Taiwan is doubling down on a double-digit increase in baseline defense spending. On August 20, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te proposed an 18 percent increase in baseline defense spending for the coming...
It is unlikely that Russia or China would be willing to support a Saudi nuclear program if the United States refuses to do so.
There was widespread condemnation on August 17 and 18 of an Iranian drone attack on the office of Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. Early on August 17, two drones...
A Media rights organization has quietly removed at least eight individuals from its roster of media workers killed while doing journalistic work. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it...
An arresting image from the last century should haunt us in this one. In November 1940, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived in Berlin to deepen Moscow’s pact with Nazi Germany, supposedly...
America’s leaders refuse to do their homework
In fits and starts, President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza is progressing. After months of inertia over Hamas’s refusal to disarm, the White House announced a breakthrough on July...
Syria’s current leaders and Russia once stood on opposite sides of the battlefield. Yet since the overthrow of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s longtime ally during the Syrian civil...
The jig is up for a Turkish resident who allegedly funneled millions of dollars to Hamas while posing as a philanthropist. On July 31, U.S. authorities announced the arrest of Mohammad Hasna, the global...
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...
President Donald Trump made waves the day after his administration announced a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. He conditioned the deal on Riyadh joining the Abraham...
Bulgaria’s parliament approved a U.S. request to station up to eight KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft and 250 military personnel at Bezmer Air Base in southeastern Bulgaria despite direct, public objections...
President Donald Trump says he has “plenty of time” for talks with Iran. That works because Washington, DC, is 7,000 miles away from the Strait of Hormuz. But if you are in Dubai,...
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on July 27 that he will “declare Qatar an enemy state” if re-elected to lead the government. Bennett, who is running in the October 2026...
On July 29, Lebanese media reported that the Information Branch of the Internal Security Forces (ISF), Lebanon’s national police and internal security services, conducted a dawn raid on the home of a...
On Monday, July 27, at the United Nations Security Council, American diplomats stood up and walked out as the French ambassador began to speak. Ukraine was the item on the agenda that day. In Moscow and...
“Syria is seeking a security agreement with Israel,” Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa said in an interview with the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera on July 26. A successful agreement, he added, could...
Following the announcement of a U.S.-Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement, President Donald Trump is now raising doubts over it. In a Truth Social post on July 23, one day after news of the agreement,...
Interviewed by the left-leaning Guardian newspaper shortly after his appointment as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2022, Volker Turk effusively praised the UN’s Universal Declaration...