7 - Policy Implications and Future Research

Summary

In Chapter 7, the authors home in on the policy implications and avenues for future research, which build upon the empirical and theoretical findings that are explicated in Chapters 3–6. The discussion herein revolves around the following questions: What do the empirical operational code results mean for the day-to-day conduct of the politics of the MENA region? How do these at-a-distance leadership analysis findings and inferences help us to make sense of MENA’s international relations today? How does the actor-specific analysis in this book cue regional and international policymakers on understanding and engaging with certain political leaders in the MENA region? This chapter addresses these questions through utilizing a case study approach. These four salient cases are: 1) Iran’s nuclear program and the diplomatic crisis with the United States (2010–2022); 2) the Egyptian crisis in the wake of the Arab uprisings (2011–2014); 3) the Syrian civil war (2011–2022); and 4) the rise and fall of the Islamic State and its top leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in Iraq and Syria (2013–2019). This chapter briefly introduces these cases and discusses how individual-level leadership analyses can be used to make sense of these crises.