Eurasia

Hezbollah deputy says MidEast conflict could expand to complete confrontation: Report

Lebanese militia Hezbollah will step up attacks on bordering Israeli areas and US military sites in the Middle East up to a “complete confrontation” if Israel continues its offensive in the Gaza Strip, Naim Qassem, the group’s deputy secretary general, said in an interview with NBC News. “Hezbollah participates [in …

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What the War in Gaza Means for Saudi Arabia

Israeli-Saudi Normalization Is on Hold—but Not off the Table Hamas is going to be able to claim very few victories in its war with Israel, but one that it has already notched is an abrupt halt in the momentum toward a U.S.-brokered deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Israeli-Saudi …

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Russia’s Second Front in Europe

The West Must Stop Putin From Provoking Conflict in the Balkans In late September, Serbia deployed advanced weapons to its border with Kosovo, in what amounted to one of the largest Serbian military buildups since the end of the Kosovo war nearly a quarter century ago. In the United States, …

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There Might Be No Day After in Gaza

Summary:As the war continues, deterioration at the level of governance, security, and public order will likely be deepened by the absence of a political horizon, diplomatic process, or future prospects. Initial reactions to Hamas’s October 7 bloody attack on Israelis and Israel’s declaration of war focused on the short term: …

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A Conspiracy of Silence

As Israel speaks openly about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s Palestinians, Western countries are nowhere to be seen or heard. Israel has made great efforts over the decades to redefine its ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine in 1948 as being a consequence of the Arabs’ voluntary departure …

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How Gaza Upset Regional Dynamics

Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 upended three major developments that had been taking place in the Middle East. Hamas’s surprise attack against Israeli towns around Gaza on October 7 upended several dynamics that had increasingly defined regional politics in recent years. The first and most obvious one was the …

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The Makings of a Disaster

Plenty of factors could expand the conflict in Gaza, which is why a ceasefire is now needed to avoid the worst. Hamas’s operational success on October 7 has placed Iran, and with it Hezbollah, between a rock and a hard place as they try to calibrate their response to the …

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The Venture Capitalists of Terrorism

Even with its physical “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in tatters, the Islamic State is still managing to wage a global insurgency, maintaining an operational presence in at least 20 separate countries. The organization’s global diffusion recently led a group of leading terrorism experts to describe ISIS as an “adhocracy,” …

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ISIS Isn’t Back. It Never Went Away

At its height half a decade ago, the Islamic State was among the most feared armed organizations in the world. The infamously brutal group had at one point captured and established governance of more than a third of Iraq and large swaths of Syria. But that shocking, sudden rise to …

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Russia Is Getting More Than It Bargained For in Libya and Syria

Is Russia’s lucky streak in Syria and Libya finally running out? The Kremlin has gambled big on proxy warfare in both countries, deploying thousands of private military contractors with the so-called Wagner Group to back its favorite strongmen. But after a recent run of misfortunes for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, …

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