Category: Adnan Tabatabai


Brussels MENA Briefing: Kuwait and the post-Sheikh Sabah Era

Brussels MENA Briefing: Kuwait and the post-Sheikh Sabah Era

December 1, 2020

On December 1, the EastWest Institute (EWI) and the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO) hosted the ninth “Brussels MENA Briefing”—a series of after-work briefings on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region—on “Kuwait and the post-Sheikh Sabah Era”.

Speakers included Vice Admiral (ret.) Ahmad Al-Mulla, advisor to the Kuwaiti Ministry of Defense, and Dr. Courtney Freer, assistant professorial research fellow at the Middle East Center of the London School of Economics. Well-known experts on the Persian Gulf region and members of the European policy community virtually attended this briefing, which was held under the Chatham House Rule.

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Brussels MENA Briefing: The Economic Dimensions of the Conflict in Yemen

Brussels MENA Briefing: The Economic Dimensions of the Conflict in Yemen

October 6, 2020

The seventh edition of the Brussels MENA Briefing, co-hosted by the EastWest Institute (EWI) and the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO), in partnership with the Rethinking Yemen’s Economy initiative, was dedicated to the economic impact of the ongoing conflict in Yemen—a war that started in 2014/15 and has since turned the country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis according to the UN. 

The Rethinking Yemen’s Economy initiative aims to contribute to peacebuilding and conflict prevention, economic stabilization and sustainable development in Yemen by building consensus in crucial policy areas through engaging and promoting informed Yemeni voices from all backgrounds (the “Development Champions”) in public discourse on development, economy and post-conflict reconstruction in Yemen, and by positively influencing local, regional and international development agendas. It is implemented by CARPO, DeepRoot Consulting and the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies and is generously funded by the European Union and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Yemen.

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Tafahum – An Ideational Fundament for West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula

Tafahum – An Ideational Fundament for West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula

by Christian Koch and Adnan Tabatabai This CARPO Brief discusses the need to construct ideational pillars for a tafahum, or common understanding, of how to define a process towards regional integration and a shared security architecture for West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula (WAAP). This is an evolutionary process, which begins with the essential building […]

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Back to Crisis Mode. Iran’s Quest to Manage Internal Crises and External Pressures [in German]

Back to Crisis Mode. Iran’s Quest to Manage Internal Crises and External Pressures [in German]

by Adnan Tabatabai This CARPO Report is dedicated to an analytical discussion about how the ongoing crisis surrounding the nuclear agreement between the E3/EU+3 and Iran is affecting the foreign policy conduct of the Islamic Republic, its internal power balance, as well as the future of state-society relations in Iran. This is the German translation […]

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Victimized by Geopolitics. Iranian and Saudi Perspectives on the Refugee Crisis

Victimized by Geopolitics. Iranian and Saudi Perspectives on the Refugee Crisis

The second meeting of CARPO and the EastWest Institute’s Iran-Saudi Track 2 Dialogue initiative took place in spring 2016 in Bonn. Current and former diplomats, analysts and security experts from both countries met alongside European scholars and experts to discuss “Iranian and Saudi Perspectives on the Refugee Crisis”.

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Know Your Enemy – Iranian and Saudi Perspectives on ISIL

Know Your Enemy – Iranian and Saudi Perspectives on ISIL

CARPO and the EastWest Institute have established a confidential track 2 format for Iranian-Saudi dialogue. The first dialogue meeting took place In the fall of 2015 in Brussels. Current and former diplomats, analysts and security experts from both countries met alongside European policy-makers and experts to discuss “Iranian and Saudi Perspectives on ISIL”.

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