Morocco is a country of emigration, transit, and destination. However, over the years, the nature of migration to and from Morocco has changed, with more women and children making the northward journey, and not always for purely socio-economic reasons. Stemming these growing migration flows has become an ever more important priority in Europe, including in its relations with the North African kingdom. In turn, migration control is now a powerful diplomatic tool for Rabat.
Iran’s combined oil and gas reserves are the largest of any country in the world. And yet the government has long failed to generate policies that would enable the country to benefit from its huge natural resources. Some of these shortcomings are international in nature, such as sanctions. Many others are rooted in poor macroeconomic policies and populist initiatives replacing competent and realistic policy choices. Given this reality, how well, or not, is Iran placed to be able to confront the global trend away from hydrocarbons in the coming decades?
May 15th marks 75 years since the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when roughly 750,000 Palestinians some two-thirds of Palestine’s Arab population were forced to flee their homes over the course of Israel’s creation in 1948. Three-quarters of a century later, the number of Palestinian refugees now stands at over 8 million, including those displaced in 1948 and 1967, making them the largest and oldest unsettled refugee population in the world.
Turks will go to the polls on May 14 to elect a new parliament and president, with early voting already underway at polling sites abroad. The incumbent leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will face his most difficult challenge in two decades. What do the polls tell us? What is the mood on the ground? What are parties doing to secure the ballot box? To address these questions and more, please join Gönül Tol, Director of MEI’s Turkey Program, for a discussion with scholars Seren Selvin Korkmaz, Can Selçuki, and Murat Somer.
During Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s visit to Moscow in late March, Tehran and Moscow once again reiterated their determination to unveil a new 20-year “strategic cooperation agreement” in the near future. Iran and Russia had signed such an agreement back in 2001, which expired in 2021. The next 20-year agreement will very likely center not just around deeper economic cooperation but also military ties, as evident from the growing Iran-Russia relationship in this area.