Middle Orient

The United States on Wednesday blacklisted a senior member of Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia, punishing it for its attacks targeting U.S. forces, most recently for killing an American contractor in an Iraqi military base near the northern city of Kirkuk.

Truce implemented after Islamic Jihad armed group and Israeli army traded rocket fire and air raids since Sunday.

After nine years of civil war, the fighting over who controls Syria has come down to one province: opposition-held Idlib, in the northwest. Backed by Russian air power, forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad began to advance on the area early this year. Because the drive left rebels and civilians …

UN agencies have underscored their commitment to continue supporting civilians affected by the war in Syria, which this month enters its tenth year. The Secretary-General issued a statement on Thursday, declaring that “we cannot allow the tenth year to result in the same carnage, the same flouting of human rights …

U.S. warplanes soaring through the skies of Iraq hit a series of sites belonging to an Iranian-backed militia, exacting revenge for a deadly attack on American and coalition troops just 24 hours earlier.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) detained three senior members of the kingdom’s royal family yesterday.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry has summoned the US and British ambassadors to Baghdad over a string of airstrikes carried out by the United States against multiple locations of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), better known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is far from the first proof of how intertwined we are as a global community. The climate crisis and the refugee crisis have long been glaring examples that the wars or CO2 emissions on one continent risk the lives and well-being of people on another continent. …

Middle East Disinformation: 2020 Prospects & Solutions Social media has transformed the information landscape in the Middle East over the past decade. The 2009 Green Revolution and the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrated the enormous power of platforms like Twitter and Facebook for political organizing.

There was a firefight During the winter of 2019, teams of U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Marines were positioned alongside their allied militia unit, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), by an oil field near Deir Ezzor, Syria. What looked like a Russian-led militia force, including a number of armored …