If Turkish efforts to stop the regime’s advance on Saraqeb fail, the humanitarian crisis will escalate uncontrollably.
The escalating tensions between Turkey and Russia over Idlib did not come as a surprise to many outside the Turkish capital.
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 communiqué, while largely symbolic, was nonetheless a major victory for Abbas’ beleaguered leadership.
Reuters reported on Jan. 30 that the FBI has been investigating Israeli spyware firm NSO Group since 2017. The revelation comes after Sen. Chris Murphy and UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard called on the U.S. to investigate the apparent hacking of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In its statement, the UN identified NSO Group as a likely source of the malware.
Khaled Elgindy and Michael Koplow join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the long-awaited “deal of the century” Middle East peace plan. President Trump rolled the plan out at the White House on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in attendance, while the Palestinians, who have refused to deal with the administration since it recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital at the end of 2017, were not there – and not invited. How has it been received so far, and where might things go from here?
The administration’s goal is not peace but the normalization of Israel’s military rule over millions of Palestinians.
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.
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.”
The notion that an American president, in consultation with two Israeli leaders, could decide on the future of Palestinians without any Palestinian involvement seems to epitomize Trump’s overall approach to the conflict.
It seems that both the right and the left in Israel are missing the main point.
The upcoming visit to the White House by Israel’s caretaker prime minister has nothing to do with the Middle East conflict and everything to do with giving yet another political favor to Benyamin Netanyahu. While the Jan. 28 visit may be all about the Israeli elections, it is shameful and dangerous for American officials to be giving time and space for discussions that affect the Palestinian people without their involvement.
As neighboring regions, the South Caucasus and the Middle East are inextricably intertwined — so much so that the former is sometimes even considered part of the Greater Middle East. While geographical proximity is the strongest driver of interconnectivity between the two regions, geopolitics, business ties, and energy interests also link countries from the South Caucasus and the Middle East and form the basis for important bilateral and regional relationships.
The U.S. assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani came as a seismic shock to the Middle East, not least to the embattled political system in Damascus that has reaped the benefits of Iran’s military involvement across the region. While his death will be a severe blow, it will not necessarily translate into a decline in Iran’s influence or military presence in Syria. Soleimani’s army of militias and supporters will outlast him, possibly by decades.