The first chapter introduces the background and current developments in the MENA region in the past decade and MENA’s current transformation to an ongoing clash of competing blocs of Sunni and Shia political Islamists, secularists, and ANSAs leaderships. The chapter briefly discusses the four prominent ideological categories in the MENA region and their implications for foreign policymaking. Next, the authors elaborate on the methodological approach of the book, introduce the operational code analysis, and discuss classical examples as well as more recent works of the opcode literature. Contributions of the operational code approach and where exactly this study fits in the literature are at the heart of this chapter.