Washington Hosts the Sixth Meeting of the US-Russia Dialog on the Middle East
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On February 21–23, 2019, Washington, DC, hosted the sixth meeting of the U.S.-Russia Middle East Dialogue group, organized by Washington Middle East Institute in partnership with Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the U.S. Department of Defense.
Dialogue meetings are held regularly twice a year from July 2016. The aim of the U.S.-Russia Middle East Dialogue group is to exchange unofficial opinions on the situation in the region, identify coinciding and divergent interests of the United States and Russia in the Middle East, assess the possible dynamics of regional conflicts, and elaborate specific proposals on the Middle East issues for the administration offices of Russia and the U.S.
The dialog group brings together a core group of American and Russian experts in the regional studies, who represent different research centers of the two countries. Aleksandr Aksenyonok, RIAC Vice-President; Andrey Kortunov, RIAC Director General; Vitaly Naumkin, President of the RAS Institute of Oriental Studies, RIAC Member; Ruslan Pukhov, Director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, RIAC member; Irina Zvyagelskaya, RIAC expert, Senior Researcher at RAS Institute of Oriental Studies; Ivan Safranchuk, Associate Professor, Department of Political Process, MGIMO University; and Nikolay Surkov, Associate Professor at the Oriental Studies Department (MGIMO), RIAC expert; attended the meeting In Washington.
The discussion focused on the general international political background of Russia-the U.S. interaction in the Middle East, short-term and long-term scenarios for the development of the situation in northeastern Syria, the risks of Iranian-Israeli escalation in the south-west of the country, the likely development of events in the Idlib region and other issues.