With Iran’s regional influence in steep decline, Turkey is aggressively positioning itself to fill the vacuum and assert dominance across the eastern Mediterranean and the broader Middle East....
When Bashar al-Asad’s regime abruptly collapsed in December 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan saw more than just a regional upheaval. He saw a long-awaited opportunity. With Iran’s...
On July 29, the United Nations Security Council Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team released its latest report detailing terrorist group activities around the world. The section...
Syria’s endangered minorities deserve protection
The recent sectarian violence shows that the Syrian government and its Turkish backers share a dangerous vision of a Sunni-dominant state.
Egyptian security forces killed two suspected members of the Harakat Sawaid Misr (HASM) militant group in a shootout on the outskirts of Giza on Sunday, according to the country’s Interior...
Israel’s Druze Test in Syria On July 16, the Israel Defense Forces carried out airstrikes in the heart of Damascus. The IDF said it had targeted Syria’s military headquarters and...
In policy, simplicity is valuable; naiveté is catastrophic. Lebanon has by now diluted UNSCR 1701 from dismantling Hezbollah’s militia, arms production, and illicit funding to merely surrendering “heavy and medium” weapons, or as U.S. Envoy Tom Barrack frames it: Hezbollah must hand over weapons that threaten Israel. Such oversimplification misses the root issue: Hezbollah’s very existence as a state within a state is an existential threat to the Lebanese state.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited President Donald Trump at the White House Monday, he celebrated his country’s victory over the Islamic Republic of Iran — after a brief but intense...
The United States rolled back decades-old comprehensive sanctions on Syria on June 30, but the story is not as simple as either media reports or the administration itself makes it seem. The executive order...
On June 30, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order revoking longstanding sanctions on Syria. “The United States is committed to supporting a Syria that is stable, unified, and...
Syria Sanctions Terminated: The Trump administration issued an executive order officially lifting most of the U.S. sanctions imposed on Syria. The order is intended to “promote...
On May 14, President Donald Trump stood smiling with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and Syria’s self-declared leader, Ahmed al-Shara’a, on the sidelines of the President’s visit...
A delegation from the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) met with the new Syrian government in Damascus on June 1. The talks are aimed at fully integrating the autonomous eastern...
Syrian Rockets Hit Israel: The IDF reported that two rockets crossed into Israeli territory from Syria on June 3 for the first time in over a year. The projectiles triggered alarms...
At a future point, many will ask an obvious question: why did the United States and Europe lift sanctions on Syria? The question will come after the likely fall of the Ahmed...
Firms relying on the recent wave of lifted sanctions and exceptive relief will face significant hurdles in verifying that transactions do not benefit excluded actors
On May 29, an Israeli security official told the Saudi-owned Arabic news channel Al Arabiya that Israel “will not fight in support of any group in Syria.” The official added that while Israel...
On May 20, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about the U.S. decision to engage with the new Syrian government in Damascus. Rubio said that an unstable Syria has historically...
The new Syrian government is integrating a Central Asian terrorist group that is part of Al Qaeda’s network into its military, despite the objections of US President Donald Trump. The head of this terror...