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Reading between the lines of US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital reveals a deliberate ambiguity, leaving the door open to having the west and east of the city as the capitals of Israel and Palestine, respectively. The symbolism of the change in the official US position is important, while measures taken to transfer its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to… → Read More
The journey of regional and international bargaining over the Middle East has kicked off with the emergence of realistic understandings in Syria, far removed from delusions of victory now that the country has been spared from total collapse. Lebanon has also received a fair share of renewed regional and international attention, on the basis that safeguarding its stability requires conveying to… → Read More
What will happen now that the strategy of US President Donald Trump on Iran and its proxies has finally converged with Saudi strategy, which has decided that Lebanon’s Hezbollah is the “head of the snake” in Tehran’s expansionism in the Arab world, from Iraq to Yemen via Syria and Bahrain? → Read More
Saudi Arabia is determined to “amaze,” as part of its strategy for national renaissance based on social and economic liberalization, and next-generation innovation, moving the kingdom away from the constraints of traditionalism to fascinating horizons of science and technology. During the Future Investment Initiative launch in Riyadh this week, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled the Neom… → Read More
Donald Trump’s exclusion of Iraq from his enumeration of Iranian violations in the Arab world and the IRGC’s roles there, and in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, has interesting implications. Iraq seems to occupy a special position for President Trump. The prime minister in Baghdad, Haider Al-Abadi, may have earned the trust of the US president, and even a preferential position with regard to US… → Read More
When the administration of former President Barack Obama claimed it was helpless in relation to Iran’s separation of nuclear negotiations from its regional ambitions, it omitted to say that it had had allowed Iran’s Republican Guards to intervene in Syria and Iran publicly. → Read More
These days in Washington, they say that as long as the military trio are in charge of foreign policy, it does not matter what President Trump says about his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, nor what Tillerson denies having said about Donald Trump. → Read More
The Kurds in Iraq will not benefit from their absolute stubbornness against the fury of the governments of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and even the US over the insistence of their leadership on holding an independence referendum that effectively leads to the partition of Iraq. → Read More
Between the American din and the Russian quietude, world leaders participating in the UN General Assembly session were struck first by the threat made by President Donald Trump of “totally destroying North Korea” if its leader continued his dangerous provocations. In the meantime, Russia was pressing ahead with its Syrian-enabled breakthroughs on the world stage, where it has regained its… → Read More
The time has come to share spheres of influence and interests in Syria. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has emerged as a shrewd tactician now in possession of the keys to Syria’s new map. Lavrov’s, however, is not a Sykes-Picot style demarcation map. Rather, it defines Russia’s sovereignty over Syria with the blessing and partnership of the US; with practical reassurances to Israel… → Read More
There have been two interesting developments in the efforts of the commanders of the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iraq and Lebanon. Both events fall within the scope of the bid to impose the model produced by the Iranian revolution, of creating a parallel military structure alongside the regular army, whereby the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) in Iraq operate in parallel with… → Read More
The deal that allowed hundreds of Daesh fighters and their families to leave the Lebanese-Syrian border in air-conditioned buses towards Daesh-held areas near the Syrian-Iraqi border is suspicious in many ways. In equal measures, Iraqi reactions, wavering between sharp criticism of the deal by Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi as an insult to the Iraqi people, and a warm welcome for what happened… → Read More
While Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu carried to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their meeting in Sochi his opposition to Iran’s continued consolidation in Syria, to shore up its sphere of influence from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, the Associated Press revealed that thousands of pro-Iranian fighters continue to advance in the Syrian desert, establishing for Tehran for the first… → Read More
One segment of the people of the Gulf are worried about the fate of the Gulf Cooperation Council, not just out of fear that it may allow Iran to realize its project for regional dominance and export its revolutionary model, but also because of the newfound linkage between the fate of the Gulf and that of Donald Trump, president of the US — which has acquired a reputation for being all too ready… → Read More
Kurdish national ambitions are hitting Iranian, Turkish and Arab roadblocks — all for different reasons. Tensions and radical differences are growing more intense between conflicting projects, amid a clamor regarding partition and influence-sharing in Iraq and Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has started building a wall along the border with Iran to prevent the infiltration of… → Read More
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has “reassured” the world that he has an accord with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Syria. Meanwhile, the US Defense Department said it will retrieve arms supplied to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) after some of its factions rejected American conditions for continued support, foremost among them ending the fight against the Syrian regime and focusing… → Read More
Declaring victory against Daesh, Al-Nusra Front, or other Al-Qaeda affiliates and extremist groups is ultimately meaningless, as long as the fate of their fighters remains shrouded in the same kind of mystery that surrounded their groups’ inception and rise. → Read More
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan begins his visit to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar on Sunday, burdened by his differences with the US, Germany and the EU, his domestic problems, and his weak position in the Turkish-Russian-Iranian triangle in Syria. He denies having a project to put the Muslim Brotherhood in power to guarantee Turkish dominance, but denies the failure of this project. → Read More
Some have read developments on the ground, international accords, and realignments in Iraq and Syria as the beginning of the end. They hope this will end the bloodletting, engender stability and signal the start of reconstruction, with positive implications for the two countries, their neighbors, and refugees and internally displaced Syrians and Iraqis. → Read More
On the eve of the G-20 Summit in Germany’s Hamburg next week, the US and Russia are undergoing a bilateral, as well as international reconfiguration. There is consideration for ongoing conflict and the strategic implications and relations with vital countries in the world and the Middle East, where Washington and Moscow converge on the goal of crushing Daesh but differ on other alliances and… → Read More