Brining you latest on security & defence matters in the Middle East and North Africa
China, Russia, and Iran have conducted joint military exercises in the Gulf of Oman, raising concern in the West about China’s growing influence in the Middle East. The five-day drill,…
Alireza Akbari, an Iranian politician and once a senior officer in Iran’s notorious IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), was deputy Minister of Defense from 1998 to 2003. In 2009 he was…
Peter Oborne’s The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam (Simon and Schuster 2022) is as much a history of US, British, and French attitudes towards Islam and Muslims…
By James M. Dorsey Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the international condemnation it generated contains key lessons for policymakers. They are lessons that should have…
By James M. Dorsey Israel and Gulf states struggle not to fall off the tightrope they walk as a Russian attack on Ukraine makes hedging bets increasingly tricky. Unlike Israel,…
By James M. Dorsey Europe is likely to shoulder the brunt of the fallout of a rapidly escalating crisis over Ukraine. Middle Eastern states could prove to be a…
by Neville Teller Israel was not directly involved in the events surrounding the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and it would be reasonable to assume that the main effect on Israel…
by Neville Teller The Taliban has just won a 20-year war against America and its allies and sent them packing. The triumph is so complete that the US no longer…
Lebanon has been without a government since the massive explosion of August 4, 2020 blew Port Beirut apart and, with it, Lebanon’s administrative machine. In the aftermath of the blast…