Eurasia

Iran and the U.S. are moving toward nuclear negotiations, even as Trump builds up forces that could be used for military action against Iranian installations. Responding to U.S. coercive diplomacy, including the buildup as well as maximum economic sanctions pressure, Iran has accepted new negotiations with the Trump team. The …

The Arab world lies in one of the most important global strategic locations, controlling most of the major commercial transportation routes. It is rich in natural agricultural and industrial resources and has always been a prime target for Western colonial powers, which periodically launched military campaigns to occupy and control …

Half a century has passed since the outbreak of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War, a vicious, multifaceted conflict characterised by sectarianism, foreign intervention, powerful militias and a state struggling to impose itself. But while the guns may have stopped firing at each other, those characteristics shape today’s Lebanon. Despite the …

If you ask someone to name the worst military or geostrategic blunders in history, the standard answers will tend to center on doomed invasions of the Russian interior, either in the form of Napoleon’s 1812 campaign or the Third Reich’s invasion of the USSR. Someone with a deeper well of …

For Israel, Qatar’s silence on a fatwa calling for “armed jihad” against the Jewish state is deafening. On April 9, Israel’s Foreign Ministry implored Doha to publicly reject the religious edict, which the Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) issued on March 31. The fatwa instructs Muslim governments to …

Can Shara’s Government Unite a Country Ready to Explode? In late March, Ahmad al-Shara, Syria’s new leader, introduced a caretaker government that would supervise the country’s transition from five decades of dictatorial rule. He gave some cabinet positions to figures outside his Islamist milieu, including naming a Christian woman minister …

How to Turn Maximum Pressure Into Personal Diplomacy On Saturday, April 12, American and Iranian officials will restart talks over curbing Tehran’s nuclear program. The talks come after U.S. President Donald Trump sent a letter, in early March, to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei proposing negotiations. “We have a very …

Nord Stream 2—the only U.S.-Russian business project that looks like a viable prospect once the fighting in Ukraine ends—raises more questions than answers. Renewed diplomatic contact between Moscow and Washington under U.S. President Donald Trump has quickly become economic as well as political. Statements from both sides about wanting to …

Global markets are abuzz with chatter about a so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord, the Trump administration’s supposed plan to reorient the United States’ relationship with the global economy by negotiating sweeping changes to the international financial and trading systems. The plan centers on weakening the value of the US dollar to boost …

The inauguration of the new US administration has set in motion a series of global developments. Chief among them are efforts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine and to extend the ceasefire in Gaza. The message from the new US President, Donald Trump – “America First” – …