Middle Orient

At 2 am on Sunday, Mohamed F. awoke to the sound of hailing gunfire in Rafah. “I think they [Israeli forces] entered, and there were many, many clashes and shooting. Oh God, protect us,” he wrote in a text message. The sound of bombs exploding could be heard in audio …

The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday it had eliminated a senior Hezbollah commander in the terror group’s elite Radwan Force responsible for a March 2023 bombing in northern Israel, along with his deputy, in a strike in southern Lebanon the previous night. The IDF said its fighter jets struck a …

Few events in our lifetime are as shrouded in myth and conspiracy as the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Forty-five years later, however, we now have a much clearer picture of the dramatic events that played out on the streets of Tehran before a worldwide television audience. Certain myths have retained an …

In recent weeks, maritime attacks carried out by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea, along with retaliatory strikes by the United States and its allies, have significantly increased global shipping risks and raised the ire of many foreign governments. More than 40 …

On the evening of Saturday, Feb. 3, local time, US warplanes bombed facilities used by Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, in retaliation for the death of 3 US service members in a Jan. 28 drone attack on Tower 22, a US military base in northeastern Jordan …

On Jan. 18, Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Houthi movement, gave a televised sermon on the Iran-backed militia group’s television channel. It was just the latest in a series of public appearances, this one aimed at addressing the coordinated US-UK airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen and the Biden …

Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip is getting worse by the day. Leena, a sixth-grade Palestinian student at the Ramallah Friends School (RFS), passed us a folded, handwritten note. “Palestine is witnessing a genocide right now,” it read. “A child is dying every five minutes of the day. Gaza needs …

The IDF’s recent airstrikes on civilian areas in Rafah mark the beginning of the final phase of Israel’s massive ethnic cleansing project. On Monday, Israel bombed a number of locations where Palestinian refugees were huddled in tents after fleeing Israel’s onslaught in the North. Videos of the destruction appeared on …

The Israel-Hamas confrontation is spreading to the wider Middle Eurasian region. This marks a turning point in the on-going reconfiguration of geopolitics in Middle Eurasia. Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen, the latter disrupting maritime trade through the Red Sea which carries nearly 30% of …

Recent U.S. retaliatory strikes on Iran-aligned militia forces in Iraq have fueled pro-Iranian political and militia leaders to accelerate their efforts to force a U.S. withdrawal. The government of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is working to reflect public opposition to U.S. strikes on Iraqi territory while remaining engaged with …