The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, signed between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan on August 7, includes a mutual defense clause and links three major Muslim states. The agreement has raised concerns in Israel and other countries, including Greece and India. However, its viability as a close military alliance is questionable due to divergent threat maps, competition for Sunni leadership, and the complex relations that both Turkey and Pakistan maintain with Iran. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal lends the alliance deterrent weight but...
Since October 7, a lively debate has been underway in professional circles regarding the need to update or revise Israel’s national security strategy. As is well known to those engaged in the field, Israel does not have, and has never had, a national security strategy in the full sense of the term—one that is written, approved by the political leadership, and made public. In practice, the term “security strategy” is used in Israel as a tool that those who invoke it define as they see fit and employ for their own purposes. Yet in the...
Artificial intelligence is not only altering the processing capabilities of computers, but also creating a new economy based on the token as the central unit of measurement for model usage, the demand for computing power, and the economic cost of operating them. The token reflects the scope of inference work—the processing performed by the model in real time—and therefore serves as a direct metric for the consumption of computing resources, including graphics processing units (GPUs), data centers, and energy. In this sense, the token...
Saudi Arabia seeks to adhere to its détente with Iran while taking a more resolute stance against the Islamic Republic’s proxies. While maintaining channels of dialogue with Tehran, in recent weeks Riyadh has demonstrated a willingness to employ military force against the Houthis in Yemen and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, and has even launched a regional security initiative to protect maritime shipping routes in the Red Sea. However, historical experience suggests that Saudi military assertiveness, which the Kingdom has sought to...
This article applies Paul Kennedy’s thesis of imperial overstretch as a structural lens through which to examine Israel’s strategic trajectory in 2026. It does not contend that Israel is an empire, nor that decline is foreordained. Rather, it argues that the mechanism Kennedy identified, namely the tendency for strategic commitments to outgrow the productive base that must finance them, combined with the political incapacity of governing coalitions to redistribute burdens before the corrective window closes, operates at...
This situation report presents data regarding security incidents in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the “Swords of Iron” War. The data includes the scope of launches and alerts carried out by Hamas, Israeli and foreign fatalities, data regarding the hostages, data following the IDF’s ground maneuver, humanitarian aid, the economic situation in Gaza, and more. The data is based on official sources and open-source intelligence (OSINT) collection and is updated on an ongoing basis.
Over the past year, an extensive debate has been underway in Iran regarding its nuclear doctrine and its validity. For decades, the Islamic Republic strove to achieve nuclear threshold capability while refraining from actually developing nuclear weapons, based on the view that such a capability provides deterrence without exposing Iran to the costs associated with a nuclear breakout. However, developments since October 2023, particularly the two American-Israeli strikes on Iran over the past year, have shaken the Iranian security...
The Lebanese leadership’s historic decision to engage in direct talks with Israel and sign the framework agreement in June has sparked extensive internal debate in Lebanon. One facet of this debate has focused on the legal implications of the move, given Lebanese legislation prohibiting contact between Israeli and Lebanese citizens and imposing severe penalties on those who violate the law. For the time being, the Lebanese leadership has refrained from pushing to amend the legislation. Instead, in response to accusations of...
Reactions in Iran to the security agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan reflect a cautious and complex approach regarding its implications. At this stage, most commentators do not view the agreement as a cohesive anti-Iranian military alliance or an “Islamic NATO” capable of shifting the regional balance of power. These commentators emphasize the gaps between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, as well as the ambiguity surrounding their military commitments. However, others identify the agreement as an...
Saudi Arabia is in the midst of an unprecedented economic revolution, through which it seeks to position itself as a regional technological and economic power. At the same time, the entire Middle East is undergoing a process of transformation in terms of the balance of power and regional arrangements, a process involving states seeking to establish a regional order characterized by cooperation and stability, including the United States and the pragmatic Sunni states: Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.
The events that have erupted in the wake of October 7 have underscored the need to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. This article reviews four main definitions: the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition, the most widely accepted in the Western world, which includes examples of the use of double standards and dual loyalty; Natan Sharansky’s 3D model, which emphasizes Delegitimization, Double Standards, and Demonization; the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which...
U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the Board of Peace had reached what he described as a “historic agreement” on the complete disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. administration is now working to implement the agreement in order to offset the sense of failure vis-à-vis Iran and revive the 20-point plan. For its part, Hamas is displaying tactical flexibility in response to Israeli military pressure (the IDF has expanded its control westward from the “Yellow Line” to the “Orange Line”) and has...
