Open Dialogue Research Journal
Saudi Arabia’s importance to Middle Eastern stability can no longer be explained only through oil, military spending, or its alliance with the United States. Riyadh increasingly behaves as a regional system manager whose interests depend on limiting disorder. Vision 2030, foreign investment, tourism, logistics, and technology all require a predictable […]
Sixty days – that was the window the June memorandum of understanding gave Washington and Tehran to turn a fragile lull into a lasting peace. The clock ran out on Monday, August 17, and instead of a deal, the two sides produced the opposite: a senior Iranian official told Reuters […]
On Sunday evening, just hours before the annual US-South Korea “Ulchi Freedom Shield” exercises were set to begin, Donald Trump issued an order to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to significantly scale back US participation. In his Truth Social post, he wrote: “Given my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un […]
The latest incidents of Israeli settler violence in the villages of Qusra and Kour, located in the northern occupied West Bank, have again caught international attention, reaching the halls of the United Nations with a gravity that, sadly, is unlikely to have much effect. Towards the end of July, the […]
The widening confrontation between Iran and the United States places China in an unusually influential but dangerous position. Beijing is Iran’s most important economic partner, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a strategic rival of Washington. Yet China is also […]
For generations, Jewish Americans have been among the Democratic Party’s most reliable constituencies, consistently supporting its candidates and identifying with its commitments to civil rights, social justice, and minority protections. Yet an increasingly vocal segment of Jewish Democrats now says the relationship is under strain. As debates over Israel’s military […]
The 36th NATO Summit, held in Ankara on July 7–8, 2026, marked far more than another annual gathering of allied leaders. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, instability across the Middle East, growing strategic competition with China, and increasingly visible disagreements between the United States and its European […]
As of August 2026, Syria’s government under President Ahmed Al-Sharaa appears considerably stronger than it did after Bashar al-Assad’s fall in December 2024. Damascus controls most major cities, has recovered important oil and gas fields, secured sanctions relief, joined the international coalition against “Islamic State” and established working relationships with […]
As of July 23, 2026, the U.S. war with Iran has moved beyond the question of whether Washington can strike Iranian targets. It can. The United States has overwhelming military superiority in airpower, naval reach, intelligence, cyber operations, logistics, and precision weapons. The real question is whether this military superiority […]
It remains a prickly reminder that Australia remains an embarrassed vassal of power, annexed to the security interests of another state basking in imperial and fast diminishing splendour. Pine Gap, known more technically as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), is a largely US-operated effort in Alice Springs, Central […]
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