Middle East

Khizar Hayat “Rejoice! For by God, they have handed their land over to us.” And then the world saw how the Arab Commander turned a basket of intended humiliation into the very omen that brought the Great Persian Empire crashing down. Sometimes, in arrogance or in folly, we …

Jenny Williams There is a familiar cruelty in the way Lebanon is treated whenever Israel wants to change the regional conversation. A village becomes a message. A suburb becomes a signal. A border town becomes a lever in someone else’s negotiation. Last night’s escalation was not an isolated …

Hadi Elis NATO is getting ready for its 2026 summit. And somehow, the alliance decided to hold it in Turkey. That’s interesting timing. Right after Turkey and Britain cooperated to make Syria’s Al Qaeda offshoot, HTS, the de facto post-Baath Party government in Damascus. On paper, it’s an …

Lama Al-Rakad The image was striking. In Washington, the leader of Syria’s transitional government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was welcomed as a legitimate political actor after years in which he and his organization were synonymous with jihadist militancy. Whether viewed as diplomatic necessity or geopolitical pragmatism, the transformation raises one …

Dr. John Calabrase A tentative U.S.–Iran memorandum of understanding appeared close to completion in late May, but Iran’s decision to suspend indirect talks over Israel’s expanding operations in Lebanon has thrown the process into uncertainty. What had looked like an emerging framework now appears less a pathway to …

Residents in Gaza, southern Lebanon, northern Israel, and Kuwait faced ongoing violence this week, despite ceasefires arranged by the U. S. supposed to be in place. Israeli airstrikes targeted Gaza and Lebanon, while Hezbollah launched rockets into northern Israel and Iran attacked Kuwait’s international airport. President Donald Trump …

For decades, geopolitical scholars have been concerned about a potential hot war between China (the “rising” power) and the US (the “ruling” power) because of the Thucydides Trap, which warns that conflict between the two will very likely occur when a rising power becomes strong enough to unseat the ruling …

Since the public launch of large-language models like ChatGPT and OpenAI in 2020, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining ground across a variety of private and public areas,  the prospect of not only facilitating mundane tasks but also revolutionising labor markets, research, medicine and militaries. The gilded age of …

Syria’s geography, through a network of international roads and land and sea crossings with connection distances of no more than 500 kilometers, condenses the equations of cost and time in favor of supply and logistics chains between Asia and Europe. This short land corridor directly links Mediterranean ports …