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Amine Ayoub

Middle East Forum Fellow/North Africa Risk Consultant

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Jun 19, 2026, 7:52 PM

Shifting the Border to the Nile: The UK’s Desperate Bid to Buy Off North Africa

The Mediterranean Sea is no longer the southern border of Europe. As of this week, that boundary has been officially relocated to the banks of the Nile and the sweeping sands of the Sahara. UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper’s...

Jun 16, 2026, 6:53 AM

The EU’s New Migration Pact Will Make Libya’s Factions Richer and Entrenched

The European Union's new Pact on Migration and Asylum entered into force on June 12, and Brussels is already treating it as a bureaucratic achievement. It is, instead, a mechanism for subsidizing Libya's permanent civil war. The logic runs as...

Jun 15, 2026, 4:42 AM

Camp David’s Security Annex Was Built for 1979. It Shows.

Three years ago this month, an Egyptian conscript named Mohamed Salah crossed the border near the Kerem Shalom crossing and opened fire on Israeli soldiers, killing three before being shot dead. The Israeli military has since described the June...

Jun 13, 2026, 10:18 AM

Algeria’s Military Diplomacy Theater: Strategic Ambiguity as a Tool of Survival

Admiral John Wikoff's two-day visit to Algiers last week, culminating in meetings with Defense Minister-Delegate and Army Chief of Staff General Said Chengriha, was framed by Algerian state media as a milestone in bilateral military partnership. The optics were...

Jun 12, 2026, 5:31 AM

Egypt’s Turkey Embrace Is a Test Washington Is Failing

Egypt's decision to conduct simultaneous joint military exercises with Turkey and Oman this week has been greeted with the usual diplomatic boilerplate about exchanging training expertise and unifying operational concepts. In Washington, it has barely registered at all. That...

Jun 11, 2026, 3:03 AM

The Red Sea Council Egypt Wants Would Lock Out America

When Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty stood alongside his Eritrean counterpart Osman Saleh in Cairo this week and demanded rapid activation of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Council, the announcement was framed as a call for regional...

Jun 10, 2026, 4:04 AM

Tunisia’s Legal Trap: Saied Has Perfected the Art of Jailing Journalists

The Arab Spring's only surviving democracy was supposed to be proof that the Middle East could produce something durable. Instead, Tunisia under Kais Saied has become a laboratory for a more sophisticated form of autocracy: one that destroys press...

Jun 9, 2026, 4:12 AM

Sisi Has Run This Con Seven Times. Washington Keeps Falling for It.

The International Monetary Fund's seventh review of Egypt's economic reform program is scheduled for June 15. Six days from now. An IMF delegation arrived in Cairo last month to launch the review, with talks focused heavily on how the...

Jun 8, 2026, 5:30 AM

Libya’s Ghost Arsenal and the Sahel Crisis: Lessons from a Failed Intervention

The United Nations has highlighted a persistent challenge rooted in the 2011 Libyan conflict. Weapons looted from Gaddafi-era arsenals continue to fuel instability across the Sahel. In recent remarks, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu noted that...

Jun 7, 2026, 5:57 AM

Egypt’s Gaza Deployment: A Force Built to Fail

The U.S. State Department announced this week that Egypt has formally joined the International Stabilization Force for Gaza, posting photographs of Egyptian military personnel and describing Cairo's contribution as "critically important" to the mission's success. On its face, this...

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About Me

Amine Ayoub, a writing fellow with the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco.

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