Middle Orient

Latest Developments Iran is employing a network of militants, criminals, and intelligence operatives to smuggle weapons into the West Bank, The New York Times reported on April 9. A group of unnamed Iranian, American, and Israeli officials told the Times that Tehran is running two routes across the Middle East …

IRGC Navy Commander Rear Adm. Ali Reza Tangsiri implicitly threatened the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during an interview with Lebanese Hezbollah-controlled media on April 9, likely to pressure the UAE to sever ties with Israel.[i] Tangsiri issued a series of threatening messages, all of which appear aimed at the UAE, …

The Syrian regime’s control over southern Syria in 2018 did not end the popular movement that began in 2011, which called for the overthrow of the regime and led Syrians to take up arms against the Syrian military machine that tried to suppress the movement. At the same time, a …

Since the Islamic State fell, tens of thousands of people—many of them children—have been herded into Al-Hol, a giant fenced-in camp in Syria, and effectively given life sentences. The dead turned up everywhere. Two decapitated corpses in a cesspit. The remains of a woman with a pierced skull. A child …

The Syrian Civil War was the longest and most complex geo-political conflict to emerge out of the Arab Spring, thus creating a complicated legacy for leftist analysts to interrogate. In this interview, exclusive for Counterpunch, former United Nations special rapporteur, and international relations scholar Richard Falk, breaks down Palestine and …

Israel is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to global terrorism. In the 1990s, after the Oslo Accords, when Palestinians resorted to suicide bombings, the world largely ignored them, blamed Israel, and failed to see these attacks as an ominous portent. Just a few years later, the …

Latest Developments A group of veteran American and Israeli intelligence professionals assert in a new report that Qatar should not mediate between Hamas and Israel, The Times of Israel revealed on April 8. The report, which draws on English, Arabic, and French sources, concludes that Qatar is “not an independent …

ISIS carried out at least 69 confirmed attacks in March in the Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Raqqa, and Deir Ez Zor governorates. These attacks killed at least 84 pro-Assad regime soldiers and 44 civilians and wounded at least 51 more soldiers and civilians. There were also 19 high quality* attacks during …

The United States is on high alert and preparing for a possible attack by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Israel’s strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria, a U.S. official said on Friday. “We’re definitely at a high state of vigilance,” the official …

A notorious Iraqi extremist leader was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria’s rebel-held north-west, it was revealed on Friday. Abu Maria Al Qahtani was killed in an attack by an ISIS fighter using an explosive belt, said former Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, which rules Syria’s last …