What is the Forum for Regional Cooperation?
The Forum for Regional Cooperation is a hub that serves numerous efforts of collaborative research and regional cooperation in the Middle East. We have emerged as an exciting new organization that works to facilitate and maintain new partnerships in the academic and civil society realms, which have been instrumental in developing diverse tools to address the many challenges facing the region today.
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Our Forum hosts many events and conferences, through a number of different forums and communities.
From November 24–26, 2025, the Forum for Regional Cooperation, a consortium of regional
and international think tanks and scholars headed by Prof. Joshua Krasna, hosted a seminal
two-day gathering with the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy (AGDA) in Abu Dhabi, to
examine the evolving influence of the Abraham Accords on regional cooperation, security
architectures, and geoeconomic integration across the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean.
The conference brought together some 30 researchers and experts from 11 countries; including
Israel, the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Cyprus, the UK, and the
USA, in a transnational network of academic and policy institutions. Partners included AGDA,
the University of Connecticut Abrahamic Programs, the Moshe Dayan Center (MDC), TRENDS
Research & Advisory, the American Jewish Committee, and the Ohr Torah Stone Interfaith
Center, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).
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The first two days comprised closed working-group sessions, where participants convened
around pre-circulated research papers prepared over the preceding months in remote
consultations and meetings. The final day was a public conference with plenary sessions,
panels, and Q&As engaging diplomats, scholars, students, practitioners, and observers, thereby
bridging expert analysis with broader stakeholder engagement.
The overarching aim was to assess where the Abraham Accords stand today, and how they can
evolve beyond diplomatic normalization to become a foundation for sustainable regional
cooperation, economic integration, security coordination, and people-to-people exchange.
The conference working groups and public sessions addressed six core themes:
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The interfaith and tolerance agenda, framed around shared Abrahamic heritage and the possibilities for coexistence and cultural rapprochement
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2. Analysis of the impact on the Greater MENA / Eastern Mediterranean region of evolving great power relationships.
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3. Infrastructure and transportation connectivity linking the Gulf, Israel, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
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4. Energy futures — including cross-border cooperation in electric grids, renewables, resource management, and energy security.
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5. Regional security challenges and shifting strategic alignments.
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6. An interim qualitative evaluation of the Accords, including development of benchmarks, indicators, and future scenarios.
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This multidimensional structure underscored the ambition to move beyond rhetoric and produce
empirically grounded, policy-relevant research on how the Accords might deliver tangible
cooperation in security, trade, energy, infrastructure, and cultural exchange.
Hiwar, (dialogue in Arabic,) brings together MDC researchers and members of civil society, academia, and government from throughout the Middle East and Africa to discuss important contemporary political, social, economic, and cultural issues from a historical perspective. The
forum works to encourage an open discussion and a frank exchange of ideas. The forum is a joint venture between MDC and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
Hiwar has conducted over 30 meetings virtually and in person thus far, featuring scholars and
practitioners from countries including Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, and
Pakistan amongst others. The forum continues to offer dialogues between Israeli and regional
colleagues surrounding concerns in the Middle East including education, radicalization, political
agreements and prospects for normalization, religious reforms and contemporary developments.
​Established in April 2024, the Morocco-Israel Forum enables networking and research collaboration between leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners from Morocco and Israel.
The main goal of this forum is to explore possible avenues for future cooperation between Israel and Morocco on regional issues such as environment, agriculture, food security, and contemporary political, social, economic, and cultural issues.
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In addition to an active WhatsApp group that engages in a lively discussion on regional issues, the forum convenes every month on Zoom. These meetings operate under Chatham House rules and off-the-record protocols to enable a frank and open conversation.