Algeria's second parliamentary elections since the 2019 Hirak protest movement produced a legislature that looks different on its surface but changes little beneath it. A new assembly with its first female speaker sits atop a system built well before polling day to deliver a predetermined outcome.
Tehran and D.C. have been stuck in their own catch-22, both have been seeking to avoid a return to active fighting, but have no real capacity to cooperate diplomatically.
Five years after seizing Kabul, the Taliban have consolidated their rule over Afghanistan, but the same failures that helped them defeat the Republic are now giving rise to a new generation of insurgents.
The systems that once maintained Libya’s status quo are now beginning to fail, with the Boulos process attempting to create a new one. Yet the competing drives to move forward and keep things the same are increasingly at odds, sometimes with violent consequences.
The U.S.-Iran War and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have upended traditional energy transport networks, with countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iraq now looking to change how their oil is moved.
