EDITORIAL

Stella Gerani, PhD
(PostDoctoral Fellow at the "Davis Institute for International Relations",Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, ISR This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Adjunct Lecturer in International Relations,
International Hellenic University, Thessaloniki, GRE

Copyright: @ 2026 Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 14 May 2026

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Re-search Institute for European and American Studies

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Turkey, a NATO member since 1952,[NATO Member Countries: https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/organization/nato-member-countries] has emerged as a critical enabler of Lebanese Hezbollah's financial and logistical infrastructure—a role that has deepened markedly since Israel's military campaign severely degraded Hezbollah in 2024 and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria closed traditional overland smuggling routes. This is not a peripheral concern: Turkey's facilitation is documented across five distinct operational vectors—money laundering through front companies, physical cash couriering, airspace and territory used as a transit corridor, active IRGC-Quds Force operations conducted on Turkish soil, and an escalating pattern of high-level political contact between Ankara and Hezbollah-linked figures.... Read more

by Riaan Eksteen Ph.D
(Emeritus ambassador and Research Associate, Department of Political Studies and Governance, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa)

Copyright: @ 2026 Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 14 May 2026

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Re-search Institute for European and American Studies

Foreign ministers of BRICS will convene in India on 14 and 15 May 2026. Abbas Araghchi of Iran is anticipated to attend. The United Arab Emirates is also a member of the Group. The Chinese Foreign Minister will be absent from the meeting in New Delhi because he will be in Beijing for President Trump's meeting with President Xi. The Economic Times of India, on 12 May 2026, describes this as “an intriguing development in global diplomacy.” ... Read more

Sinduja Umandi Wickramasinghe Jayaratne
(Research Fellow at Rabdan Security and Defence Institute in Abu Dhabi'). 

Copyright: @ 2026 Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 12 May 2026

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Re-search Institute for European and American Studies

For over five decades, the Maoist insurgency, commonly known as Naxalism, represented one of the most formidable internal security threats to India. Rooted in the exploitation of socio-economic disparities and tribal marginalization, the movement once commanded a vast Red Corridor that stretched across multiple states and heavily impacted over 120+ districts. However, by 2026, the Indian government declared a historic victory over this decades-long armed rebellion, shrinking the insurgency’s footprint to mere fragments.... Read more

Why the Eastern Mediterranean needs a Lisbon 2.0 doctrine before Turkey, Russia and American uncertainty redraw Europe’s security map

by Shay Gal
(Shay Gal works with governments and defence leadership on sovereign risk, alliance leverage, and cross-theatre security dynamics. He previously served as Vice President of External Relations at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and as a senior advisor to Israeli government ministers.)

Copyright: @ 2026 Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 1 May 2026

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Re-search Institute for European and American Studies

There are moments when a region discovers that its most dangerous error was not about its enemies, but about its friends.

Israel, Greece and Cyprus have reached that moment. Greece has faced it in the Aegean, in islands framed by Ankara as negotiable geography, and in a standing threat of war over rights it is entitled to exercise. Cyprus has lived it through occupation, division, drilling and the normalisation of an illegal reality on European soil. Israel has come to it through Syria, Gaza, Ankara’s rhetoric and the arrival of Turkey as a strategic actor near its operational perimeter. Disputes are used as pressure theatre.... Read more

Evangelia Akritidou
(RIEAS Senior Research Analyst)

Copyright: @ 2026 Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 19 April 2026

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Re-search Institute for European and American Studies

A strategic shift is underway, in which geography, deterrence, and regional architecture have quietly re-positioned Greece from the margins to the center. For years, Greece was not considered a central variable in Israel’s strategic environment. The dominant analytical focus remained on the Gulf, the Levant, and Iran’s expanding network of proxies. That analytical framework is no longer sufficient to describe the current regional reality.... Read more

Prof. Dr. Ilias Iliopoulos is currently teaching International Relations and History at the University of Athens. He was awarded his Ph.D. (Dr. phil) from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. He had long been a Professor of Grand Strategy of the Great Powers, Naval History, and Strategy and Geopolitics of Sea Power at the Hellenic National Defence College and the Naval War College, and an Associate Professor of History of Western Civilization, Diplomacy, and Maritime History at the American College of Greece – Deree College

Copyright: @ 2026 Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 13 April 2026

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Re-search Institute for European and American Studies

In 1991, the then-Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Eyskens famously retorted that “Europe was an economic giant, a political dwarf and a military worm”. 
His dictum has been ascertained during the latest Iranian crisis. For the real story of the conflict is not in the Middle East, but in what this conflict has once again revealed about the so called European Union: the EU did NOT shape the conflict, could NOT protect critical maritime chock-points and vital energy routes, and played NOT the least role either in the course of warfighting or in securing the ceasefire. Albeit all bombastic declarations of Brussels’ nomenclature about “Europe” being a “global power,” “geopolitical actor,” or even “superpower”, it is a plain fact that the EU is NOT a Great Power – nor shall it become one in the years to come. .... Read more