The IISS Manama Dialogue is an inter-governmental summit at which national-security leaders from the Gulf, wider Middle East, North America, Europe and Asia can consult bilaterally and multilaterally on key security and foreign-policy challenges.
The IISS Manama Dialogue, now in its 11th year, will also convene analysts, business leaders, senior government officials and prominent members of the media to ensure open and transparent discussions.
Dr. John Chipman, Director-General and CEO of the IISS, said: “In 2015 the Middle East is going through a period of extraordinary strategic unease. The need for a strategic rather than tactical approach to the many conflicts affecting the region has never been greater.”
‘The Manama Dialogue 2015 will offer a unique opportunity for foreign and defense ministers from the Middle East and outside to confer on the major challenges of the day. These include the implementation of the E3 plus 3 nuclear agreement with Iran, the efforts to contain and defeat Daesh and the conflict in Yemen,” he added.
‘The IISS expects new policy initiatives to be tested and launched at the Manama Dialogue, which will again attract both leading policymakers from around the world and the best strategic analysts on the region,” Chipman concluded.
Over the past decade, the IISS Manama Dialogue has become the most important national security and defense forum in the Middle East. This year’s conference will be one of the most essential yet, says Sir John Jenkins, the new Executive Director of IISS–Middle East. Crises in the region – in Iraq, Syria and Yemen – are ‘more urgent now... than they have ever been’. At the same time, there is a new willingness by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to form their own ‘coalitions of the willing’ to tackle regional issues.
Leaving the high-level IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore to prepare for the IISS Manama Dialogue 2015, Sir John said the high-level Mideast summit was about ‘not just discussing things', but also ‘about finding new ways of doing things’ and he was looking forward to its becoming not just a fixture in the calendar of the Gulf and the region, but also of the wider world.