The economic impact of this war is unlike the pre-globalisation-era oil shocks of the 1970s: it is a shock to the extensive global supply chains that have emerged since then. 

Early Assessments of the Impact of War…  

President Trump’s declaration that the US and Israel’s war against Iran, which began at the end of February, would be over quickly suggested it could be manageable for the global economy. After all, the Gulf economies only accounted for 2% of global GDP, and given the lower dependence of the global economy on fossil fuels, the oil price rise was limited to 40-50% compared with the 1973 oil shock, when it had quadrupled. There was also the cushion from ample stocks in storage, allowing the International Energy Agency (IEA) to release 400mb of crude in early March.

With the exception of KOSPI, financial markets avoided sharp corrections. Investors seemed reassured by White House announcements that the war would soon end – as they did by the April 8 cease-fire agreement. But, given the maximalist demands of all sides, it was no surprise that this latest ‘ceasefire’ would end like the others: continued selective bombing by Israel, Iran, and its proxies, accompanied by threats (the latest being the US blocking of the Hormuz Strait) and deadlines from President Trump, desperate for an exit given his falling poll rating.

…Underestimated its Broader Shock to the Global Supply Chain 

By the end of March, with thousands of civilians wounded and perished, and Gulf oil facilities and refineries damaged, it seemed the war could go on for some time and could even escalate. Unable to match the firepower of the US and Israel, Iran’s strategy of maximising the negative impact of the war on the global economy was working, resulting in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and potentially the Bab al-Mandab Strait (with the reactivation of the Houthis) and taking oil prices over $100/b. 

In addition, it became evident that the supply shock to the global economy extended beyond energy to key industrial inputs. World-scale industrial facilities damaged or shut in the Gulf included Qatar’s Ras Laffan, accounting for 20% of global LNG and 30% of global helium. Helium is used in semiconductor manufacturing, which will affect Taiwan, that relied on the Gulf for 37% of LNG and much of its helium and sulphur. Half of the world’s sea-borne trade in sulphur – a vital industrial input – is via the Straight of Hormuz. The disruption to petrochemical complexes and fertiliser supply has raised global food prices. Meanwhile, the damage to Aluminium Bahrain (ALBA), the world’s biggest outside China, and Emirates Global Aluminium created a shortage of automotive-grade aluminium for manufacturers including Toyota, Nissan, BMW, and Hyundai. In services, the disruption to shipping is severe, and the airline industry is cancelling routes due to the shortage of jet fuel.

A Risk of Prolonged Conflict with the ‘Houthification’ of the War 

An OECD report in mid-March made a brave attempt to forecast the war impact on the global economy with a downside scenario of oil prices averaging $135/b in 2Q2026 and, although falling thereafter, remaining higher than before the war into 2027. This suggested that global GDP growth could slow from 2.9% to 2.6% in 2026 and from 3.0% to 2.5% in 2027.

But these forecasts could be underestimates depending on how long the war will last, if it escalates, or how it will end. Even if the US declares a victory and pulls out, a war of attrition could persist with the ‘Houthification’ of the war, delaying reconstruction and repair of the damaged Gulf facilities. By mid-April, the IMF was suggesting that a prolonged conflict could lead to a global recession. 

Asian Economies Most Vulnerable 

The negative impact on the global economy outside the Middle East region is greatest on the Asian economies, which rely heavily on imports of Gulf energy, industrial supplies, and remittances. Gulf oil met 70% of Japan and South Korea’s and half of India’s imports. In 2025, around 87% of oil and 86% of LNG passing through the Strait of Hormuz were destined for Asia. By the end of March, the disruption to supply chains compelled the Asian Development Bank to offer a fast-disbursing Trade & Supply Chain Finance Programme to the private sector and fiscal support to governments. 

Central Banks Under Pressure to Hike Rates  

As signalled by higher bond yields, these wide-ranging cost/price rises and the impact on inflationary expectations suggest Central Banks need to raise interest rates. However, there is a reluctance to tighten monetary policy in response to a supply shock. This dilemma seems acute in the UK and Europe, which are heavily dependent on imported LNG whose price has doubled. Pre-war expectations of interest rate cuts in 2026 have now been replaced by rate increases, which could tip the already weak growth into recession. Meanwhile, as a net energy exporter, the US is less vulnerable. Yet, the broad inflationary pressures could make rate hikes inevitable the longer the war continues, creating headwinds to growth. But the major impact of this war on the US cannot be measured in slower growth but in declining global ‘soft-power’.

Chinese Growth Also Likely to Slow

The Chinese economy has been cushioned by high levels of energy stockpiles, Russian energy imports, and, until the threat of US blockade of the Hormuz Strait, Iranian supplies. Despite these early buffers, potential supply disruptions led China to block its fuel and fertilizer exports (later eased for hard-hit countries). Shortages of industrial inputs could make it more difficult to meet the 2026 growth target of 4.5-5.0% — lowest since the early 1990s. A longer war that slows global growth is a bigger risk given China’s dependence on exports.

The Gulf Economies Facing Long-term Damage 

In the Middle East, the Gulf economies have been devastated with damage to the central pillars of their existence. The destruction from the war is not only on their fossil fuel and connected industrial base, but also in the services sectors of air travel, tourism, property, finance, and hospitality. Of the neighbouring non-conflict economies in the Eastern Mediterranean, oil importers will have to deal with major foreign payments constraints as their energy import bill rises. Turkey, with a 30% inflation rate, and Egypt, with a high debt burden, will both struggle to pursue their adjustment policies. 

As for the Iranian economy, it is having to absorb US and Israeli bombing of its military and economic infrastructure. The Iranian economy is more diversified than the rest of the Gulf and is largely self-sufficient in food. But its two biggest steel plants and petrochemical and gas complexes have already been damaged, and key infrastructure and the main oil export hub of Kharg Island targeted. With 50% inflation, years of sanctions, and dysfunctional infrastructure (water shortages were one of the factors driving the January protests), Iranians are facing desperate hardship.

…With A Shift of Supply Chains Away from the Hormuz Strait 

Six weeks into the war, the global economy has begun to adjust with major consequences for global trade and power relations. As seen after the COVID-19 epidemic, global supply chains are being reorganised as Asian and other countries seek alternatives to the Gulf. Already, secondary pipelines to avoid the Hormuz Strait are being revived and expanded. The rising cost of shipping is increasing traffic on overland routes such as the Gulf-Iraq-Turkey route and the Middle Corridor. The war is likely to support the shift to renewables and nuclear energy, even if in the short-run, there is increased focus on domestic coal and gas. Gulf states, too, may seek to diversify their security dependence on the US, but a return to their pre-war position in the global economy will prove more difficult.

The post The Economic Impact of the Iran War: A Global Supply Chain Shock first appeared on Middle East Centre.

Algeria’s role as a central mediator in the Sahel is facing its most momentous test in over a decade. Long positioned as a key diplomatic intermediary, Algiers built its regional influence on a strategy centred on political mediation and non-interference. Today, however, the very foundations of this approach are being challenged by a swiftly evolving regional order marked by military coups, shifting alliances and the resurgence of armed actors.

Nowhere is this transformation more visible than in Mali, a country that lies at the heart of Algeria’s strategic environment. Sharing a vast border and connected through deep social and historical ties with northern communities, Mali’s stability has long been considered a matter of national security for Algeria. Yet, the fragmentation of the political architecture that once governed the Malian crisis signals a profound shift in the regional balance of power.

A Sahel Reconfigured: The Rise of the ‘Coup Belt’

The Sahel today is increasingly defined by what analysts have termed a ‘coup belt’, stretching from Guinea in the West to Sudan in the East. Military-led governments have become the dominant political rulers, reshaping both domestic governance and external partnerships. This shift has undermined multilateral frameworks that once structured crisis management.

Algeria’s relations with these governments reflect this new reality. While ties with Niger and Chad have shown signs of improvement, particularly through renewed economic and strategic cooperation, relations with Mali remain deeply strained. These tensions are not merely diplomatic; they reflect competing visions of how security should be managed in the region.

The decision by Bamako’s transitional authorities to withdraw from the 2015 Algiers Peace Agreement marked a rupture with the diplomatic framework that had guided conflict resolution efforts for nearly a decade. By rejecting an agreement negotiated under Algerian mediation and endorsed by the United Nations, Mali’s military rulers have signalled a shift away from political compromise towards coercive approaches.

The Limits of Military Solutions

This shift is noticeable given the repeated failures of military strategies in the Sahel. Over the past decade, military interventions, most notably France’s Operation Barkhane, sought to contain jihadist groups through force. While these operations achieved relative tactical successes, they ultimately failed to prevent the reorganisation and expansion of armed groups across the region.

Rather than being dismantled, jihadist groups adapted and consolidated. The emergence of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), bringing together several Al-Qaeda factions under a unified structure, illustrates this evolution. In parallel, Islamic State affiliates have expanded their influence, contributing to an increasingly complex and competitive jihadist landscape.

These groups are no longer peripheral actors. They have embedded themselves within local economies, exploiting governance gaps and positioning themselves as alternative providers of security and resources. In doing so, they have transformed from insurgent movements into entrenched actors within the regional order.

Recent developments in Mali underscore this transformation. The encirclement and blockade of Bamako by JNIM highlights the extent to which the Malian state’s authority is being contested. Even more contradictory is the very recent response of the Malian junta, which reportedly entered into negotiations with JNIM to secure a corridor into the capital. This development reveals a paradox: a government that fiercely rejected Algeria’s mediation and prioritised military solutions has been compelled to engage in direct negotiation under pressure.

Algeria’s Diplomatic Model Under Strain

For Algeria, these dynamics represent a structural challenge. Its approach to the Sahel has long rested on the premise that sustainable stability can only be achieved through inclusive political settlements addressing the root causes of conflict. The Algiers Peace Agreement embodied this vision, combining political and security arrangements with socio-economic development.

However, the conditions that enabled such an approach have significantly eroded. Sahelian governments have shown limited commitment to negotiation, favouring the consolidation of power through force. At the same time, the presence of external actors, particularly Russian-linked mercenaries, has introduced new dynamics that marginalise traditional mediation efforts.

This evolving landscape has created an inconsistency with Algeria’s diplomatic approach. While it remains analytically compelling, its practical implementation has become increasingly difficult in an environment characterised by fragmentation, militarisation and shifting alliances.

A Region at Risk of Strategic Spillover

Beyond the Sahel, these dynamics carry broader regional implications. The continued expansion of jihadist groups raises the risk of spillover into the Gulf of Guinea, where countries such as Benin, Togo and Nigeria are facing growing security pressures, with a significant risk that the mistakes that have fuelled jihadism in the Sahel will be replicated in the Gulf.

Both Al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates appear to have strategically prioritised Africa as a new stronghold following setbacks in the Middle East. Their ability to adapt, expand and integrate into local contexts suggests that the threat is not only enduring but evolving.

In this context, the Sahel is no longer a peripheral security concern but a central theatre in broader geopolitical and security dynamics. The failure to stabilise the region risks creating a continuum of instability across the African continent.

Between Continuity and Adaptation

Despite these challenges, Algeria has not abandoned its strategic approach. Algerian diplomacy has regained a more proactive posture, combining traditional mediation efforts with new instruments, including economic cooperation and development initiatives. The creation of the Algerian Agency for International Cooperation reflects an attempt to address the socio-economic dimensions of instability that were previously underemphasised.

At the same time, constitutional reforms have expanded Algeria’s strategic options, allowing for the possibility of external military engagement under multilateral frameworks. While Algeria continues to reject direct military intervention, these developments suggest a gradual adaptation of its posture to a more complex environment.

Yet, the central dilemma remains unresolved. Algeria’s political solution retains its relevance, particularly in light of the repeated failures of military approaches. However, the actors that dominate the current Sahelian landscape operate according to logics that do not align with negotiated settlements. The transformation of the Sahel is not merely a crisis of governance; it represents a reconfiguration of regional order. Algeria is not absent from this transformation, but it is navigating an environment in which its traditional role is increasingly contested.

The erosion of mediation, the redundancy of military coups and the growing influence of non-state armed actors all point to a shifting balance in which diplomacy alone is no longer sufficient.  As such, Algeria’s challenge is not only to defend its diplomatic model but to frame within a landscape where the boundaries between political negotiation, military coercion and non-state power are increasingly blurred. Its role in the Sahel will depend less on its past achievements than on its ability to recalibrate its strategy in response to a rapidly evolving regional order.

The post From Mediation to Erosion? Algeria and the New Sahel Order first appeared on Middle East Centre.

Middle powers often perceive bipolar and multipolar world orders as spaces where they can exercise greater leverage. However, this conventional wisdom must be checked. The strategy of ‘playing the China card’ – or the Soviet card, or the American card – carries a risk that is often overlooked. What begins as tactical leverage can quickly become a strategic trap. 

A few months before the Suez War, Egypt’s ambassador, Dr. Ahmed Hussein, met U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to discuss American support for financing the Aswan High Dam. While Dulles was already sceptical about the economic feasibility of the project and concerned about pushback from Congress over Egypt’s Soviet ties, the Egyptian ambassador tried to regain leverage by arbitraging the bipolar world order. He claimed that Egypt had a Soviet offer ‘right here in my pocket.’ Dulles, who had been furious over Egypt’s Soviet arms deal a year earlier, replied sharply, ‘Well, as you have the money already, you don’t need any from us! My offer is withdrawn!’ 

Although often overlooked, the incident is well-documented in multiple accounts, including the testimony of Dr. Mahmoud Fawzy, Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs (1952–64). While the Suez War had other underlying causes, this incident triggered a chain of reactions. Nasser’s nationalisation of the canal was only the beginning, as the crisis ultimately left Britain humiliated by the new superpowers and demonstrated Egypt’s resolve in ways that came to symbolise the ‘end of empire.’ 

The Perils of Entrapment and Unintended Alliance

Eventually, Nasser emerged victorious, retaining control of the canal and securing public endorsement across the region. Indeed, the crisis acted as a force multiplier, elevating his narrative into tangible political gains in Damascus and Baghdad shortly thereafter. However, this was also the moment when he had to abandon non-alignment and move closer to the Soviet orbit, bringing his domestic and foreign policies – in addition to the Arab-Israeli conflict – under the shadow of the Cold War. Yet, Nasser did not wish to become a communist. Although he pursued an egalitarian agenda, policies such as land redistribution were widely compatible with Western-style reformation. 

Nasser told the American ambassador, following Dulles’ cancellation of the financing offer, ‘I don’t like the Russians. I’ve had a lot to do with your people, and basically, I like your people.’ Feeling threatened by the US public embarrassment, he added, ‘But you fellows are out to kill me, and I am not going to be killed.’ Later, His words proved prophetic. Negotiations with the Soviet Union, now Egypt’s sole remaining partner, dragged on for three years, as Moscow leveraged its monopoly, knowing Cairo had nowhere else to turn.

This episode underscores the perils of entrapment that may result from playing great powers against each other. A middle power today might threaten deeper cooperation with China by pretending to suddenly cozy up to Beijing to push back on American pressure. However, it is likely that the threat turns into a self-reinforcing cycle with the middle power ending in Beijing’s camp, often unaware of the costs and dependencies incurred. If the threat triggers a US backlash, the middle power may find that its best alternative is now to take Chinese offers on less favourable terms – simply to fill the gap. 

Hence, middle powers pursuing this strategy must be genuinely prepared to embrace either option, not merely signal flexibility as a bargaining tactic. Otherwise, middle powers risk being taken less seriously. As European leaders increasingly visit Beijing to gain leverage in Washington, China appears to be growing sceptical of those treating it as a ‘photo booth’ for scaring the United States rather than a reliable partner.

Ideology Cannot Hold: The Long Arm of Transactionalism 

In principle, the Americans viewed Nasser and his ‘Free Officers’ colleagues as a nationalist movement. This assessment was largely accurate, given the group’s ideological diversity, which a communist organisation could not tolerate. Consequently, the United States assumed that nationalist movements like Egypt’s would naturally distance themselves from the Soviets. Americans therefore took for granted that Nasser would align away from the Soviets and remain independent of the traditional imperial powers, Britain and France. In contrast, the Soviets labelled Nasser as ‘bourgeois’ and maintained a cautious stance toward the region, even engaging with socialist-led Israel in its foundational years. 

The fact that Nasser ultimately became a Soviet ally despite these contradictions further demonstrates how ideology can be subordinated to realpolitik. Even at the height of the Cold War, ideological alignment was subject to the adaptability of middle powers and the pragmatism of great powers. Today’s world is less ideologically polarised than during the Cold War, meaning that support is often transactional, conditional, and contingent upon political commitments. Under the Biden Administration, democracies sought to leverage the ideological bonds of the Western ‘Free World,’ but this effort faltered due to weak structural fundamentals.

Also, India’s multi-alignment strategy provides a contemporary illustration. The country has robust relations with Russia and the United States, in addition to engaging with China through forums such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Yet, this balancing act could not continue unchecked, as all parties demand economic privileges tied to political obligations. The democratic bond between the world’s largest democracy and the United States’ role as a global guardian of democracy cannot offset trade deficits or compensate for India’s perceived reluctance to isolate Russia or confront China in a potential conflict scenario. After all, India has to relax certain tariff restrictions for the US and opened markets in alignment with Washington’s trade priorities, after it envisioned positioning itself as an alternative to China in U.S.-bound trade. 

Cautionary Tale

The Suez Crisis offers a cautionary lesson for middle powers. Overplaying the card of a rival power, whether Washington, Moscow, or today, Beijing, may seem tempting, offering leverage and short-term gains, but it carries significant risks. Nasser’s attempt to extract concessions from both the United States and the Soviet Union produced immediate political rewards, yet it also entangled Egypt in a relationship with many strains attached. 

In the contemporary context, middle powers face a similarly transactional environment. Attempts to signal alignment or threat to one great power to extract concessions from another can quickly become self-reinforcing, producing estrangement, dependence, and strategic entrapment. The lesson is clear; if a state seeks to play a rival power’s card, it must do so with a full readiness to pursue the option it signals, rather than treating it as a temporary bluff. Half-measures or posturing can leave a country locked into commitments it did not anticipate, undermining autonomy rather than enhancing it. 

The post From Suez to the New Cold War: What Middle Powers Get Wrong About Arbitraging Great-Power Rivalries first appeared on Middle East Centre.

On 28 February 2026, the United States (US) and Israel launched a second war against Iran within less than a year, amid significant setbacks suffered by Iran since Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023. Israeli military strikes in 2024, followed by joint operations with the US during the 12-Day War in June 2025, undermined Iran’s air defences and nuclear programme. In January 2026, the country experienced widespread protests, which were harshly suppressed as the regime conducted a nationwide campaign of mass killings (Human Rights Watch, 2026), further exacerbating its legitimacy deficit. Meanwhile, Iran’s regional allies — Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — had been weakened (though not defeated) in their respective wars with Israel. Israel’s decision to attack Iran can therefore be seen, in part, as an attempt to exploit this weakened position and realise the longstanding ambition of its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to ‘put an end to the threat of the Ayatollah regime in Iran’ and to ‘target Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities’ (PBS, 2026).

However, this explanation only partially captures the scope and nature of Israel’s current war with Iran, which represents the culmination of a broader strategic shift aimed at reversing its pre-7 October 2023 foreign and security policy in the Middle East. From Netanyahu’s return to power in 2009 until 6 October 2023, Israel’s regional strategy rested on two principles: entrenchment and containment. Entrenchment held that Israel would pursue peace with Arab states in exchange for peace, rather than territory. Under this approach, Palestinians in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) could be granted limited civic autonomy but would remain under Israeli military occupation. At the same time, entrenchment prioritised the use of military force over diplomacy in Israel’s regional policy.

These rigid principles rendered prospects for peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Syria, and Lebanon largely unviable. Consequently, Israel adopted a conflict-management strategy of containment, applied most forcefully to Hamas after it seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2008. Together with Egypt, Israel imposed a territorial blockade and maritime siege on Gaza, accompanied by economic, diplomatic and military sanctions aimed at limiting Hamas’s ability to govern and develop its military capabilities. This strategy included periodic clashes and major operations such as Cast Lead (2009), Pillar of Defence (2012), Protective Edge (2014) and Guardian of the Walls (2021). Concurrently, Israel relied on Western-led economic and diplomatic sanctions against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria, while seeking to degrade their military capabilities through limited force against Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, as well as through efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme.

With the benefit of hindsight, Israel’s containment-based regional policy appears to have failed. Iran continued to advance its nuclear programme and expand its arsenal of drones, rockets and ballistic missiles. Hamas, despite the blockade and repeated military confrontations, consolidated its military capabilities, which were demonstrated during its 7 October 2023 deadly attacks on Israel. Similarly, Hezbollah evolved into a hybrid force with near-state capabilities, including a large rocket and drone arsenal and highly trained ground units. Particularly concerning from Israel’s perspective was Hezbollah’s Radwan Force, a special operations unit trained to infiltrate Israeli territory in a manner similar to the 7 October 2023 attacks. At the same time, the regional balance of power appeared to be shifting toward Iran, which increased coordination with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, effectively advancing a strategy of multi-front pressure that risked encircling Israel militarily and strategically. 

Against this backdrop, the war launched by Israel, in conjunction with the US, against Iran represents the culmination of an effort since 7 October 2023 to replace containment with an activist-offensive posture. The extensive decapitation campaign targeting the Iranian regime’s senior military and political leadership, combined with strikes on nuclear facilities, military assets, infrastructure and leadership compounds, exemplifies this shift. In relation to Iran, this strategy appears designed to compel the regime, after the war, to divert its limited resources toward domestic rebuilding and political stabilisation rather than restoring its pre-7 October 2023 eminent regional position. 

The strategic shift is equally evident on Israel’s second war front in Lebanon, which emerged following attacks launched by Hezbollah in support of Iran. In contrast to its pre-7 October 2023 containment approach, Israel has not relied solely on airpower. Instead, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have deployed inside Lebanon with the aim of controlling a significant portion of southern territory, according to Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz (BBC, 2026). This would enable the IDF to establish a territorial buffer zone between Israeli communities along the northern border and Hezbollah ground forces and constrain use of short-range missiles against Israeli civilians, while also providing leverage in potential ceasefire negotiations.

Parallels can be drawn between Israel’s conduct in Lebanon and its modus operandi in the Gaza Strip and Syria, highlighting the contours of its emerging activist-offensive regional strategy. In Gaza, Israel has established military control over approximately 53% of the territory (BBC, 2026a), creating a buffer zone between Hamas forces and the civilian areas targeted during the 7 October attacks. Similarly, in Syria, the IDF has deployed between 2 and 10 kilometres inside the former United Nations disengagement buffer zone, established under the 31 May 1974 Israeli-Syrian Agreement on Disengagement. 

The activist-offensive posture offers certain advantages for Israel, notably in degrading adversaries’ military capabilities and creating buffer zones to protect civilian populations along its northern and southern borders. However, its opponents have demonstrated resilience in rebuilding their capabilities, suggesting that the activist-offensive approach may result in altering rather than eliminating the threats Israel faces. Moreover, the prolonged application of such a posture could further exacerbate Israel’s international legitimacy deficit and weaken its diplomatic standing. 

[To read more on this and everything Middle East, the LSE Middle East Centre Library is now open for browsing and borrowing for LSE students and staff. For more information, please visit the MEC Library page.]

The post Israel’s War with Iran Reflects its New Regional Strategy first appeared on Middle East Centre.

Challenges

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is the most arid of the world’s major regions. Providing adequate supplies of water to people and the economic activities which provide them with food and employment has long been a challenge. This situation has been made even more challenging by population growth and economic development (which have increased the demand for water) and climate change (which is reducing the availability of water and making it more erratic). In some cases, competition for water among countries that share a river basin has exacerbated the situation still further.

While the region is known for its aridity, there is sometimes too much water, arriving too quickly for the existing infrastructure to cope. The result is often catastrophic flooding.

Responses

MENA countries have responded in several ways. One has been the building of infrastructure. This has taken the form of dams (such as Syria’s Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates) to retain water for use in dry seasons or pipelines and canals to convey water from wetter regions to drier ones, such as Morocco’s autoroute de l’eau, designed to take water from the rainier North to drier and more populous regions to the South. Another response has been to modernise irrigation by installing sprinkler or drip systems, thus reducing water use in the agricultural sector – which everywhere in the region consumes the lion’s share of national water budgets.

MENA governments have also resorted to public information campaigns, urging citizens to use less water at home, for example, by turning off the tap while brushing their teeth. While much cheaper than infrastructure, the impact of these campaigns on water consumption has been limited. Even if the public were to comply wholeheartedly, such campaigns could only have a marginal effect, given that household consumption of water is everywhere in MENA just a small proportion of overall national water budgets.

The road not taken in almost all MENA countries is the pricing of water at a level that reflects the cost of delivering it to users (of all kinds). Such a step would give users a real incentive to consume less water. In financial terms, this is a value-for-money option – almost a no-brainer. In political terms, however, it is far less attractive. Consumers regard water as a basic right and, in many cases, a divine gift for which no charge should be made. For their part, political leaders are reluctant to impose higher tariffs that might be unaffordable for poorer demographic groups and that might well provoke discontent. Moreover, governments wish to avoid imposing tariffs on water use in agriculture that would lead to the loss of farming livelihoods and hence the acceleration of migration to the cities. What’s more, moves towards more economic water-pricing in agriculture may be resisted by vested interests: the owners of large agri-businesses are often well connected politically.

MENA governments have usually done better in terms of saving water in agriculture by using administrative measures to encourage farmers to give up or at least reduce the growing of ‘thirsty’ crops. In Jordan, for example, farmers have been persuaded to reduce or abandon the cultivation of alfalfa (a low-value fodder crop) in areas in which groundwater depletion is a concern. In Saudi Arabia, the cultivation of wheat (a crop readily available on the global market) had been phased out by 2018; alfalfa is due to go the same way.

In nearly all MENA countries, groundwater is a major source of water. In decades past, it served as a ‘buffer’, enabling farmers to have access to the water they needed during dry years. It now serves as a means of enabling unsustainable levels of economic activity, whatever the weather. With renewable aquifers being consistently overdrawn, water tables are falling. Those with the means, such as agri-businesses, are able to drill ever-deeper wells and pay the cost in fuel of pumping water from them. Small farmers frequently can’t and so go out of business. Media reporting suggest that this has been happening in the Souss-Massa region of southern Morocco (from which the EU and UK get most of their tomatoes).

In general, MENA governments have preferred to try to balance their national water budgets by increasing supply rather than constraining demand. Major infrastructure projects offer political leaders the opportunity to demonstrate to their publics in a very visible way that they are addressing the water-scarcity problem.

New desalination plants are a popular option. However, given the cost per cubic metre of producing water in this way, it is not a panacea – crucially, desalinated water is too expensive for all but the most valuable crops. Moreover, desalination damages the marine environment, as ‘brine’ (hyper-saline water), the main by-product of the process, is released into coastal waters. And in the GCC countries, the extreme dependence on desalination creates various forms of vulnerability (as shown by the Iranian drone attack on a desalination plant in Bahrain on 8 March 2026) that their governments are only now beginning to address.

One source of water that is increasing (due to population growth) is sewage (‘wastewater’) from homes, hotels and other urban facilities. To turn it from an environmental hazard into a valuable resource requires it to be treated, something that is happening to an ever-expanding extent in most MENA countries. The construction of the wastewater treatment plants and the treatment processes are inevitably costly, although still a good deal less so than desalination.

MENA governments are frequently criticised for the leakiness of their water distribution networks. However, much of the water put into those networks and for which no revenue is received (‘non-revenue water’) is in fact delivered to consumers but not paid for. The actual physical loss from leaking pipes may be relatively small (as in Jordan) and in any case some of this ‘lost’ water may be recoverable from the aquifers into which it drains.

Floods

In the MENA region, storm-drainage systems have often proved unable to cope with the more intense rainstorms which climate change has brought. The result is the sort of calamitous floods which occurred, for example, in Jeddah in 2009 and 2022, in Dubai in 2016 and 2024 and earlier this year in northern Morocco. The flooding question can only be addressed by increasing the capacity of existing storm drainage systems or installing them where they don’t. (Where cities have expanded rapidly, as in the Gulf, storm-drainage systems may simply not have been built.) Such systems are expensive and disruptive to install in existing cities. They are, however, necessary, if further destructive flooding is to be avoided.

The post Balancing MENA Water Budgets: Challenges and Responses first appeared on Middle East Centre.

Iraq did not choose the current war in the Middle East.  Yet the confrontation between the United States, Israel and Iran is shaping Iraq’s fate regardless. Iraq has become an active battleground for all three protagonists: Iran and its militia proxies have struck targets across the country, with the Kurdistan region bearing the heaviest toll, while US and Israeli forces have hit militia strongholds in central and southern Iraq.  With each exchange, the physical and economic damage mounts, and Baghdad’s efforts to remain neutral grow more desperate. 

The immediate costs, however, are only part of the threat. The violence is reopening domestic fault lines, exposing the fragility of the country’s post-2003 political order. The Iran war may yet prove the gravest challenge to Iraq’s political cohesion since the ISIS invasion of 2014, a crisis that unleashed powerful centrifugal forces testing Iraq’s territorial integrity to the core. 

Fractured Politics, Fragile State 

As in 2014, the domestic pressure stems from a fundamental divergence in how Iraq’s main communal groups perceive the same crisis, and from the absence of any common national agenda. Confronted by a regional threat, parochial reflexes rather than national calculations are driving their responses. Officials in Baghdad and Erbil appear to be operating in growing isolation, deepening an estrangement that already runs deep. More worryingly, the two governments risk ending up on opposing sides of the battle. As Erbil’s tolerance for militia attacks wears thin, the prospect of direct armed confrontation is growing, leaving the federal government with an invidious choice: challenge the militias and risk violent intra-Shia fragmentation, or permit a deepening conflict with Kurdish forces. 

What is at stake in this war differs sharply across Iraq’s communal landscape. For the Islamist Shia parties, Iran has long been a mixed blessing – a heavy-handed patron that has regularly compromised Baghdad’s independence, but also a crucial anchor of Shia solidarity and counterweight to regional rivals. A severely weakened Islamic Republic would alter the regional and domestic balance of power to the detriment of Islamist Shia factions. For some Kurdish leaders, by contrast, the erosion of Iranian regional power lifts a significant constraint on nationalist ambitions while undermining the main source of support for their principal political rivals. For Iraq’s Sunni factions, diminished, divided and never fully reconciled to post-2003 Shia and Kurdish dominance, a weakened Iran signals a regional shift in favour of their Arab and Turkish allies. 

Persistent Foundational Disputes

The domestic battle lines have not yet hardened as starkly as during the ISIS crisis, when Iraq was effectively partitioned along communal lines. Iraqi communal blocs have also grown more factionalised, spawning cross-communal alliances – most recently between Nouri al-Maliki, the KDP, and various Sunni parties – driven by a kleptocratic oligarchy’s shared interest in capturing state resources rather than ideological conviction.

But foundational disputes persist. Disagreements between Baghdad and Erbil over the constitution, especially budgets, oil-sector management, territorial control and the limits of federal authority, have been managed rather than settled. Erbil’s efforts to exploit the disruption to southern Iraqi oil exports to renegotiate its budget deal with Baghdad may be an early indicator of what lies ahead. Ahead of the November 2025 elections, the KDP campaigned extensively on resolving outstanding constitutional issues as economic and national security imperatives. Wartime conditions will only make those demands more pressing. 

The Collapse of External Guardrails 

Compounding the risks to Iraqi political cohesion is the erosion of the external stabilisers that ultimately contained Iraq’s centrifugal tendencies during the ISIS crisis. Iran provided Iraq’s Islamist Shia establishment with cohesion, strategic direction, and critical military support. Even if the Islamic Republic survives in attenuated form, Tehran will be inwardly consumed and outwardly diminished for years to come. Meanwhile, the Marjaiyah, the clerical establishment in Najaf, remains a deliberate non-factor, unwilling to deploy its religious authority as a political brake on Iraqi leaders.

The United States, whose military intervention preserved Iraqi territorial integrity in 2014–2017, may this time actively deepen domestic discord. As Baghdad drifts perilously close to being regarded in Washington as an adversary, Trump administration officials appear to be engaging the Kurdistan Regional Government as a de facto independent ally. US efforts to coopt Iraqi Kurdish support for Washington’s reported plans to mobilise Iranian Kurdish opposition groups are only likely to make matters worse – especially if Kurdish leaders believe they now enjoy White House backing to press a harder constitutional bargain with Baghdad or even revive the independence bid of 2017.

The Stakes of Endgame

The immediate scale of damage to Iraq’s political fabric will depend significantly on how the Iran war ends, and how quickly. A shorter conflict that leaves the Iranian regime diminished will be disruptive but not existential, given the fiscal dependencies and regional pressures keeping the KRG bound to Baghdad’s orbit. A longer war that dismantles the Iranian state would test Iraq’s fault lines far more severely, as spillover would become impossible to contain. In that scenario, renewed internecine violence within Iraq would become a genuine possibility – this time without the US military presence that restrained Iraqi leaders during the last major crisis. 

The risks to Iraq will also endure well beyond the immediate hostilities. However it ends, the Iran War has structurally transformed the Middle East: Iran weakened; Israel ascendant; and Turkey and the Gulf states recalibrating their strategies in an environment of both opportunity and anxiety. As regional powers manoeuvre for position, competition will create new strategic fault lines that history suggests will be contested violently. It is the weakest and most ethnically diverse states – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran itself – that are likely to absorb the greatest stress. In the years ahead, Iraq’s political elite may confront a more fundamental test of the post-2003 order than anything they have faced before. 

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The post Middle East War Rocks Iraqi Stability first appeared on Middle East Centre.

A conventional wisdom emerged almost immediately after US President Donald Trump initiated war against Iran on 28 February 2026, namely that he had no clear war aims. In contrast, the official aim of Israel’s war on Lebanon is, on the face of it, crystal clear: complete disarmament of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Muslim organisation that is a military organisation, a political party, and an important social welfare provider, all-in-one. Dismantling Hezbollah completely and coercing the Lebanese government into concluding a peace treaty with Israel are not declared war aims, but are also seen, entirely plausibly, as Israeli objectives.

But the evidence is growing that Israel is drawing itself into the same trap as the US in Iran: on the one hand, the disappointment of initial expectations of immediate victory is spurring expansion of the Israeli war effort and aims in Lebanon, while on the other hand, the risks of mission creep increase. The extraordinarily close identity of US and Israeli political views and military might, amidst the collapse of any semblance of a rules-based international order, has removed any restraints on Israeli action and ambition. The temptation to go beyond defeating Hezbollah to redrawing Lebanon’s political system and social map completely appears to be luring Israeli decision-makers. Hubris rules the day — much as it did in 1982, when then Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon entertained the same grand designs of reshaping Lebanon, ironically, triggering the birth of Hezbollah.

Israel’s ramping up of its present military campaign in Lebanon confirms that its ultimate goals are more ambitious than simply maximising leverage against the central government of Lebanon to coerce it into forcibly disarming Hezbollah. Israeli officials and government media have issued new threats of conducting major ground incursions, destroying civilian infrastructure, and declaring that the entirety of the Lebanese capital Beirut, is ‘no longer considered a safe zone or beyond the reach of attack’ under new rules of engagement that abandon any attempt to spare civilian lives. Faysal Itani, an astute analyst, anticipates that Israel will displace tens of thousands of Lebanese to establish a permanent buffer zone in the South, condemning the country to an equally permanent state of war. This is likely. Less likely to materialise is the rhetoric of far-right Israeli ultra-nationalist and ultra-religious zealots who want to annex South Lebanon and settle it with Jews, but it fuels feverish speculation nonetheless.

At a minimum, it is clear that Israel cannot fully disarm Hezbollah on its own, let alone ensure its dismantling, without occupying extensive swathes of Lebanese territory far beyond the South, a venture whose long-term costs could be intolerable. A complementing effort led by the Lebanese government and army is necessary if the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a political organisation and social force, root-and-branch, as I have argued elsewhere. But because such an effort is not feasible, politically or militarily, the question of what Israel’s options and its endgame in Lebanon are comes to the fore once more.

There is a possibility, however remote, that a way to end the war can be found. On Monday 9 March 2026, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun proposed direct peace talks between his country and Israel, in the hope of heading off Israeli threats of a major expansion of the war and of bringing the military campaign to an end. Although Lebanon has no leverage whatsoever, this approach could gather pace – especially if the Trump administration favours it, which becomes conceivable if and when it seeks a deal with Iran. The US and other foreign governments, such as France, might also consider an incremental effort by the Lebanese government to curtail Hezbollah’s military activity and capability as an avenue worth developing. Egypt’s revival of its 2015 proposal to create a joint Arab force is addressed to Arab states in the Gulf but could be repurposed for Lebanon as part of a package of security measures to end the war.

Meanwhile, however, the Israeli campaign is unfolding in ways that suggest it seeks destruction of Hezbollah’s social base, along with the organization itself. Some Lebanese believe it intends to eliminate the Shia as a communal force in Lebanese politics, if not annihilate them as a close-knit community entirely. At the least, the systematic destruction of property in Shia-populated areas and of their future means of livelihood points to an effort to pauperise the entire community to an extent from which it cannot recover for many years to come. Pursuing social and political engineering of this kind and scale through brute force inevitably means massive and disproportionate firepower, resulting in indiscriminate harm to the civilian population.

Israel may be able to bring about these physical results, but the notion that it can reshape Lebanese society and politics is sheer hubris. For comparison, the US occupied an entire country, Iraq, and then spent years, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives reshaping its political system and reorienting its social alliances, and yet the Iraqi state remains incapacitated by its sectarian political system and unable to generate an economy that does not rely fundamentally on exporting oil. Whether or not Israel itself pays a long-term price, Faysal Itani is entirely justified in concluding that whatever path Israel takes next in Lebanon, the outcome for its citizens and hundreds of thousands of resident Palestinian and Syrian refugees, will be an absolute calamity.

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The post Israel’s Lethal Hubris in Lebanon  first appeared on Middle East Centre.

Al-Hawizeh, once Iraq’s most vital natural wetland and a designated part of the 2016 UNESCO World Heritage site for its exceptional historical and ecological value, which warranted protection, has experienced rapid desiccation in recent years and entered a sharply accelerated phase of socio-ecological collapse. By August 2025, field observations confirmed that the entire Al-Hawizeh has transformed into an arid landscape.  

Systematic state-led interventions by Iran and Iraq, aimed at draining the wetlands for security purposes and facilitating oil extraction, have driven a catastrophic ecological transformation. These extractive policies erased much of the marshes’ original environment and undermined the cultural fabric of local communities. Women and girls, as the primary custodians of marsh-based livelihoods and knowledge, have borne the heaviest burden and have been disproportionately affected by the irreversible desiccation. 

A Vanishing Marsh 

Until the late 20th century, Al-Hawizeh constituted a vast, transboundary wetland system spanning Iraq and Iran. When designated as a Ramsar site in 2007, it covered 1,377 km² and was recognised as the largest wetland system of its kind in the Middle East and West Eurasia. Yet between 1984 and 2015, Iraq lost a third of its permanent water surfaces, and the marshlands contracted by 86%. Al-Hawizeh experienced the sharpest decline, where Iranian dams on the Karkheh River progressively reduced inflows before cutting them off entirely in 2011. The situation was further exacerbated by massive fires that consumed over 90% of the marsh amid the absence of practical intervention by the local or national government. 

Iraq instead built a massive earthen barrier in 2022 and cut water releases below 50 m³/s, using drug smuggling as a pretext to restrict women’s access to the wetlands. The consequences were immediate: dust replaced water, reeds collapsed, buffalo herds sickened, and entire communities pushed toward displacement. Field data indicate that renewed drying between 2021 and 2023 displaced more than 200 families from four villages with no government assistance. By 2024, one-fifth of Iraq’s environmentally displaced population originated from the Maysan Governorate. This crisis is, therefore, a catastrophe by design. 

Officials have consistently denied the impact of hydrocarbon development on marsh ecology. However, oil licensing rounds in 2009 and 2023 have allocated extraction blocks directly next to and within areas that were previously underwater. UNESCO’s 2025 review concluded that ongoing petroleum expansion is incompatible with the preservation requirements of the World Heritage site, raising the prospect of delisting in the 2027 assessment. 

Women as the Living Archive of Marsh Knowledge 

Al-Hawizeh’s socio-ecological collapse is analysed through the experiences of women in Al-Bu Khassaf village, Maysan. Fieldwork conducted from June to September 2025, including 26 interviews and various local testimonies, reveals that deliberate drainage, oil extraction, and militarised governance have undermined the environmental and cultural foundations of marsh life in southern Iraq. 

For generations, Al-Hawizeh’s women have been the primary custodians of ‘Marsh Knowledge’ – the ecological skills and cultural practices developed over millennia and transmitted through oral tradition. It has been a constant in their lives. Historically central to the marsh economy, they worked alongside men in a ‘participatory mode of production’. Roles spanned fishing, food and dairy production, animal care, herbal medicine, navigation, craftsmanship, basket-weaving, household economic management, oral arts, and distinctive dialect traditions – while also sustaining rituals, solidarity networks, and community-based charitable practices. This continuity of knowledge and practice has ensured communal survival and underpinned women’s social leadership. 

Today, this knowledge is fading under the weight of environmental erasure, confining women to household tasks with little income and threatening intangible traditions with extinction. Despite the depth of this intangible heritage, neither Iraqi law, UNESCO initiatives, nor national heritage programmes offer any protection for marsh-based knowledge. Iraq’s 2002 Antiquities and Heritage Law does not refer to Marsh traditions, and even international efforts, such as the EU Advisory Mission to Iraq (2022), have largely overlooked the heritage of Marsh Arab communities. Unlike other indigenous ecological knowledge systems globally, they remain absent from cultural policy and unrecognised within Iraq’s legal framework. 

Women Sustained the Marsh Economy 

Historically, women were central to a cooperative economic system where household production underpinned local livelihoods. Their labour created self-sufficiency and social cohesion. 

According to the women of Al-Bu Khassaf, before 2021, families’ income from collective work ranged between 150,000 and 200,000 dinars per day. One woman recalls helping set fishing nets at night and collecting them at dawn. Another woman explains her role in managing community donation funds for religious ceremonies and to support poorer households. However, due to the deliberate drying, this social infrastructure unravelled rapidly. Women’s contributions have been reduced mainly to low-return crafts such as basket weaving, often sold for less than 500 dinars (around £0.28). The collapse of buffalo milk production, from roughly 2,200 litres per day per village before 2021 to 150 litres after that, has eliminated women’s primary income source. 

Environmental destruction has been compounded by aggressive securitisation. Embankments and barbed wire divide Al-Hawizeh into restricted zones. Movement requires special permits, checkpoints confiscate IDs, and women are systematically prevented from entering areas where reeds and grazing resources remain. Security forces justify restrictions on the grounds of counternarcotics operations and the lack of female personnel to search women. The result is restricted mobility for women, blocked livelihoods and their portrayal as a ‘security threat’. Interviewees say this is a deliberate effort to starve the community. One woman said, ‘They’ve taken everything; reeds, water, even our buffalo feed.’ 

Developmental Failure’s Impact on Women  

Economic failure for women and local marsh communities has reduced families’ ability to afford girls’ education, forcing them to limit their children’s education beyond primary school, and increasing dropout rates among girls. 

Healthcare is nearly nonexistent. The lone centre has repeatedly closed since 2014, and the closest hospital is about 45 kilometres away. There are also no veterinary services or police stations for women facing domestic violence. 

Consequently, the collapse of basic services has created an emergency that disproportionately affects women, who must walk long distances in extreme heat to secure safe drinking and bathing water. With no reliable water networks, many resort to contaminated sources, fuelling disease, while families struggle to afford costly reverse-osmosis water, often forced to choose between clean water and other essentials. 

The Al-Hawizeh collapse is not a natural disaster but rather a manufactured collapse produced by deliberate water cuts, extractive expansion and security-driven spatial engineering. These forces are reshaping the marshes from a living cultural landscape into an extractive frontier, redistributing the social and economic costs onto women. 

The research for this blog is part of the ‘ELEVATE: Early Career Researchers’ Initiative for Strengthening Women’s Climate Resilience’ project, a wider collaboration between LSE Middle East Centre and Moja Organization for Human Rights, hosted by the LSE Middle East Centre and supported by the British Council. 

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The post Al-Hawizeh Marsh Women: Struggling Amid Marsh Eradication  first appeared on Middle East Centre.

Transboundary water resources are an important component of the water budget of many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. These resources exist in two forms: surface water (rivers, streams and lakes), and groundwater, stored in aquifers (porous rocks) underground. Aquifers may be renewable (recharged by rainfall) or non-renewable (‘fossil’), laid down in earlier geological ages and lying beneath layers of impermeable rocks.

For some countries in the region, transboundary water constitutes a substantial proportion of their water budgets. Egypt represents the most extreme case, with 98% of its water supply coming down the Nile from beyond its borders; around 80% comes from Ethiopia alone. Iraq and Syria also depend heavily on transboundary rivers that rise mainly in Türkiye but also (in Iraq’s case) in Iran. There are many other examples in the region: for instance, a substantial proportion of Tunisia’s water supply (around 40% of the country’s drinkable water) flows down the Medjerda river from Algeria.

Downstream states can therefore be vulnerable because use upstream may reduce the volume of water which reaches them down shared rivers. They may also be vulnerable to the pollution of that water by its utilisation upstream. This matters because water polluted beyond a certain point cannot be safely used. Water flowing down the Euphrates into Iraq is contaminated by chemicals applied to fields in Türkiye and Syria (and the level of pollution only increases as the river flows through Iraq itself). For the moment, the Tigris is less polluted by agricultural chemicals but is set to become more so, as Türkiye implements irrigation projects along the river.

In some transboundary situations, climate impacts are reducing or are projected to reduce the overall volume of rainfall and snowfall, while making it less predictable. Such impacts are already noticeable in the Tigris-Euphrates and Yarmouk basins and will probably become stronger. (Projections for the Nile basin are far less clear.) They can be expected to intensify the existing competition for water between states and between economic sectors within states.

Transboundary water law, as codified by the UN Convention of 1997, offers valuable principles for regulating the use of internationally-shared rivers (‘watercourses’). (The Convention does not cover groundwater not associated with surface water.) Its core provisions are that states should use such watercourses in ‘an equitable and reasonable manner’ (Art. 5), while avoiding causing ‘significant harm’ to other states with which they share the river (Art. 7).

There is naturally room for argument as to the application of these principles to individual river basins. What is more, most MENA states and those upstream of them – including Ethiopia, Egypt, Türkiye, Iran and Algeria – have not adopted the 1997 Convention and do not regard themselves as bound by it.

Agreements on the management of specific transboundary rivers in the region do exist but seldom include all the states concerned. Moreover, most of these agreements are partial or outdated, in that they do not cover all aspects of the management of the shared rivers concerned – including important questions such as water quality and responses to drought. And they are frequently ignored, with upstream countries prioritising their own needs over those of downstream neighbours in years of low flow.

In the Middle East and North Africa, regional institutions that might have acted as a framework for the resolution of disputes over internationally shared water resources are absent or have proved largely ineffective. Moreover, potential cooperation among states is undermined by lack of trust and sometimes outright hostility – as is currently the case between Egypt and Ethiopia. Win-win solutions – such as storing water in reservoirs in upstream countries where evaporation rates are lower, for use in downstream countries – are there for the taking. However, they are generally not taken. And such mechanisms for cooperation as do exist are not used as fully as they might be – or not at all as, for instance, the Algerian-Tunisian joint committee on the Medjerda.

Despite these negatives, the picture with regard to shared rivers is not entirely bleak: cooperation may co-exist with competition. In November last year, for example, Iraq and Türkiye signed an agreement in which sales of Iraqi oil would be used to fund water projects in Iraq, which Turkish companies would carry out. The agreement does not, however, commit Türkiye to allow specific quantities of water to flow down the Tigris and Euphrates, a long-standing Iraqi demand.

Political boundaries divide aquifers as much as they do river basins. Indeed, all MENA countries share aquifers with neighbouring countries. In general, however, the use of the groundwater stored in these aquifers has caused less discord than has the use of shared rivers. This is partly because the utilisation of this groundwater is much less visible than is the case with rivers, in which reduced flow is immediately obvious. In the case of some aquifer systems, such as those in Northeast and Northwest Africa, the volume of groundwater which they store is so vast that only in the most extreme scenario would abstraction of water in one country affect the resource in a neighbouring country.  

There is good cooperation between Algeria, Libya and Tunisia over the aquifer system which they share. Further East, Jordan and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement in 2015 to regulate abstractions from the aquifer which lies beneath their common border (the Disi or Saq aquifer). While rudimentary, this agreement appears to be working well. The aquifers beneath Israel and the West Bank constitute a qualified exception to this picture of relative harmony, with the Israeli-Palestinian agreement to cooperate in their management actually serving as an instrument of Israeli control.

The water budgets of almost all MENA countries are under increasing pressure, as a result of climate change, population growth and economic development. Dependence on water coming from other countries is therefore a matter of concern, in terms of both quantity and quality. Only rarely, however, is it the source of overt inter-state discord, with the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam the most prominent example in the region.

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On 2 March 2026, Iraqi feminist and human rights defender Yanar Mohammed was shot and killed outside her home in Baghdad by unidentified gunmen. Her assassination came just one day before so-called Iraqi Women’s Day. While this day is meant to celebrate women’s rights, it instead underscored how precarious those rights remain.

Even in exile, Yanar’s activism rejected the idea that women’s rights were an import to Iraq. She framed gender equality as intrinsic to Iraq’s political future and democratic viability. This conviction shaped her decision to return after 2003. Following the US-led invasion, Yanar returned to Baghdad and co-founded the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, known as OWFI.

In a 2007 interview reflecting on the invasion’s aftermath, she stated: ‘The first losers in all this were women.’ She described how insecurity, armed groups control of areas and social fragmentation curtailed women’s freedom of movement and personal safety. For her, the fall of dictatorship did not automatically produce liberation for women, but reproduced patriarchy.

Under her leadership, OWFI established shelters for women fleeing domestic violence, trafficking and so-called honour killings. These shelters operated in a legal grey zone, as Iraq lacks a formal framework recognising independent safe houses. In interviews recounting two decades of work, Yanar stated that OWFI had rescued and protected hundreds of women from what she described as ‘inevitable death’. The shelters were not just emergency refuges, but also provided psychological counselling, legal assistance and skills training, enabling women to rebuild their lives rather than return to abusive environments. This work filled a structural void. In a context where police protection is inconsistent at best and directly contributes to gender-based violence at worst and stigma silences survivors, OWFI institutionalised protection. In doing so, it challenged both state failure and entrenched patriarchal norms.

Yanar’s activism also extended beyond the immediate protection of women. She consistently opposed attempts to embed sectarian or religious interpretations into the Personal Status Law at the expense of women’s equality. Appeals to ‘social values,’ she argued, were often political tools used to discipline women and consolidate power.

Her political stance also included a clear critique of foreign intervention in Iraq. Although she collaborated with international organisations and human rights networks, Yanar rejected the idea that Iraqi women’s rights should be instrumentalised to justify military intervention or foreign political agendas. This position became particularly visible in 2017, when OWFI publicly refused the US State Department’s International Women of Courage Award.

Her critique also engaged Iraq’s post-2003 political economy. The erosion of public services, the rise of patronage networks and uneven privatisation reshaped Iraqi society in ways that disproportionately affected women’s economic participation and security. For Yanar, sovereignty without equality was hollow. A state that could not protect women from violence could not claim full legitimacy.

Many Iraqi civic actors similarly criticised corruption, militia influence and weak institutions. Yet Yanar’s insistence on placing gender equality at the centre of all these debates drew particular hostility. Challenging patriarchy meant confronting power structures that cut across political factions and social hierarchies.

Yet, despite years of advocacy by organisations such as OWFI, Iraqi women continue to face structural barriers to equality. The adoption of an anti-domestic violence law has stalled repeatedly. In 2025, despite important victories on the part of the women’s rights movement, the Personal Status Law was amended, setting back hard-won rights and diminishing women’s and girl’s equality before the law and putting them at further risk of abuses.

Prior to her assassination, Yanar faced years of threats and legal battles from parties hostile to her secular feminist activism, who were undoubtedly emboldened by the adoption of the aforementioned amendment and by the years of misogynistic and violent rhetoric in parliament during the decades-long battle to stave off these changes. Yanar’s death was also made possible by the Iraqi government’s extremely poor record of holding perpetrators to account for violence against activists and civic voices in Iraq, which has created a climate of impunity and an increasingly shrinking civic space.

For us, Yanar, who we met over a number of years at conferences and in protest squares, largely shaped and inspired our own individual work and activism, along with that of many of our peers whose voices she helped raise in a context where there is often so little room to speak out. Yanar devoted her life to a vision of an Iraqi state and society grounded in gender equality and human dignity and the task now is to continue defending the rights she spent decades fighting to secure.

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