How COVID-19 and the oil shock will reshape the Middle East

The Brookings Center for Middle East Policy hosted a virtual panel event to discuss how COVID–19 is likely to reshape the Middle East. The panel featured Jihad Azour, director for the Middle East and Central Asia at the International Monetary Fund, who also served as Lebanon’s finance minister from 2005-08, and Rola Dashti, undersecretary-general and executive secretary of the Beirut-based U.N.-agency Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and a former minister of planning and development for Kuwait. The panel also included Samantha Gross, a fellow at the Brookings Institution focusing on energy and climate. Hady Amr, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, moderated the discussion.