Iran has revealed plans for a free trade zone with Turkiye, with an agreement expected to be signed in the next couple of months.

While the region’s countries have put aside their militarized foreign policies thanks to the normalization climate that is sweeping the Middle East, the clashes in Sudan have reinforced the militarization of politics there, bringing large-scale instability on to the doorstep of key actors.

The China-brokered agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which was announced on March 10, was positively received by Turkish policymakers in Ankara. Turkiye is one of the countries in the region that closely follows developments between Riyadh and Tehran.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich included a phrase in a scholarly article she wrote in 1976 that gained widespread popularity and became one of feminism’s most popular slogans: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”