Islamabad

Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban: Strategic depth, strategic disaster

Pakistani outreach presents a dilemma for Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance

On October 22, The New York Times gave credence to rumors of potential Pakistani support for the anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan. According to a Pakistani intelligence official and a senior resistance...

Pakistan-Taliban border clashes continue amid diplomatic efforts

Since October 12, border clashes between Pakistan and the Taliban have continued in multiple locations, with both sides accusing the other of initiating hostilities. Russian and European Union officials...

Taliban-Pakistan border clashes continue after Moscow talks end without agreement

Since October 5, reported fighting between the Taliban and Pakistan has largely consisted of border clashes along Afghanistan’s southeastern Paktia province and Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa...

The Taliban vs Pakistan: Can they both lose?

The Mecca Pact Won’t Deter Yemen’s Houthis

Less than two months after its signing, Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia activated the Mecca Pact for the first time. On October 5, during an emergency meeting held in Riyadh, the three countries...

Pakistan launches new strikes as conflict with Taliban persist into third week

Last week, Pakistan conducted another round of airstrikes in Afghanistan and targeted operations against terrorists at home, prompting fresh accusations between Islamabad and the Taliban as the two former...

The Mecca Pact Has Become a Hollow Promise

If these excuses hold in the pact’s first crisis, they will hold in the next.

Pakistan conducts airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan in retaliation for terrorist attacks

On September 20, Pakistan conducted airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan, reportedly targeting militants suspected of involvement in recent terrorist attacks in western Pakistan. Pakistan claimed that the...

The Three Quiet Victors of the Iran War

Turkey, Pakistan, and Qatar have played their hands well since February 28, without disrupting their relations with either the United States or Iran.

Hezbollah Has Lost. Now It Must Admit It

Let us, for a moment, entertain a thought experiment. What if Hezbollah had gotten its political way? Imagine that in late 2024, after Hezbollah’s resounding military defeat, Lebanon’s Parliament had...

Resistance to Taliban rule persists in Afghanistan

As the Taliban’s reign over Afghanistan enters its sixth year, the Taliban remains stronger, more unified, and better equipped than it was before September 11, 2001. Today, its flag flies across all...

Erdogan’s Iraq play: A bigger game than oil

There is an easy way to read Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to host Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al Zaidi in Ankara on July 28, and to call the visit “historic”: as an energy...

U.S. Targets Iran’s Hormuz Extortion but Leaves Foreign Financial Enablers Untouched

Tehran faced two rounds of new U.S. sanctions in as many days. On July 29 and July 30, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued back-to-back sanctions targeting the...

Trump needs to shut down this key Iranian transit artery — ASAP

Iran’s corrupt economy is still bleeding; Washington has a narrow, perishable window to bring the regime to its knees. President Donald Trump has shown admirable resolve. His instinct...

Here’s how to crush Tehran in three moves

The small group of Islamist regime loyalists now ruling Iran by committee may be able to fool the world with AI-generated propaganda videos, paper statements attributed to an invisible ayatollah and...

What would Thomas Jefferson do?  

America’s third president understood that jihadis don’t make good deals

Iran’s economic damage from Operation Epic Fury

Iran attacks vessels in Hormuz, avoids concrete stance on ceasefire extension

After Donald Trump announced an extension of the US ceasefire with Iran on April 21, Tehran refused to take an official position on the state of the ceasefire, denied it had agreed to any extension, and...

From Budapest to Beirut to Tehran

Perspectives from Across the Pond