The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Tensions have been deepening across the Middle East, with Israeli groups pushing for settlements in Gaza as US strikes on Iran continue. Daniel Martin discusses further with James M. Dorsey.

James discusses the Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz, Yemen, and US-Israeli relations on Radio Islam.

If you've been following the 2026 World Cup, you've obviously seen the football, but you've also probably seen a lot of Donald Trump. The US President made himself part of the tournament after FIFA President Gianni Infantino awarded him the organisation's first-ever "Peace Prize" in December. Fast forward to the Folarin Balogun decision, where one phone call from Trump was enough to reverse a red card on a US player. Fans, coaches, and lawmakers called it a clear breach of FIFA's political neutrality. To many people, the way politics is impacting the game might seem new, but has it ever really been any different? We discuss this on BFM 89.9 with James M. Dorsey, adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and one of the most-cited voices on sport and politics.

The Saudi-led coalition says it intercepted ballistic missiles launched by Yemen's Houthis towards the kingdom's south. The Houthis say they targeted Abha International Airport in response to Saudi strikes that damaged the runway at Sanaa airport. James M. Dorsey from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies discusses the escalating Saudi Arabia-Yemen crisis on TRT World.

The Strait of Hormuz, alongside Lebanon, where Israel continues to strike at alleged Hezbollah targets despite a ceasefire, is not the only Middle Eastern theatre at risk of escalated violence with potential regional and global consequences.

The fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran appears to be hanging by a thread. After fresh fighting erupted and Iranian attacks targeted commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, US President Donald Trump declared the agreement "over" and warned that American bombings would "get much worse" if Tehran failed to back down. The latest exchange has seen US strikes on Iranian military targets met with retaliatory attacks on American military facilities in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, raising fears of a wider regional conflict. Are Iran and the United States heading back to open conflict, or is this the latest round of brinkmanship before diplomacy resumes? On The Big Story, Hongbin Jeong and Dr James M. Dorsey, Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, unpack what the latest escalation means for the Middle East, the global economy, and whether there's still any path back to peace.

The drums of war are beating again in Yemen. A series of recent incidents suggests that both Iran and Saudi Arabia are more assertively supporting their Yemeni allies at the risk of shattering an informal four-year ceasefire in the kingdom's war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. The recent incidents stand in stark contrast to the kingdom's tacit outreach to Iran. Saudi Arabia sent a delegation to this week's funeral proceedings for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's assassinated supreme leader, enabled the indirect sale of five aging Boeing 777-200ERs to an Iranian airline, and proposed a post-war regional security architecture that would include Iran. Moreover, Saudi Arabia, which intervened in Yemen in 2015 to counter Houthi military advances, has not closed the door on a negotiated resolution of the conflict. “The political solution remains on the table; power-sharing, which could save (the Houthis) from destruction. The Houthis remain a Yemeni player with the right to be a partner in power, not to dominate it,” said Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a Saudi columnist who often reflects official Saudi thinking. Fuelling the rising tensions are rival perceptions of windows of opportunity created by the failure of the US-Iranian memorandum that extended the Iran war ceasefire and created the basis for negotiations to end the war to address Iran's support for its Arab partners, including the Houthis.

James discusses on CNBC prospects for the US-Iran negotiations and US President Donald Trump's interview with the network.

Lebanon looms large as a grey swan that could run roughshod over US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war.

Lebanon looms large as a grey swan that could run roughshod over US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war.

Geography gives Iran a leg up in the struggle to determine the strategic Strait of Hormuz's future and potentially with it the region's balance of power. Iran's strategic advantage is rooted in the Marxist principle of possession is ownership. As a result, tensions in the Strait are about who controls the Strait.

Widely diverging US and Iranian attitudes towards Iran's nuclear programme are not just about preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons. It's also about perceptions of sovereignty and efforts by non-nuclear states, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, to level the playing field with the world's core nuclear powers, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France, and perceived double standards built into the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) when it comes to haves and have-nots. In contrast to Iran, Saudi Arabia, insisting on its right to enrich uranium, this year successfully negotiated a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States that allows the kingdom to enrich without intrusive supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite evidence over the years that it is creating some of the building blocks for a nuclear weapons programme. Saudi Arabia's nuclear focus serves various goals: diversifying its economy, reducing its dependence on fossil fuels, countering a potential future Iranian nuclear capability, and enhancing efforts to ensure that Saudi Arabia, rather than Iran, emerges as the Middle East's long-term dominant power. None of this is to ignore the fact that the Islamic Republic, at times, has worked to become a nuclear threshold state, if not to develop a nuclear weapon.

James discusses the US-Iran negotiations, the Middle East's changing geopolitics, and Yemen on Radio Islam.

A Turkish-Saudi agreement to revive the Ottoman-era Hijaz Railway tells the story of geopolitical realignment in the wake of the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, including the future of Iran's relations with the Gulf monarchies. The agreement is the tale of efforts to reduce regional dependence on the Strait of Hormuz, diverging Gulf attitudes towards cooperation with Israel, dashed US hopes of including Israel in a rail and shipping network that would connect the Gulf and India to Europe, diminished prospects for Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations, Turkey's evolving regional ambitions, and post-Bashar al-Assad Syria's reintegration into regional dynamics. The agreement is also indicative of a broader shift in the wake of the Iran war towards alternative export routes and hardened critical infrastructure that will impact the Gulf's geopolitics.

The negotiations between the United States and Iran remain fragile with both contradicting the other on what may or may not have been agreed. James discusses the negotiations' prospects on TRT World.

It's time to rethink policy towards Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The need to think outside of the box has become more urgent with Middle Eastern states and the international community seeking alternative transport routes to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent of the world's oil flows in peacetime.' Rethinking policy isn't that far-fetched given the United Arab Emirates and Qatar's efforts to cut deals with Iran to ensure that the Islamic Republic does not attack their energy and other infrastructure if hostilities in the Iran war erupt again. It's also not a big leap from cutting deals with Yemen to rethinking attitudes towards the Houthis, given that they de facto govern a state in a part of Yemen, albeit ruthlessly.

James discusses the US Iran memorandum of understanding on Radio Islam.

James discusses the cost of the Iran war on TRT World.

By James M. Dorsey Out of character, Iran gave US President Donald Trump an unexpected birthday present. It agreed on Mr. Trump's 80th to the final text of a memorandum of understanding that will end the Iran war and frame negotiations on the future of Iran's nuclear programme, final arrangements for shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of sanctions, and the release of frozen Iranian assets. The gift came with a price tag.

James discusses the US-Iran agreement on BFM 89.9

James discusses on Radio Islam this week's rollercoaster in the Iran war.

There is one thing US President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders agree on. They both religiously adhere to the principle that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

With an unprecedented eight teams competing, the Middle East casts its long shadow over this year's World Cup; not always for the right reasons. The shadow may not always cloud the pitch, even though several teams could spring a surprise. Think of Tunisia in 2022 beating France, Saudi Arabia defeating Argentina, and Morocco reaching the semi-finals in the Qatar World Cup, the first African team to make it to the final four. In this year's tournament, imagine the United States, the first World Cup organiser to host a team from a country with which it is at war, playing Iran at some point during the tournament, or Iran encountering Qatar or Saudi Arabia, countries it has bombed during the Iran war and continues to threaten.

James discusses the Iranian-Israeli tit-for-tat, the Lebanon war, and US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war on CNA938.

Like the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and last June's 12-day Israel-Iran war, this year's Iran war has reshaped the Islamic Republic. The Iran-Iraq war fuelled the Islamic Republic's initial embrace of nationalism at the expense of the revolutionary zeal that drove the 1979 toppling of the Shah and the Republic's first 18 months. This and last year's war cemented the transition and emboldened a new generation of confident leaders who were formed in the war of the 1980s and have since proven themselves in their ability to prepare for and stand their ground against overwhelming US military power. Their newly found confidence frames the Islamic Republic's strategy and goals in negotiations to end the war, including their insistence that Iran will retain control of the Strait of Hormuz, even if that primarily means the ability to disrupt and deny free passage through the waterway rather than absolute control.

James discusses this week's Iran war developments, Gulf splits on post-war relations with Iran, and the Middle East's shadow hanging over the 2026 World Cup.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stands accused of waging war in his personal rather than Israel's national interest. Mr. Netanyahu's critics argue that had the prime minister focussed on Israel's national interest rather than his personal concerns, Israel would have long sought to end hostilities in Gaza and Lebanon and, perhaps, lobbied US President Donald Trump less hard for military action against Iran. Focusing on Israel's national interests would also have spared Israel the reputational, diplomatic, and economic damage it has suffered that will take years to repair and require significant political and policy changes. Analysts define Mr. Netanyahu's personal interests as wanting to escape conviction in a corruption trial, betting on war boosting his lagging chances in elections scheduled for October, and ensuring that his legacy is one of military victory and enhanced Israeli security rather than responsibility for failures that led to Hamas's devastating October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and presiding over the worst reputational crisis in Israel's history. Polls suggest that most Israelis distrust Mr. Netanyahu, even if they empathise with his security and military policies. To be fair, Mr. Netanyahu's policies are as much informed by his personal interests as they are by his political and ideological beliefs. Even so, Mr. Netanyahu's ability to prioritise his personal ambitions raises multiple questions that are not simply answered by the fact that Messrs. Trump, his predecessor, Joe Biden, and other Western leaders have given the prime minister a long leash. Some of these questions go to the heart of problems with democracy that are accentuated by the rise of a critical mass of illiberal and autocratic world leaders, who have hollowed out democratic institutions or reinforced existing autocratic structures. Others have more to do with Israel's almost 60-year occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands, the country's education system, including the prepping of youth for military service, refusal to acknowledge that nations and people have equal rights, and the ability to flout international law and moral and ethical norms in the name of national security.

A US-Iranian tit-for-tat in the Strait of Hormuz amounts to a game of chicken that risks spinning out of control. US President Donald Trump's impatience with the grinding process of indirect negotiations to reopen the strategic Strait and end the Iran war, and the president's insistence, amplified by senior administration officials, that the United States could revert to military action, enhances the risk. “It's time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You've been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!” Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social platform, addressing Iran. The tit-for-tat is as much a calibrated effort by both the United States and Iran to frame the exchanges as not rising to the level of a breach of the fragile ceasefire as they are a window on what a revival of hostilities might look like.

James argues on TRT World that for Iran and the US a Lebanon ceasefire is not just about Hezbollah. It's also about leverage in US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war.

Disregard the US, European, Iraqi, and Gulf states' rejection of Iran's insistence that it will control the Strait of Hormuz no matter what. The fact of the matter is that Middle Eastern states are factoring in permanent Iranian control into their longer-term thinking about shaping the region's post-war balance of power and security architecture, even though they may not admit as much publicly. Already, the public US, European, and Gulf state consensus rejecting Iran's imposition of fees on ships transiting the Strait appears to be fracturing.

US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war have evolved into a performative tug-of-war over who has the longer breath rather than an all-out effort to resolve differences, given that neither US President Donald Trump nor Iran wants a full resumption of hostilities. Mr. Trump admitted as much during this week's public Cabinet meeting that resembled a sycophantic choir praising the conductor. The meeting enabled Mr. Trump to showcase his perceived achievements and shore up support for his desperate search for an off-ramp that would allow him to declare victory in the war credibly and would justify his 2018 abrogation of the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran's nuclear programme. The abrogation put the United States on a slippery slope, facilitated by President Joe Biden during his interregnum between the two Trump administrations, that ended up in the February 28 US-Israeli assault on Iran.

For Iran, control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz is about dominance in a post-Iran war era, in which the Gulf is looking at an adapted, if not new, regional security architecture.

James argues on TRT that the United States and Iran are nowhere close to an agreement to end the Iran war.

Three months into the Iran war, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have largely been absent, depriving Iran of an opportunity to increase further pressure on Saudi Arabia, global energy markets, and international trade. The Houthis could have bolstered Iranian leverage by disrupting shipping in the narrow Bab al-Mandab waterway, which connects the Suez Canal with the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Some ten per cent of global trade passes through the strategic waterway. The disruption would have come on top of Iran's throttling of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent of the world's oil flowed before the war and the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. It would also have threatened Saudi Arabia's efforts to enhance existing and develop alternative export routes that circumvent the Strait of Hormuz by directing oil and trade to the kingdom's Red Sea coast. The Houthis have good reason to hold their fire and limit their support for Iran to statements and the symbolic firing of a few missiles in the direction of Israel in the first month of the war.

James discusses on Radio Islam this week's Middle East developments.

A resumption of Iran war hostilities could jeopardise Pakistani mediation and turn the South Asian nation into a combatant as differences between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates shape Gulf relations with the sub-continent.

James discusses on TRT World the Iran war's economic fallout in the Gulf states

The Gulf states' divergent responses to the Iran war are part of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)'s DNA. Founded in Abu Dhabi in 1981 by the region's six monarchies, the GCC aimed to be a hub for military coordination, intelligence sharing, and economic integration in response to the 1979 anti-monarchical Islamic revolution in Iran. The monarchies established the GCC on the back of their support for the 1980 Iraqi invasion of revolutionary Iran to the tune of US$60 billion. The GCC's creation also followed the Shah of Iran's seizure a decade earlier of three islands at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, which the United Arab Emirates claimed as it declared its independence in the wake of Britain's withdrawal from the region. The GCC has come a long way since its early days, when Emirati merchant families feared that they would be marginalised by their Saudi and Kuwaiti competitors who were wealthier, more powerful, and more numerous, even if the rivalry has more recently become fiercer and more pronounced as a result of diametrically opposed regional policies and the Iran war.

A US and Bahraini draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a halt to Iran's throttling of traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz has spotlighted US-Chinese disagreements rather than the consensus President Donald Trump claims he achieved in this week's talks with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. A Security Council vote on the resolution would be a litmus test of the degree to which Messrs. Trump and Xi had reached a meeting of the minds in Beijing on Iran that went beyond platitudes on which both men could agree and would camouflage their differences.

James discusses the struggle for the Strait of Hormuz, US President Donald Trump's visit to China, US-Gulf relations, and the return of sectarianism on Radio Islam.

US President Donald Trump has rejected Iran's response to peace talks as tensions rise ahead of his trip to China, while global powers prepare military plans to restore trade routes through the Strait of Hormuz. CNA938's Daniel Martin speaks with James M. Dorsey, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.

The United States and Iran are closer to a deal that would end the Iran war. James M. Dorsey tells TRT World why that does not mean that they are close to reaching agreement.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on thin ice when he declared this week on the White House press podium that “Operation Epic Fury is concluded.” Mr. Rubio's reference to the codename of the two-month-old US-Israeli assault on Iran echoes George W. Bush's 2003 Iraq war “Mission Accomplished” declaration, eight years before the president withdrew US forces from the country. Even so, both the United States and Iran are, at least for now, careful to ensure that a four-week-old shaky ceasefire remains in place. The question is for how long. None of the combatants -the United States, Israel, and Iran - likely want the war's lay of the land to settle into either a slow-grinding war of attrition or a long-term no war-no-peace situation.

The good news is that Iran's latest ceasefire proposal apparently includes elements that US President Donald Trump finds worthwhile considering, even if he insists that it doesn't go far enough. The bad news is that the US and Iranian positions remain so far apart that a degree of renewed military conflict seems inevitable.

The gap between the US and Iranian positions is widening. Whatever understandings existed have vanished. Driving the widening of the gap are US inflexibility, the increased influence of Iranian hardliners due to the war, and the expectation that domestic and economic pressure will force the other to blink first. The question is whether the widening gap takes on a life of its own, with a renewal of hostilities making a return to negotiations in the near future next to impossible, or constitutes brinkmanship to push the other to concede first. Which way the pendulum will swing hangs in the balance.

Celebrated Orban's defeat-That may have been premature by James M. Dorsey

An Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has arrived in Islamabad for talks with Pakistan's leadership, as uncertainty hangs over potential negotiations over the weekend. Iran's foreign ministry says no direct talks with the US are planned in Islamabad, adding that Tehran will instead relay its position through Pakistan. But in a contradictory statement, the White House says Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to travel to Pakistan on Saturday for face to face discussions with Iran. James M. Dorsey, joins TRT World from Singapore. He is an adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

The US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz threatens to backfire as the Trump administration and Iran seek to gain the upper hand. Iran assumes that US President Donald Trump believes it's a matter of days, or at most weeks, before the blockade's economic and military pressure compels the Islamic Republic to compromise on at least some of its demands. Mr. Trump has conditioned the lifting of the blockade on Iran putting forward a “unified” proposal that leads to an agreement on ending the war. The implication is that the proposal would have to differ fundamentally from Iran's hitherto consistent position. That is not Iran's perspective. On the contrary, Iran operates on the principle that time is on its side.

Will the Iran war gun remain silent by James M. Dorsey

It's going to take more than a knife-edge game of bluff poker to get US-Iranian talks back on track. To successfully pull back from the brink, both the United States and Iran would have to fundamentally alter the assumptions underlying their negotiation strategy and what they hope to achieve in talks. That may be a tall order, particularly for President Donald Trump, who clings to the fiction of already having achieved total victory in Iran, an inflated perception of his negotiating skills and ability to dictate terms, and an overestimation of the powers of his office and country, and of what military superiority can achieve. Mr. Trump's belief that the US-Israeli air campaign has rendered Iran militarily impotent, inflicted incalculable infrastructural damage, and that Iran is a one-man dictatorship rather than a multi-layered governance system reinforces his flawed perception of reality. On the bright side, Mr. Trump, like Iran, would prefer a negotiated resolution rather than escalation of hostilities once the current ceasefire expires on April 22. The problem is that neither the president nor Iran, both convinced that they have the upper hand, wants a resolution at any price.

The 1987 Iran-Iraq Tanker War offers important lessons for today's US-Iranian stand-off in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The war erupted as a subset of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war after Iraq's navy attacked Iranian tankers and oil facilities. The similarities between the Tanker War and the battle for the Strait are significant.