Why the United States and Its Allies Must Act Now to Prevent a Humanitarian Disaster On December 1, a United Nations official said that Afghanistan may be facing the most rapid economic collapse in modern history. Since the Taliban takeover in late August, government revenues have all but disappeared and …

Xi Jinping savored the moment. Speaking before China’s annual gathering of nearly 3,000 representatives to the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March 2021, the Chinese president took a post-pandemic victory lap, proclaiming that his country had been the first to tame COVID-19, the first to resume work, and the …

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid met on Thursday in Cairo with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to discuss the nuclear threat from Iran and the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Lapid, who presented the Egyptian president – whose country is serving as the mediator between Israel and Hamas in Gaza …

Iraq’s national security adviser announced on Thursday that the United States military forces and allied forces have ended their combat mission in Iraq and moved to a training and advisory role. Qasim al-Aaraji made the announcement in a tweet. The US has not confirmed this announcement, however. The troops are …

Warnings of an expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine have a “High Noon” feel. A renewed crisis could spur the United States and its NATO allies to go beyond, perhaps well beyond, their responses to Russia’s 2014 assault. This militarization could cause a dramatic increase in defense spending by both the …

Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, said that his group’s dissatisfaction with Egypt was in the context of differences between “brothers.” Despite tensions between Hamas and Egypt, Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip are willing to give the Egyptians and other mediators another chance to prevent a military confrontation …

Ukraine says it fears an invasion by tens of thousands of Russian troops gathered near its borders, while Moscow says its posture is purely defensive. Russia said on Thursday that escalating tensions over Ukraine could lead to a repeat of the Cuban missile crisis, when the world stood on the …

The UAE and Saudi Arabia warned against the “terrorist Hezbollah” in a joint statement on Tuesday. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia stressed the need to ensure that Lebanon “will not be a starting point for any terrorist acts,” pointing specifically to Hezbollah, and expressed support for a Palestinian …

Airwars finds less than 50 civilians killed compared to the over 200 civilians killed in Gaza during Operation Guardian of the Walls. Less than 50 civilians have been killed in Syria during Israel’s eight-year-long war-between-wars campaign targeting Iranian military infrastructure, making it one of the most surgical offensives ever, Airwars.org …

A Syrian opposition member claimed that Syria is working on a nuclear reactor in northwestern Syria. Syrian opposition member and former parliamentary member Mohammad Barmo claimed that North Korea and Iran were helping develop a nuclear reactor in Syria, the latest in a series of similar reports in recent years, …