidi massacre).

ISIS continued to fund its operations from oil production and smuggling, taxes, ransoms from
kidnappings, selling stolen artifacts, extortion and controlling crops. Some figures put the
annual income of ISIS to be $1bn to $2bn per year. It is also speculated that it received
funding and arms from Saudi Arabia in the early days of its creation.

However, thanks to a concerted military campaign (i.e. Russian airstrikes, Iraqi soldiers, and
US aid and assistance), ISIS’ stronghold began to diminish. In early 2016, the United States
calculated that ISIS had lost 40% of its 34,000 square miles of territory. And in March 2019,
the Syrian Democratic Forces announces that ISIS has lost its final stronghold in Syria,
bringing an end to the so-called caliphate.

Part of ISIS’ existential threat was its seemingly global hold. It uses modern tools like social
media to promote reactionary politics and religious fundamentalism, spreading its
recruitment materials through covert cyber networks. The UN has estimated around 40,000
foreign fighters from 110 countries travelled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. The group has
also claimed credit for planning and carrying out several terrorist attacks outside the Middle
East including the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Orlando club shooting. Though these
attacks have been linked to ISIS, it is unclear whether the core individuals actually
orchestrated the attacks since the organisation, especially outside of Syria and Iraq, is
largely informal with no clear membership or structure.

Egypt
Long known for its ancient civilisation, Egypt is the largest Arab country and has played a
central role in Middle Eastern politics in modern times. In the 1950s, President Gamal Abdul
Nasser pioneered Arab nationalism and the non-aligned movement, while his successor
Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel and turned back to the West.

Egypt's teeming cities– and almost all agricultural activity– are concentrated along the banks
of the Nile, and on the river's delta. Deserts occupy most of the country. The economy
depends heavily on agriculture, tourism, and cash remittances from Egyptians working
abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries.

However, rapid population growth and the limited amount of arable land are straining the
country's resources and economy, and political unrest has often paralysed government
efforts to address the problems. This eventually culminated in the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

Nasser, the Suez Canal Crisis, and the pan-Arab project

Gamal Abdel Nasser was an Egyptian army officer and was the Prime Minister of Egypt
between 1954–56, and then the President between 1956–70. He was the controversial
leader of the Arab world, creating the short-lived United Arab Republic (1958–61), twice
fighting wars with Israel (1956, 1967), and engaging in such inter-Arab policies as mediating
the Jordanian civil war (1970).

He rose through the ranks of the Egyptian army and was part of the dissolution of Egypt’s
monarchy. Nasser became the symbolic leader of the Arab world when he nationalised the
country’s Suez Canal project. The Suez Crisis was provoked by an American and British
decision not to finance Egypt’s construction of the Aswan High Dam, as they had promised,
in response to Egypt’s growing ties with communist Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.
Nasser reacted to the American and British decision by declaring martial law in the canal
zone and seizing control of the Suez Canal Company, predicting that the tolls collected from
ships passing through the canal would pay for the dam’s construction within five years.
Nasser’s act was deeply symbolic as many people were resentful of imperialist powers
leveraging important economic or political projects to gain access to oil.
The UK and France feared that Nasser might close the canal and cut off shipments of
petroleum flowing from the Persian Gulf to western Europe. When diplomatic efforts to settle
the crisis failed, Britain and France secretly prepared military action to regain control of the
canal and, if possible, to depose Nasser. They found a ready ally in Israel, whose hostility
toward Egypt had been exacerbated by Nasser’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran.

In October 1956, Israeli, British and French soldiers invaded Egypt and occupied the canal
zone. This was met with outrage– the Soviet Union threatened to intervene, and to prevent
an escalating international crisis, the US sponsored UN resolution that called for the
withdrawal of foreign forces. Nasser emerged the victor and a regional hero.

As a regional symbol, Nasser strongly supported the pan-Arab project, which is an ideology
which espouses the unification of the countries of North Africa and Western Asia from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, which is referred to as the Arab world. It is closely
connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts that the Arabs constitute a single nation.
Advocates such as Nasser have often espoused socialist principles and strongly opposed
Western political involvement in the Arab world, and thus formed an important agitator for
decolonisation. When given the opportunity, Nasser helped form the United Arab Republic
(made up of modern day Syria and Egypt) in 1958. However the union quickly collapsed as
Syrians saw their political life being dominated by the Egyptians.

It is also important to note that pan-Arabism often had racist undertones. The ‘Arab’, after all,
exists only in our cultural imaginations and collective understandings. Many of the strongest
proponents of pan-Arabism were fixated on the idea of racial purity, including Nasser
himself. The stigmatisation of ‘non-Arab’ populations living in the Middle East worsened at
the height of Nasser’s popularity. This includes those who are dark-skinned and those who
don’t practice Islam or speak Arabic. The remnants of such racism still exist in much of the
Middle East.

2011 Revolution, Morsi, and the Muslim Brotherhood

The Egyptian revolution of 2011 started on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The
date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police holiday"
as a statement against increasing police brutality during the last few years of Mubarak's
presidency. It consisted of demonstrations, marches, occupations of plazas, non-violent civil
resistance, acts of civil disobedience and strikes. Millions of protesters from a range of
socio-economic and religious backgrounds demanded the overthrow of Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak had come into power after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Mubarak's
National Democratic Party (NDS) maintained one-party rule under a continual state of
emergency that was enacted since the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967. The state of
emergency lended extended police powers, suspended constitutional rights, legalised
censorship and abolished the right to a fair trial. It also limited non-governmental political
activity, including demonstrations, unapproved political organizations and unregistered
financial donations. During his presidency, Mubarak would justify extending the state of
emergency by citing terrorist threats by militant groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the
organisation that had attempted to assassinate Nasser.

Though the demonstrators mainly protested Mubarak’s regime and emergency law, they
also had grievances with other issues such as police brutality, corruption, high food-price
inflation and high youth unemployment. During the uprising, the capital, Cairo, and the port
city of Suez saw frequent violent clashes. Protesters defied a government-imposed curfew,
which was impossible to enforce by the police and military. Police forces were gradually
replaced by military troops and in the subsequence violence, at least 846 people were killed
and over 6,000 were injured. ​Protesters retaliated by burning over 90 police stations across
the country

On 11 February 2011, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak resigned as
president, turning power over to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) which
would act as the “caretaker” of the government until elections could be held 6 months later.
The Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt through a series of popular elections, with
Egyptians electing Islamist Mohamed Morsi to the presidency in June 2012.

The Muslim Brotherhood has a checkered past (to put it mildly). Initially centered around
providing much needed social services in the 1930s, it slowly evolved into a revolutionary
organisation that had the aim of overthrowing Egypt’s Waft party, a British puppet
government. It organised popular protests and in the early 1940s, a branch of it became
armed and were linked to a number of violent acts, including bombings and political
assassinations, spiralling out of the groups central control. It eventually went underground
and, after an attempt to assassinate President Nasser, the Muslim Brotherhood was cracked
down on and many of its leaders were arrested. Its more radical doctrines (e.g. Qutb’s
‘Milestones Along the Way’) have heavily influenced modern-day terrorism. But in the 1970s,
the group officially renounced violence and emerged as a political party.

Morsi’s presidency was short-lived. Many had voted for him only because he was the only
alternative to the pro-regime general that stood as his opponent. Youths had a problem with
his attempt to enact a Islamicist-leaning constitution, and he faced resistance from the
Mubarak structures left behind in the army and judges. Judges would dissolve parliament,
oppose his attempts to hold new elections, while intelligence services attempted to blackmail
him. He was replaced by the current president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Unfortunately,
Sisi is not much better than Mubarak as he has shown similar strongman tendencies–
intimidating political opponents with corruption charges and arrests. His government has
also given the Egyptian military unchecked power.

Algeria
Algeria, deep in the heart of the Sahara Desert, has been battered by violence over the past
half-century. There are conflicting reports about the death toll during the war against France
for independence in the 1950s and early 60s. French historians estimate that up to 400,000
Algerians were killed, while the Algerian government says more than one million people
died. The country later endured a brutal internal conflict after when elections that Islamists
appeared certain to win were cancelled in 1992; a low-level Islamist insurgency still affects
Algeria.

The Sahara desert covers more than four-fifths of the land. Algeria is the continent's biggest
country, and is the world's 10th largest. Oil and gas reserves were discovered there in the
1950s, but most Algerians live along the northern coast.

French-Algeria relations
Throughout the 8th to 16th centuries, Algeria was part of the Ottoman Empire. Its brief
period of independence after the decline of the Ottoman Empire was short-lived for France
launched its war of conquest in 1830. By 1847 the French had largely suppressed Algerian
resistance to the invasion and the following year made Algeria a colony of France. French
colonists modernized Algeria’s agricultural and commercial economy but lived apart from the
Algerian majority, enjoying social and economic privileges extended to few non-Europeans.
Ethnic resentment, fueled by revolutionary politics introduced by Algerians who had lived
and studied in France, led to a widespread nationalist movement in the mid-20th century. A
fierce war of independence ensued in 1954–62.

Relations between post-colonial Algeria and France have remained close throughout the
years, although sometimes difficult. On February 23, 2005, the French law on colonialism
was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) conservative majority,
which imposed on high school teachers to teach the "positive values" of French colonialism
to their students, in particular in North Africa.

Military ties and French citizenship

In 1962, the Evian Accords was negotiated and facilitated the withdrawal of French colonists
from Algeria. Other than specifying technicalities to do with territory and military withdrawal,
it also sought to protect the rights of European settlers as well as the indigenous Sephardi
Jews in Algeria. They were guaranteed religious freedom and property rights as well as
French citizenship with the option to choose between French and Algerian citizenship after
three years. In exchange, Algeria received access to technical assistance and financial aid
from the French government. This is juxtaposed with Algerian Muslims, the majority of the
indigenous which were not given such claims to French citizenship. Algerians were permitted
to continue freely circulating between their country and France for work, although they would
not have political rights equal to French citizens.

However, this wasn’t the only thing that was asymmetrical in post-colonial Algeria. In the
1963, the Algerians enacted a nationality law that only granted citizenship to Muslims,
requiring that only those individuals whose father and paternal grandfather had Muslim
personal status could become citizens of the new state.

On the other hand, the issue of the harkis, the Muslims who had fought on the French side
during the war, still remained unresolved after independence. Large numbers of harkis were
killed in 1962, during the immediate aftermath of the Algerian War, while those who escaped
with their families to France have tended to remain an unassimilated refugee community.
The present Algerian government continues to refuse to allow harkis and their descendants
to return to Algeria.

This subject is definitely very complex. Even before the Algier war for independence, France
highly relied on forced conscription in its colonies to fight WW1 and WW2. In this way,
French military service came highly naturalised to people, though the issue of divided
loyalties made troops less reliable when fighting in North African wars for independence.

Today, military service is still a pathway that many take in order to gain French citizenship.
Typically, individuals are required to reside in France for at least 5 years before they can
apply for citizenship, but an exception can be made if you serve in the French Foreign
Legion (FFL). The FFL is essentially a special forces unit and has far more intense training;
not to mention that the FFL is active, meaning that they serve in live conflict, mostly in former
colonies in North Africa. Some notable operations include: the Chadian–Libyan conflict in
1969–1972; Kolwezi in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo in May 1978; the
evacuation of French citizens and foreigners in Rwanda, Gabon and Zaire. In the 2000s, the
Foreign Legion was deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Operation
Licorne in Ivory Coast, the EUFOR Tchad/RCA in Chad, and Operation Serval in the
Northern Mali conflict. The FFL has around 9000 active soldiers.

National identity (i.e. language, post-colonialism)

After a long period of colonisation, Algeria still feels challenges in attempting to reconcile its
new identity. One important aspect is in language. With independence in 1962, the adoption
of Arabic as the national language was a natural choice to mark the break with France and
forge an identity suited to the country's new status as a third-world leader. Yet many
Algerians, including many in top positions, had been educated in French and could not
master Arabic. Despite programmes to Arabise school education, French continued to be the
dominant language in business and professional circles.

In 1998, a law came into force that made Arabic the only language allowed in public life (e.g.
the official language of media networks, public servants, and in public institutions). This
sparked a wave of protest from individuals, especially of language and ethnic minorities,
against attempts to ‘Arab-cise’ Algeria. Though French was spoken by the metropolitan elite
who had been educated in France, it was also the language of oppressed minority groups
such as the Berbers who mostly supported a secular Mediterranean identity rather than an
Islamic Arabic one.

The difficulties in mediating Algeria’s rich history comes partly from the fact that the
geographical concept of Algeria was artificially created by colonists who drew borders
without consideration of North Africa’s rich patchwork of ethnic, linguistic and cultural
diversity. One of the key strategies of early French colonialism in Algeria was to drive a
wedge between Arab and Berber identities by vigorously constructing a narrative pitting an
indigenous Berber population against an Arab, alien one. Many policies disallowed the
speaking of Arabic and the practicing of Islam. Therefore, many welcomed
post-independence education policies that reaffirmed and rehabilitated Algeria’s Arab and
Muslim identities. The issue continues to divide Algeria’s ethnic groups, manifesting as
racism against black and Berber Algerians.

Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is an intergovernmental
organization of 14 nations, founded in 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members (Iran, Iraq,
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela), and headquartered since 1965 in Vienna, Austria. As
of September 2018, the then 14 member countries accounted for an estimated 44% of global
oil production and 81.5% of the world's "proven" oil reserves, giving OPEC a major influence
on global oil prices.

Oil cartels existed before OPEC and formed a major motivation for its creation. Multinational
oil companies controlled the price and production of oil (e.g. John D. Rockerfeller’s Standard
Oil monopoly), and as more reserves were discovered between 1945 and 1960, oil prices
were dropped. This angered the few Venezuela and many Middle Eastern producers who
had nationalised oil and depended on revenues for growth.

After its creation, OPEC leveraged its power over the biggest consumer of oil, the US. In
1973-74, they slashed production, creating an oil embargo against the US, who was
supporting Israel in the Yom-Kippur War. This caused oil prices to sky-rocket and Western
governments were forced to resort to oil conservation efforts including: lower speed limits on
highways; smaller and more energy-efficient cars and appliances; year-round daylight saving
time; reduced usage of heating and air-conditioning; better insulation; increased support of
mass transit. It also created a great need to find alternative oil sources. The implications of
this are discussed below in the 2014 Oil Crisis.

The current OPEC members are the following: Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea,
Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Saudi Arabia (the de
facto leader), United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Indonesia and Qatar are former
members.

2014 Oil Crisis

The stunning fall in oil prices, from a peak of $115 per barrel in June 2014 to under $35 at
the end of February 2016, has been one of the most important global macroeconomic
developments. The reason behind this drop are numerous: slowing growth in oil demand; the
incapacity of OPEC to fix oil prices; and growing oil supplies in the US.

Slowing growth in emerging markets, most importantly in China, has led to sharp drops in
commodity prices almost across the board. The drop in oil prices, however, has been
significantly steeper than in metals and food. Most of the time, oil price decreases have
been largely passed onto consumers in advanced countries. However, many governments
(e.g. China and India) have taken advantage of the decline to reduce subsidies on fuel
consumption and thereby strengthen their fiscal position. This kept demand for oil low.

The most significant contributor to the fall in oil prices is most likely technological
advancements in fracking that drastically increased global supply. In 2019, the US became
the largest oil producer in the world, even overtaking Russia. These innovations were hugely
supported by the government because of the political implications of the 1973-74 oil crisis.

Furthermore, OPEC did not cut production in order to raise prices. Saudi Arabia, most
notably, opposed decisions to cede its market share by cutting its production (a decision that
was deeply unpopular with other members). Because Saudi Arabia produces oil so cheaply
and holds the largest oil reserves in the world, it can withstand low oil prices for a long time
without any threat to its economy. The country hoped that the expensive extraction methods
(e.g. fracking) would drive Western competitors to abandon their production due to a lack of
profitability. It is also likely that Saudi Arabia, being a close ally of the US, did not want to
incur political harms to their relationship.

The oil crisis has wreaked havoc on many oil exporting countries. Notably, Russia’s growth
has stagnated to just 0.8% in 2019, and Venezuela is currently suffering a huge economic
crisis.