التحليل

While proclamations of ISIS’s defeat were certainly premature, international policy and attention on countering terrorism in Syria has since declined — as if to suggest that the job is done. In fact, as 2020 sets in, the world seems to be getting counter-terrorism all wrong in Syria, in three interlinked ways.

Jordan’s response to President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” has been quick and unequivocal. Less than an hour after the release of the peace plan at a White House ceremony on Jan. 28, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi issued a statement in which he reiterated Amman’s support for the two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative (API) as the only path to a just and lasting settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, without referring directly to the Trump proposal.

The protest movement in Iraq is now entering its fourth month. The protests raging across most of the south of the country have remained non-sectarian in their tone and message, and the movement is steadfast in its rejection of the political order, and all members of the political elite.

Iran and the U.S. were on a collision course as soon as President Donald Trump arrived at the White House in January 2017.

Jordan is bracing for protracted cyber insecurity. Since 2010, the Hashemite Kingdom has rolled out a raft of policies to manage digital vulnerabilities. In keeping with its proactive approach to cybersecurity, Amman is taking additional measures to inoculate the kingdom against digital ailments, including, most recently, the adoption of the 2019 Cybersecurity Law.

Absent international pressure, the Iran-backed Houthis have no reason to stop expanding

The administration’s goal is not peace but the normalization of Israel’s military rule over millions of Palestinians.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy shapes the way the U.S. military competes with state and non-state adversaries. It specifically calls for improvements in partner force operations (PFO) — especially counter-terrorism (CT) — so that regional partners can keep up CT pressure while America’s special operators shift focus to help the nation gain and maintain an advantage over the near-peer competitors of Russia and China.

By any objective standard, the Lebanese protest movement has failed. This is not necessarily an indictment against it. Rather, it’s a reality one cannot and should not ignore. The responsible thing to do now is to try to understand why it has fallen flat, despite more than 100 days of demonstrations in various regions of the country including the capital, Beirut. 

First, a word of solace. In the annals of history, the Lebanese are in good company as most uprisings and revolutions failed to attain their goals. And even when they did, success either didn’t last long or was completely reversed due to counterrevolutions and other spoilers, both foreign and domestic.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait (“Gate of Tears” in Arabic) forms a vital strategic link in the maritime trade route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. On one side of the narrow strait lies the Arabian Peninsula. On the other is the Horn of Africa, a fragile region that has been plagued for decades by high levels of violence and instability within and across borders, and which in recent years has served as a launching pad for terrorism, piracy, human trafficking, and smuggling operations.

Over the past several weeks geopolitical experts have been talking a lot about what the surprise U.S. drone attack on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the IRGC – Quds Force, on Jan. 3 means for the Middle East and relations between the major powers. What has received considerably less attention, however, is what Soleimani’s killing means for the South Caucasus, a region whose small size belies its strategic importance.

How did the Islamic Republic of Iran’s dominant narratives over labor evolve since the 1979 revolution? What paved the way to neoliberal discourses, particularly since the 1990s? Which processes and legal measures made workers precarious? What role did workers play, and along which lines did they develop their trajectories of resistance? These questions are at the core of this article, which explores the above-mentioned issues from two different vantage points: a top-down approach, which looks at official narratives, as well as the legal strategies that contribute to the precarization of workers; and a bottom-up perspective, which seeks to understand workers’ practices of resistance and counter-hegemonic actions.

Egypt has realized a significant number of changes in healthcare, education, and economic reform policy over the past decade. It is also increasingly looking toward policy for development that emphasizes cohesive problem solving, in line with its Vision 2030 strategy, which highlights the need for positive knock-on effects from investments in human development

Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was on Israel’s “most wanted” list for more than a decade. Israeli intelligence identified him as a looming threat early in his career, and with time he outperformed even the graver threat predictions, as he systematically built the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force into a formidable regional stealth operation. Soleimani was a highly sophisticated executioner of Iran’s long-term strategy, which can be described as an effort to build a “double crescent.”

As an Iraqi American who lived through the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 U.S.-led invasion to bring about regime change, I have witnessed firsthand how U.S. wars in the region can break out when Baghdad and Washington fail to understand each other’s intentions and motives.