Middle East

In a surprising development, President Vladimir Putin has indicated that Russia is prepared to donate $1 billion from its frozen U.S. assets to former President Donald Trump’s newly proposed Board of Peace—and an as-yet unspecified sum for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The move comes as Putin weighs Trump’s invitation to …

Georgi Asatrian No sooner had 2026 begun than dramatic events in world politics followed one after another. The problem is not even the speed of these events but the difficulty of systematizing them. Forecasting is a thankless task. And the issue is not only the high probability of …

The latest waves of protests in Iran expose the deep structural exhaustion of a political model built on theocratic authority, an entrenched security apparatus, and an economy constrained by sanctions and mismanagement. For decades, Tehran has relied on a combination of coercion and regional power projection to preserve …

In a landmark series of high-level talks in New Delhi, India and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to a sweeping upgrade of their strategic and economic relationship. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed off on ambitious plans that could …

Roger Kimball In the fog of prewar Iran, disinformation, inflated body counts, and diplomatic silence obscure a simple truth: the regime is murdering its people, and the world is running out of time. Everyone knows about “the fog of war.” What about the fog of prewar? There are …

Growing geopolitical tensions and repeated export controls by Beijing have pushed rare earths and other critical minerals to the centre of global economic and security debates. China’s dominance across the mining, refining, and processing stages of these minerals has long been a strategic vulnerability for advanced economies, but …

Governments expressed caution in response to U. S. President Donald Trump’s invitation to join his “Board of Peace” initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts. Only Hungary, whose leader is close to Trump, openly accepted the invitation, while others refrained from public comments due to concerns about how the …

Jamal Ladam By 2026, the global system is undergoing critical changes, marked by political uncertainty, economic fears, and security concerns. The idea of a unipolar world, which seemed dominant before, is slowly declining, making way for a clearer picture of a multipolar order in which decision-making power is …

Mohammed Ayoob Multiple, intersecting Middle East crises combined with an unpredictable United States augur a tumultuous 2026 for the region. The current protests in Iran and the Donald Trump administration’s threat to take military action against the Iranian regime, if it continues to suppress dissent violently, demonstrate how …