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Middle East ForumMEF Research by Name

Method

Sources and Matching

Entities come from MEF profile pages and a list of regional places; mentions are whole-word matches against a hand-checked list of spellings.

Coverage

320 entities: 93 people, 102 armed and militant groups, 27 organizations and 98 places. Each has at least two MEF items (articles, Daily Readout items, Policy Notes or MEF profile pages).

Sources

Which Entities

  • Every Jihad Intel group and every Shia Militia Tracker group profile. The same group under two names (for example Harakat al-Nujaba and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba) is one entity.
  • Heads of state, heads of government and ministers of the 17 governments in the Government Graph, as recorded there.
  • Iran Ledger profiles of people and organizations that at least one other MEF source also names.
  • The countries of the Middle East and North Africa plus Afghanistan and Pakistan, and principal cities, regions and waterways.

How Mentions Are Found

  • Each entity has a list of spellings: its name on the MEF profile, the other names listed there, and spellings added by hand where MEF writers use a different transliteration (for example Hizballah, Houthi, Erdogan). The spellings matched are listed at the foot of every entity page.
  • A spelling counts only as a whole word: Iran matches “Iran” and “Iran's” but not “Iranian”. Accents and curly quotes are ignored.
  • Acronyms and single words are case-sensitive (IRGC, Hamas). Multi-word names are case-sensitive except for particles such as al-, el- and the.
  • Short names match only when qualified: single words match at five letters or longer and acronyms at three letters or longer, plus hand-added spellings and place names. Acronyms that double as common words (KIA, SAM, JAM) match only in their spelled-out form.
  • People are matched by full name only, never by surname alone, plus surnames added by hand that MEF writing uses unambiguously (Netanyahu, Erdogan). Officeholders appear only where the full name is distinctive in MEF writing.
  • A spelling claimed by two entities is kept only as the primary name of one of them. Where one name contains another (Kata'ib Hezbollah contains Hezbollah), the longer name wins. Longer names that are not the entity, such as the Jerusalem Post or the Jordan River, are skipped.
  • OFAC status is shown only on an exact match of the full name (or a listed alias) to an SDN entry, or where the Iran Ledger profile records the SDN entry number. A person whose name matches more than one SDN entry is shown without a match, with a link to OFAC search.

Precision

A hand check of 50 randomly drawn matches on October 13, 2026 found 47 correct (94 percent). A second draw of 30 matches limited to people, groups and organizations found 30 correct. The errors were place names inside the name of an institution or party (American University of Beirut, Israel Law Center, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan). Counts for places are therefore an upper bound; counts for people and groups are closer to exact.

Definitions

  • Item: one MEF article, Readout item, Policy Note or MEF profile page that names the entity.
  • Names: the text contains one of the entity's spellings. A mention is not a finding about the entity; read the article for context.
  • Description: the one-line description on a page is quoted from the linked MEF profile.

Update Cadence

Rebuilt daily from the current MEF site data and article archive. Data refreshed October 13, 2026.

Citation

Middle East Forum, MEF Research by Name, accessed October 13, 2026, https://entities.meforum.org/