On March 1, 2024, the Islamic Republic of Iran will hold elections for the sixth term of the Assembly of Experts. The major responsibility of this 88-man institution, comprising qualified clerics, is to choose the future supreme leader after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death, or is rendered incapable of fulfilling the position’s responsibilities. Tehran’s political system, which relies on a complex set of institutional arrangements including a central personality, has held up despite internal strains.

Since the 1979 Revolution, Tehran has turmoil, from the war with Iraq in the 1980s to Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign more recently. Why and how has the Iranian system persevered despite its adversaries’ efforts, and self-inflicted wounds? What are the control mechanisms or safety-valve functions within the system that have kept it going? What can we expect from the day after Khamenei?

In this webinar, the Middle East Institute will host Professor Mehran Kamrava to explain Iran’s resilience and key findings from his recently-released book, Righteous Politics: Power and Resilience in Iran. Prof Kamrava will also touch on Tehran’s foreign policy domain, which he observes as increasingly securitised in recent decades.

The post-Arab Spring collapse of decades-old regimes inaugurated a decade of re-shaping for the geopolitical order in the Middle East and North Africa region. A multipolar disorder ensued, solidified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Amid general bewilderment, the small monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) spent the decade between 2011 and 2022 trying to re-shape regional equilibria as protagonists. Cinzia Bianco’s book applies an original theoretical framework to unpack the threat perceptions and strategic calculus driving the behaviour of these new impactful regional players. Six chapters look at the GCC monarchies individually. Bianco challenges commonly-held narratives, and goes beyond attention-grabbing headlines, thus provides reading keys to the past, present, and future of policy-making in the Gulf monarchies, which are middle powers destined to play an oversized role in the new multipolar world. Against that backdrop, the book talk will allow us to reflect on the major evolutions of Gulf states in the past decade, and venture on their future trajectories.

Between November 30 and December 12, 2023, the United Arab Emirates hosted the 28th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A major outcome of COP 28 was the conclusion of the first-ever Global Stocktake — a mechanism to measure collective progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. For fossil fuel producers, who were granted the highest representation in the history of COP, the inclusion of language on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner” was perhaps the most striking of the COP 28 outcomes. This webinar will explore the following questions:

• What are the main outcomes of COP 28?

The aim of the S R Nathan Distinguished Lecture is to provide greater awareness and understanding of the modern Middle East. This lecture provides a forum for statesmen, internationally prominent scholars and public intellectuals to express their views on key issues. The lecture series is named in honour of Singapore’s late former president, Mr S R Nathan, who encouraged a deeper understanding of the Middle East region in Singapore.

The 2023 S R Nathan Distinguished Lecture was organised by Middle East Institute (NUS).

This year’s distinguished speaker was General (Ret.) David H. Petraeus, who served in the US military for 37 years, including several combat commands.

Following his retirement from the US Army, General Petraeus served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During his tenure, the CIA made significant achievements in the global war on terror, established important digital initiatives, and made significant investments in the agency’s most important asset – its human capital.

This year’s format featured a conversation between General Petraeus and Chairman of Middle East Institute Bilahari Kausikan.

This public lecture was conducted both in-person and via Zoom on Wednesday, 13 December 2023.

Between November 30 and December 10, 2023, the United Arab Emirates will host the 28th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It becomes the fourth Arab country to host the event. COP 28 brings the world together at a critical moment for humanity, as we stand at the halfway point between the Paris Agreement and the 2030 deadline for GHG emissions to decline. This webinar raises the questions: What can we expect from the UAE as host of COP 28? Will the event be a course-correction COP? Perhaps more importantly,  how will governments and businesses adapt to this momentum and implement practical climate solutions?

To answer these questions and more, the Middle East Institute and the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Singapore will bring a panel of experts from the both countries for their views on these questions, and their implications for governments and businesses.

Throughout history, the Middle East has been locked in engagements with the West through crusades, wars, colonialism and terrorism. However, beyond the clichés and convenient facades lie many lesser known facets from economic transformation to climate change. This last closing lecture aims to summarise the different sessions and give you an overview of the region, its impacts on Singapore and why should Singapore care about.

Are Islam and Malay culture in Southeast Asia becoming more Arabised? Several academics and policymakers reckon that Muslims in Southeast Asia, whom they once regarded as the “smiling face of Islam”, are now alienating their cultural practices by mimicking Middle Eastern fashion and lifestyle. They shun Malay words, dressing, and food, in favour of Middle Eastern lifestyles in the name of being better Muslims. This lecture examines critically dominant images of Southeast Asian Islam, focussing on three countries, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. It highlights the interaction between the region and the Middle East. Applying the socio-historical approach, the lecture makes three arguments: (1) while Islam originated from the Middle East, the type of Islam

The lecture will discuss shifting patterns of further and higher education choices of young people in Saudi Arabia under Vision 2030 and how these shifts influence and are influenced by new labour market trends in the Kingdom.

This talk offers a lively discussion of five common stereotypes of oil/gas in the Middle East

Marked by hot and arid climate and vast disparities of security and wealth, climate change brings unique challenges to the Middle East. The region is already battling with common challenges of water scarcity, desertification, biodiversity loss and low levels of food self-sufficiency, aggravated by climate change. Temperatures in the region have already risen by 1.5°C — twice the global increase over the past three decades — and climate models for the region until the end of the century estimate a continuous rise. Rainfall in the region has become more variable and the intensity and frequency of climate-related hazards such as extreme temperatures, storms, floods and droughts have become more visible and are likely to increase because of climate change, exacerbating existing environmental, socio-economic and security challenges. The objectives of