Middle Orient

The leader of al-Qaida’s Yemen branch has threatened both U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in his first video message since taking over the group last year. The half-hour video message by Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, which spread online early …

The recent agreement between Syrian President Ahmed Sharaa and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander, Mazloum Abdi, marks a turning point in Syria’s conflict dynamics. According to the deal, all civilian and military institutions in northeastern Syria will be integrated into the Syrian state, effectively dissolving the autonomous governance structures …

Shortly after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) drove Bashar al-Assad out of Syria last year, the group pledged to respect the rights of minorities. Yet, since HTS took control over much of the country, some across the international community have raised fears that Syria’s new leaders—with their jihadist backgrounds—might erode minority …

Next month, Lebanon will mark the 25th anniversary of Israel’s troop withdrawal from its southern region after a two-decade-long occupation and eighteen year resistance campaign by Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization. But this year, the commemoration will be marred by the fact that Israeli forces are back on Lebanese soil, effectively maintaining …

Since the opposition ousting of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Western powers have cautiously embraced Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa as the country’s new legitimate leader. The new Syrian government, consisting of technocrats and high-profile former dissidents of the Assad regime, is actively reaching out to international actors in a quest to …

On May 14, President Donald Trump stood smiling with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and Syria’s self-declared leader, Ahmed al-Shara’a, on the sidelines of the President’s visit to Riyadh. After the get together, the President declared that the United States would lift sanctions on Syria and re-establish diplomatic …

Netanyahou admet qu’Israël arme des gangs à Gaza pour contrer l’influence du Hamas, et de nouvelles preuves montrent qu’Israël les paie pour piller l’aide humanitaire et mettre en œuvre son plan de nettoyage ethnique. En réponse, le gouvernement du Hamas a créé l’«unité Arrow». L’armée israélienne arme des gangs pour …

Britain’s Foreign Office met privately with a pro-Israel lobbyist to discuss arms exports to Tel Aviv, documents obtained by Declassified reveal. The meeting took place in October 2024 and was attended by Christian Turner, the political director at the Foreign Office, and Sir Trevor Chinn, a pro-Israel businessman from Britain. …

In the uneasy interstice between war and peace, Syria grapples with a question striking at the heart of national sovereignty, social cohesion, and institutional legitimacy: what to do with thousands of foreign jihadist fighters who can neither be expelled nor ignored. The recent move to integrate roughly 3,500 of these …

In a wide-ranging talk, former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford traced the astonishing political transformation unfolding in Damascus: from a 14-year civil war and the December 2024 collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime to the rise of Ahmed al-Sharaa—a former jihadist commander now serving as Syria’s transitional president. Ford began …