Ahmet Üzümcü, Senior Network member and former Director General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) during the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, outlines the steps the international community can take to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use by Russia in Ukraine.
Ilana Bet-El, Senior Associate Fellow at the European Leadership Network, is joined by Salome Samadashvili, a prominent member of the opposition of the Georgian parliament, to discuss the protests that have erupted on the streets of Tbilisi since the Georgian parliament voted to designate Western-funded NGOs as foreign agents. Critics of the new law allege it negatively impacts Georgia’s aspirations to join the EU and further bolsters the perception that Georgia’s government is aligning itself with Russia.
As the situation on the battlefield has changed in recent months to the detriment of Ukraine, a “prolonged war” where there is no decisive military victory on either side is the most likely scenario, writes ELN Policy Fellow Katia Glod. Based on a scenario-building workshop with experts from Ukraine, Russia, and wider Europe, she outlines what implications this could have for Europe and how the EU and UK can prepare for it.
Nobumasa Akiyama discusses Japanese perspectives of strategic risks in East Asia, including the North Korean threat and navigating Japan’s relationship with China amid great power rivalry.
Following Iran’s direct attack on Israel on 13th April, Hemidreaza Azizi examines both the official and unofficial discourse in Iran in recent days. He writes that most political experts and analysts in Iran seem to agree that Iran’s goal has been to restore deterrence and not to enter into war. However, concerns about the outbreak of an unintended war and its destructive consequences appear to be more pronounced among experts than among official figures.
Ilana Bet-El, Senior Associate Fellow at the ELN, speaks with Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief of the Forward and former New York Times Bureau Chief in Israel, and Dr Roxane Farmanfarmaian of Cambridge University, Senior Associate Fellow at the ELN, and an expert on Iran and the Middle East. They discuss their own experiences of 7 October, their reactions to the war in Gaza, the implications for the media, geopolitics and the region, and the escalatory nature of the war following Iran’s increased role in the conflict over the past week.