Middle Orient

Days before a new round of discussions in Astana between Iran, Turkey, and Russia, and in parallel to talks about Turkey’s fear of a military operation by the Syrian army in Idleb, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced a new agreement between the two …

ETHIOPIA Federal troops left Mekelle, capital of the northern Tigray region, as Tigrayan forces advanced on Monday. Interim administrators appointed by Addis Ababa after its soldiers ousted Tigray’s regional government in November had already departed over the weekend. Crisis Group expert Will Davison says these stunning developments sink the federal …

Real rapprochement between the US and Turkey may have to wait the result of Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had his first face-to-face meeting with US President Joe Biden on June 14 on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels. Since Washington …

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held talks on Wednesday with King Abdullah before the Jordanian monarch’s key visit to Washington. The king will be the first Arab leader to meet at the White House with President Joe Biden and his team. Two Jordanian army helicopters flew to Ramallah to transport Abbas …

Raisi’s election, “engineered to guarantee his victory,” looks suspiciously like a ploy by Iran’s Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei to terrify the American negotiators into capitulating to Iran’s demands even faster and more recklessly, to avoid negotiating with an opponent more uncompromising than the one with whom they are negotiating at …

These [Palestinian] leaders have turned the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of the West Bank into a police state where political opponents are beaten to death, arrested, tortured and intimidated. The crackdown was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the West — until the death of Banat. It was ignored …

Airstrikes on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border near Qaim conducted by the United States were followed by retaliatory strikes by Iran-linked groups against a Kurdish-led SDF base housing coalition forces in eastern Syria. On June 29, four coffins draped in the Iraqi flag were carried through central Baghdad streets …

An official from an Iran-backed militia in Iraq accused the Kurdistan Regional Government of allowing the United States to launch bombing runs from Erbil. The Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq has denied claims that US warplanes took off from its capital Erbil to bomb Iran-backed militias in the country. Early …

As the JCPOA parties prepare for a return to the seventh round of nuclear talks, incoming hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi might actually welcome a done deal before taking office. Ebrahim Raisi’s election to the Iranian presidency has raised significant concern about the future direction of Iran’s domestic and foreign …

“We are starting to get used to making history,” Lapid quipped, noting that he had inaugurated the Israeli Embassy in Abu Dhabi the day before. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid inaugurated Israel’s Consulate in Dubai on Wednesday, on the second day of the first trip to the United Arab Emirates by …