With few war goals achieved in Gaza, targeted killings change little strategically but send a political message to the Israeli public ahead of elections After years of pursuit, Israel killed the commander of Hamas’s armed wing, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, in Gaza last week. Describing him as a key architect of …

Tehran seems just as enthusiastic about the new prime minister as Washington—a telling sign that the militia-dominated status quo in Baghdad will be difficult and slow to change, if it changes at all. On May 14, U.S. special envoy Tom Barrack congratulated Iraq’s new prime minister Ali al-Zaidi on the …

A senior commander from Ansar Allah al-Awfiya, an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed faction, was killed and his aide seriously wounded on Thursday when an explosive device detonated in their vehicle. Iraq finds itself at a new crossroads. Will it rein in Iranian-backed militias, or let them continue to hollow out the …