The MENA Mix: Regional Recap is a monthly video podcast, produced by the Institute for Middle East Options (IMEO). Each episode features rotating experts who unpack and analyze key news stories shaping the Middle East and North Africa.
Our June episode brought together Anna Borshchevskaya (Senior Fellow, The Washington Institute) and Sara Bazoobandi (Research Associate, Institute for Security Policy, Kiel University). Amongst other topics, they discussed the Iran and Israel conflict, Russia's regional position, and how Ukraine impacted Russia's failure to aid Iran.
Anna Borshchevskaya
Dr. Anna Borshchevskaya is the Harold Grinspoon senior fellow in The Washington Institute's Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Program on Great Power Competition and the Middle East, focusing on Russia's policy toward the Middle East. In addition, she is a contributor to Oxford Analytica and a contributing editor to the military, defense, national security, and politics website 19FortyFive.com. In June 2024, she served as a consultant for the US Department of State on defense strategies in the Black Sea region. She is the author of "Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence," which Financial Times listed among top 12 books to read on Syria in December 2024. She is the author of the February 2016 Institute monograph, "Russia in the Middle East."
Sara Bazoobandi
Dr. Sara Bazoobandi is an associate research at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, where she was a Marie Curie fellow between 2021 and 2024. In addition, she is a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Security Politics at Kiel University. She is also a non-resident fellow at ISPI in Milan and the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. She was previously non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and Chatham House. Between 2013 and 2018, she was a senior lecturer in international political economy at Regent’s University London.