Middle Orient

The State Department’s annual report on terrorism said Islamic State branches outside of Iraq and Syria caused more fatalities in 2020 than any previous year. The number of terrorist attacks increased worldwide in 2020 in part due to the spread of Islamic State (IS) branches and al-Qaeda affiliates, the US …

Lebanon’s interior minister on Wednesday ordered the deportation of non-Lebanese members of a Bahraini group after some of them held a news conference in Beirut, harming Lebanon’s ties with the Kingdom. Bahrain accuses the group of harboring terrorism. Bahrain’s government has denounced “the promotion of malicious allegations and causing harm …

An anti-ISIS coalition shot down a terrorist drone near a base in southern Syria this week, military officials said. Two RAF Typhoon FGR4s were patrolling over Syria and Iraq on Tuesday, as part of the global coalition against ISIS, and were ordered to investigate hostile drone activity near the Al …

In its annual terrorism report, the US State Department accused Iran of providing a safe haven for senior Al Qaeda members despite the regime’s public condemnation of the group. The report, released on Thursday, claimed senior Al Qaeda leaders are currently residing in Iran and “[facilitating] terrorist operations from there”. …

This paper assesses the risks to national and transnational security posed by foreign terrorist fighters and their families, and considers how global leadership and multilateral solutions are necessary to address them. The collapse of the Islamic State caliphate in March 2019, while a positive development overall for international security, has …

The U.S. Military Should Pull Back but Not Pull Out Since declaring his candidacy for president, Joe Biden, like his two Oval Office predecessors, has made it clear that he wants to rebalance the United States’ military presence in the Middle East. During the 2020 campaign, Biden pledged to “end …

Ankara’s controversial economic policy coupled with external forces portend a continuing deprecation of the Turkish lira that will only worsen inflation and other economic parameters. Turkey’s Central Bank lowered its policy rate by 100 basis points to 14% Thursday, delivering a fourth cut in as many months in line with …

Forty years have passed this fall since my first travel to Lebanon and it happened ever since to return there many times and to spend more than four years in the beautiful Cedars country; I had during the time the opportunity of meeting relevant Lebanese personalities such as the late …

Speaking at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur, Blinken said Washington had to conduct some reviews. The United States is prepared to move forward with the sale of F-35 fighter jets and drones to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday, after reports …

The Saudi representative to the UN said the “entire Muslim world” will recognize Israel if it withdraws to the Green Line. The “entire Muslim world” will normalize relations with Israel once it withdraws to the ’67 boundary, Saudi Arabia’s representative to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, said in an interview …