Middle Orient

In the aftermath of the coordinated United States (US)-Israel airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Islamic Parliament of Iran passed a resolution recommending a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—a 32-kilometre-wide passageway between Iran and Oman that opens in the Arabian Sea. Although the final decision rests with Iran’s Supreme …

US air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have upended the already tense standoff between Tehran, Washington, and Israel, raising urgent questions about what comes next — and just how far Iran might go in its retaliation. Tehran faces the difficult task of crafting a response that is neither too weak …

While uncertainty lingers in the wake of President Donald Trump’s surprise ceasefire announcement in a war that has raged between Iran and Israel—and drawn in direct U.S. intervention—another archnemesis of Tehran lurks in the shadows. The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) operates both east and west of Iran and has …

The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 has not ended Syria’s security challenges, as episodes of sectarian violence and Islamic State resurgence persist, exacerbated by foreign fighters embedded within fragmented militia networks. Initial international efforts to expel foreign fighters fell short, leading to a policy shift toward integrating …

The Iran-Israel conflict confirmed a shift in the regional balance of power away from Iran, but might set the stage for further combat. U.S. and Israeli officials have defined a “new normal” in which either will take further military action if Iran tries to advance its nuclear program. Gulf and …

Less than two weeks after rebel forces led by Ahmad al-Sharaa ousted Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, a U.S. State Department delegation arrived in Damascus to talk with the country’s new leader. It was a meeting few could have predicted. Roughly a decade earlier, the U.S. had declared al-Sharaa — …

The West Bank on Sunday witnessed heightened levels of Israeli violence with arrests, vows to continue home demolitions and settler attacks. Israeli forces carried out a series of raids on the occupied West Bank early on Sunday, arresting and injuring almost a dozen Palestinians, including children. In the Hebron governorate, …

E_132_25Download

An unspecified high-ranking Iranian official cited by Amwaj Media on July 4 reported that Iran plans to resume indirect nuclear negotiations with the United States, but the conditions that Iran will reportedly present would require unspecified guarantees that the United States would not strike Iran.[1] Such a guarantee would be …

In the aftermath of US & Israeli strikes, Iran is at a crossroads. As well as a weakened ‘Axis of resistance’ the regime faces many internal challenges. The Iranian regime recently faced a critical reckoning. For 12 days, it operated in survival mode amid escalating conflict with Israel and, by …