Middle Orient

Labour continues the Conservatives’ policy of spying on Gaza despite stopping some arms exports to Israel over war crimes concerns. Britain’s Labour government has ordered 100 spy flights over Gaza to aid Israeli intelligence, it can be revealed. This amounts to an average of more than one a day since …

To protect its ally, Britain’s military is refusing to give details about its coaching of Israeli troops. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has rejected a freedom of information request that would shed light on training it is providing to Israeli armed forces personnel in Britain. The refusal comes as …

Paul SalemVice President for International EngagementPaul Salem While Israel is winning on the battlefield, it does not have a sustainable vision for any of the days — or months or years — after in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, or the region; for the Palestinians, the last year has been …

Western and Middle Eastern outlets have suggested that Israel killed or injured Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Commander Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani on October 4. Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah have been unable to contact Ghaani since Israel conducted an airstrike targeting Hashem Safi ed Din—the presumed successor to …

Instead of debilitating Hezbollah, Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah may prove to be a major PR boost for the embattled organization. On Feb. 16, 1992, a decade into the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, Israel assassinated Abbas al-Musawi, Hezbollah’s co-founder and Secretary-General. At the time, Israeli media praised the army’s …

Dystopian displays of technological prowess serve to distract the Israeli public from the military’s failure to achieve its long-stated war aims. After detonating thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah members in an attack that caught much of the world by surprise, Israel has now launched a bloody aerial and ground …

Abstract: The Iran-backed Houthi movement has delivered a strong military performance in the year of anti-Israel and anti-shipping warfare since October 2023. They seem to be aiming to be the ‘first in, last out,’ meaning the first to cross key thresholds during the war (for instance, attack Israel’s major cities) …

Abstract: As early as the 1980s, the U.S. intelligence community documented the ways in which Iran deployed chemical weapons for tactical delivery on the battlefield. Nearly 40 years later, U.S. officials formally assessed that Iran was in non-compliance with its Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) obligations, pointing specifically to Tehran’s development …

At 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 17, someone pushed a “red button,” and a low-simmering conflict blasted open into a full-scale war. For months, Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah had been locked in a cross-border slugfest, exchanging daily attacks that forced civilians in both countries from their homes but …

A new round of airstrikes hit Beirut suburbs late Sunday as Israel intensified its bombardment of northern Gaza and southern Lebanon in a widening war with Iran-allied militant groups across the region. Palestinian officials said a strike on a mosque killed at least 19 people. A year after Hamas’ Oct. …