Middle Orient

U.S. warplanes soaring through the skies of Iraq hit a series of sites belonging to an Iranian-backed militia, exacting revenge for a deadly attack on American and coalition troops just 24 hours earlier.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) detained three senior members of the kingdom’s royal family yesterday.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry has summoned the US and British ambassadors to Baghdad over a string of airstrikes carried out by the United States against multiple locations of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), better known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is far from the first proof of how intertwined we are as a global community. The climate crisis and the refugee crisis have long been glaring examples that the wars or CO2 emissions on one continent risk the lives and well-being of people on another continent. …

Middle East Disinformation: 2020 Prospects & Solutions Social media has transformed the information landscape in the Middle East over the past decade. The 2009 Green Revolution and the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrated the enormous power of platforms like Twitter and Facebook for political organizing.

There was a firefight During the winter of 2019, teams of U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Marines were positioned alongside their allied militia unit, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), by an oil field near Deir Ezzor, Syria. What looked like a Russian-led militia force, including a number of armored …

Turkey’s defense minister said on March 1 that his country was “successfully” continuing its military operation in northwestern Syria against the Russian-backed regime in Damascus and that Ankara doesn’t have “the desire or intention to clash with Russia.”

As Lebanon nears a breaking point due to its acute financial crisis, the Trump administration faces a policy dilemma: should it financially support a corrupt ruling faction that is allied with Hezbollah – Iran’s friend and Washington’s nemesis – or should it hold off on aid and watch the country …

Monitors in Syria said Friday that a cease-fire was largely holding on the first day of a truce between Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, and Turkey, which backs some Syrian rebel groups.

Did Bin-Salman thwart a ruling family coup, or launch a pre-emptive strike to ease his ascent to the throne?