Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)

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Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)

Leading source of critical, alternative analysis of the Middle East for 50 years.

MERIP provides critical, alternative reporting and analysis, focusing on state power, political economy and social hierarchies as well as popular struggles and the role of US policy in the region. MERIP seeks to reach academics, journalists, non-governmental and governmental organizations and informed citizens who want knowledgeable analysis and critical resources about contemporary political deve

lopments. Informed by scholarship and research, MERIP is a curated platform for critical analysis and discussion that brings informed perspectives to a broader audience. The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) was established in 1971 to educate and inform the public about contemporary Middle East affairs. A registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, MERIP publishes a quarterly online magazine, Middle East Report, as well as frequent articles and educational primers on its website.

02/03/2026

Contribute to our summer issue!

MERIP is seeking pitches for our summer issue on visual art and cultural production. The deadline for pitches is February 23, 2026.

To learn more about what we’re looking for and how to pitch go to Merip.org or follow the link in our bio!

01/30/2026

Recent protests in Iran triggered by currency collapse and price shocks expose how sanctions have reconfigured state power, enabling austerity and insider accumulation rather than relief. Moving beyond the endless debate over whether Iran’s crisis is caused by external pressure or internal mismanagement, Ida Nikou shows how the two are intertwined.

Read the full analysis at MERIP.org

Photo: People gather to protest on January 8, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. Anonymous/Getty Images.

01/21/2026

In December, MERIP published the second installment of investigative journalist Adnan Khan’s look at how Europe’s recycling industry is sustained by a downward chain, culminating in Turkey’s factories where migrant workers process polluted waste under deadly conditions. Read the piece at www.merip.org to understand why this system persists despite attempts at regulation.

12/19/2025

This week, MERIP published a review essay of Annemarie Jacir’s Oscar nominated film, Palestine 36, written by contributor Lori Allen. Allen dives into the historical richness of the story Jacir sets out to tell, noting that Palestine 36 succeeds by bringing the hard facts of history to life. The film, Allen writes, reflects Ghassan Kanafani’s materialist analysis of the period, placing Palestinian peasants and their relationship with the land at the center and depicting the resistance as it emerged among their ranks.

To read, go to Merip.org or follow the link in our bio.

10/31/2025

Don’t miss Rafeef Ziadah’s piece that serves as an entry point into our latest issue, The Material Politics of Normalization. Link in bio.

Photo caption: The Cairo West power plant near the Nile river, Cairo, Egypt, 2025. Islam Safwat/Bloomberg via Getty Images

10/21/2025

MERIP’s latest issue is out today, exploring the Material Politics of Normalization, featuring several brilliant contributions on how normalization is hardwired into regional infrastructures in ways that demand new forms of disruption.

Cover art by — who drew these scissors in the shape of the Arabic word for no, لا, on the eve of the first states signing the Abraham Accords in September 2020.

09/18/2025

On the five year anniversary of the first states signing onto the Abraham Accords, Arang Keshavarzian reflects on the logics and effects of these agreements through a review Elham Fakhro’s ‘The Abraham Accords: The Gulf States, Israel, and the Limits of Normalization.’ From our upcoming double issue on the material politics of normalization. Link in bio.

09/03/2025

As the school year kicks off, we asked our readers and contributors about which MERIP pieces they find useful in the classroom. Swipe for some of their recommendations.

Photo captions:
1 - A demonstration at the Third World Conference on Women, in Nairobi, Kenya, July 1985. (William F. Campbell/Getty Images)
2 - Palestinians living with limited electricity in Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip, December 24, 2024. Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images
3 - Demonstrators shout during a protest in Tripoli, Lebanon, November 2, 2019. Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
4 - Cover of issue 311, featuring “After Oil (Das Island/Das Crude),” by DESIGN EARTH.
5 - Boys play in front of burning oilfields in Qayyara, south of Mosul, Iraq, 2016. Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
6 - Cover of issue 310, featuring an ink on paper drawing from Galal Yousif’s “Forgotten Crisis Series 2024.”

08/27/2025

As Israel’s genocidal assault produces famine in Gaza—most acute in Gaza Governorate, where, according to UN estimates, more than half a million people face starvation, destitution, and preventable death—the cover of our latest issue turns to Raed Issa’s Faces from My Homeland. The series speaks to creation amid devastation by transforming discarded medicine packages and everyday remnants like coffee into portraits that refuse erasure. Read more about the cover and the issue at merip.org

08/12/2025

As famine tightens its grip on Gaza under Israel’s blockade of food and aid, children and pregnant women are among the hardest hit.

Between October 2023 and October 2024, Hala Shoman gathered voice notes, texts, emails, and calls from those enduring—or witnessing—reproductive violence in Gaza.

For MERIP, she documents how Israel weaponizes reproduction: from direct attacks on reproductive health and infrastructure, to the conditions under which women and men are forced to conceive and give birth, to sexual violence as a tool of reproductive erasure.

Photo: Palestinian women sew diapers at a workshop in Rafah, February 18, 2024, amid severe shortages of basic necessities. (Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)

07/30/2025

In Sudan, the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces entered its third year in April 2025. The conflict—which has triggered the world’s worst displacement crisis, nearly 13 million people—has its roots in the failed political transition following the overthrow of long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. In our latest issue, Marya Hannun, MERIP’s managing editor, interviewed Raga Makawi, a Sudanese editor and researcher who studies the intersections of revolution, materiality and identity in post Bashir Sudan. They discussed the longer history of feminist and gender-based organizing in the country, how gender was mobilized within the revolution and what the ongoing war has meant for women.

Photo: Women hold a banner reading in Arabic “Sudanese Feminist Union—No to war, we will not be ruled by a partnership of blood,” in Khartoum on December 19, 2022, protesting the agreement signed by military and civilian leaders, which critics dismissed as vague. (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

07/23/2025

Deportations of Afghans from Iran have seen a dramatic increase in the wake of the twelve days of war provoked by Israel’s unprecedented attack on Iran in June. But Afghans have long been treated as a racialized “other” in Iran, with consequences for labor and migration. In our spring issue, wrote about these dynamics through the prism of the 2016 documentary ‘Overruled,’ by Farnaz and Mohammad Reza Jurabchian. Read the piece at the link in our bio.

Photo: An Afghan broom maker in the Iranian city of Mashhad. Broom making (Jarubafi) is a profession predominantly taken up by Afghans in the city. Reza Heidari

Second Photo: Gol Agha in a still from the 2016 documentary film “Overruled” by Farnaz and Mohammad Reza Jurabchian. The original title in Persian is “Eteraz Vared Nist.”

Address

PO Box 10659
Chicago, IL
60610

Website

https://www.merip.org/

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