Open Dialogue Research Journal
When Iran’s first vice-president, Mohammad Reza Aref, travelled to Moscow for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) prime ministers’ meeting, it came at a moment of renewed pressure on Tehran. The snapback mechanism has been reactivated, Western sanctions discussions are re-intensifying, and the regional environment remains unsettled after the recent twelve-day […]
The recent adoption of the United States–drafted Gaza resolution in the UN Security Council is far more than another procedural episode in the management of a protracted conflict. It marks a decisive moment in the geopolitical contest over the future architecture of the Middle East and the evolving international order. […]
Donald Trump’s presence at the ASEAN Summit in Malaysia may seem at first glance like a conventional diplomatic event. In reality, it is a revealing episode in the ongoing re-engineering of American strategy amid the emergence of a multipolar world. The trip reflects Washington’s gradual recognition that direct dominance in […]
Empires rarely fall in noise; they dissolve in silence. The sudden quiet around Budapest, after the cancellation of a long-anticipated summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, may tell us more about the end of an era than any official communiqué. What was meant to be another act in Washington’s […]
The reactivation of the UN snapback mechanism has placed Iran under renewed pressure at a moment of growing global instability. Designed as a safeguard in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the snapback provision restores international sanctions if a party is deemed in violation. For policymakers in Washington, […]
Iran’s absence from the Sharm el-Sheikh peace summit is often dismissed as recalcitrance or obstructionism. But viewed through the prism of recent events, it becomes clear that Tehran chose nonparticipation as a strategic judgment on legitimacy, risk, and leverage. In a moment when U.S. and European powers are resurrecting the […]
Since the eruption of the Al-Aqsa Storm operation on October 7, 2023, the Gaza conflict has reshaped the political and moral landscape of the Middle East. Two years on, the battle has evolved beyond military confrontation it has become a war over legitimacy, narrative, and the endurance of an idea: […]
On September 26, China and Russia formally proposed a six-month delay in the activation of the UN’s “snapback” mechanism against Iran. At first glance, this might appear to be a procedural maneuver another bargaining chip in the endless cycle of nuclear disputes and sanctions diplomacy. Yet the timing, substance, and […]
Nearly a fifth of the world’s oil flows through Hormuz. Its fragility exposes how unipolar security has failed and why multipolar cooperation is the only sustainable path forward. The Strait of Hormuz has long been regarded as the world’s most strategic energy artery, a narrow corridor where geography, politics, and […]
The Israeli airstrike on Hamas leaders in Doha in September 2025 was more than a military operation. It was a symbolic rupture in the very architecture of Middle Eastern diplomacy. For decades, Qatar had cultivated the image of a “neutral mediator,” hosting negotiations between the Taliban and Washington, or acting […]
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