ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on accommodation in the post-Cold War Middle East. It examines strategies pursued by ‘regional challengers’: states engaged in protracted conflicts or enduring rivalries with local allies o f the United States. The first half of this chapter offers a framework o f analysis that links strategic choices made by these states at the regional level with factors from multiple analytical levels (global, regional, and domestic). The framework also considers the interaction o f different types o f security concerns (realist political/military, economic, and domestic political) and different types of causal relationships (stimulus, permissive, and motivating causality). The second half focuses on one type of causal relationship-motivating causality-in the context o f Iran’s policy o f accommodation towards Saudi Arabia.
