Middle Orient

The former spy chiefs expressed a wide range of views on the impacts of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan on global security issues. The US will not be able to leave the Middle East even if this is the stated goal of the Biden administration, because Middle East events …

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman dismissed the Kingdom’s director of public security and referred him for public investigation according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA). The dismissal of Khalid bin Qarrar Al Harbi comes as part of a royal decree that also includes the sacking of 19 other officials that were …

Potential Armenia-Turkey rapprochement could have a major influence on South Caucasus geopolitics. The opening of the border would allow Turkey to have a better connection with Azerbaijan beyond the link it already has with the Nakhchivan exclave. Moscow will not be entirely happy with the development as it would allow …

Twenty years after 9/11, the lessons of that day are still inconclusive. It was traumatizing for a generation. It was just after midnight when two Border Police officers on guard duty at a base near Kibbutz Bahan in central Israel were fired upon. According to the Foreign Ministry’s subsequent report, …

BEHIND THE LINES: In the southwest, the outside powers of relevance are Iran and Russia. The arrangement in place from July 2018 until now was the product of an uneasy standoff between them. In a new ceasefire agreement that may bring an end to a 75-day Assad-regime siege on the …

Pashtun practices include circumcision on the eighth day and refraining from mixing meat and milk — Is there a connection to ancient Hebrews? With the fall of Kabul into the hands of the Taliban just shy of the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the world’s attention has once …

While prospects for actual conflict use are slim, Belgrade hopes that by buying Israeli weapons it can alleviate some of the pressure it may face from Washington over Kosovo and ties with Russia and China. Israel’s defense industry just added another buyer to its list. Speaking to the Serbian national …

It was evident in the meeting in Moscow between Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that the two countries do not see eye to eye on the Iranian nuclear agreement and Syria. On an official visit to Moscow, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned Sept. 9 …

A meeting of Jordanian, Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian ministers seems to have cracked Syria’s isolation. Four Arab countries have agreed on a road map to supply Egyptian natural gas to Lebanon through Jordan and Syria during a ministerial meeting in Amman on Sept. 8. They also approved a plan to …

The members of the Dutch Parliament found out that official Hague was providing aid to the so-called Sultan Murad division. “Open sources indicate that the ‘division,’ per the UN data, was recruiting teenagers, arming them and dispatching them to fight,” Maria Zakharova pointed out Dutch authorities will have to explain …