The article takes recent research on the difficulties for the EU in successfully promoting democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as its point of departure, with a specific focus on the European Neighbourhood Policy EU-Lebanon Action Plan. It is shown that, in spite of the fact that Lebanon does not present the same authoritarian institutions and character as most of the other countries in the region, the EU seems to have difficulties dealing with the political realities of Lebanon. This has to do with its consociational system and the existence of political elites in Lebanon, who see avoiding another breakdown of the political system as the decisive political issue. In addition, the existence of a 'dual power' situation, where two sources of authority are competing for power and legitimacy, constructs a Lebanese reality which the EU chooses to address by neglecting its own normative, democracy promotion ambitions. The article concludes that the vagueness and inconsistency of EU policies in Lebanon cannot only be explained by tactical considerations, but also imply that the EU pursues a realist agenda: in other words it is a realist actor dressed in normative clothes.

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Arguing that a security-stability nexus is a dominant theme in shaping the EU's foreign policy approach towards recent challenges in the Mediterranean, the article applies a historical institutionalist theoretical framework when analysing EU policies concerning Lebanon. The article discusses how the EU-Lebanese cooperation in the light of the unstable political environment in Lebanon is being impacted by the Syrian crisis and how this has been dealt with by EU institutions. It is argued that significant changes in the EU's policies and practices over recent years have taken place. Related to the EU-Lebanon Association Council decision of November 2016 launching the EU-Lebanon Compact, new institutional systems and practices are established regarding cooperation within areas where the EU and Lebanon share common interests. Finally, it is shown that the EU's institutional setup in connection with the Compact represents a pragmatic approach, which, dealing with a crisis situation, aims at making concrete and tangible practices possible.

In July 2015 an agreement on the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran's nuclear program was announced between Iran and the permanent members of the UNSC, Germany and the EU. The Iranian decision to comply with the results of the negotiations attracted much focus, both at the policy level and in scholarly debates. However, the foreign and security policy interests and possibilities of Iran in the MENA region have not been discussed very intensively, nor has there been much attention paid to how the international actors and in particular the EU were able to influence the Iranian policies and decisions. This article seeks to take up this challenge: firstly by analyzing to what degree the sanctions influenced the Iranian decisions on the nuclear issue; and secondly, by discussing how the sanctions regime affected the relations between Iran and the international actors, with a specific focus on the EU and the ability of Iran to pursue its foreign policy interests in the Levant and the Gulf. This article is published as part of a collection on analysing security complexes in a changing Middle East.