2015 marked a change in the Syria policy of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He began to walk back his initial goal of toppling the Asad regime and turned towards Syria’s surging Kurdish forces....
On June 29, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in al-Sham (ISIS), was recorded on video speaking at the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, Iraq. (“Al-Sham” is the traditional Arabic...
Ahmad al Sharaa, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), commonly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al Jolani, has unveiled a vision for post-Assad Syria. With HTS assuming control in the aftermath...
Excerpt Much of the analysis on Iranian foreign policy focuses on both Iran’s positonality in relation to the Middle East, and its claim to the mantle of Shia Islamic leadership. However, a more detailed...
If anyone is going to derail the Islamic Republic’s regional ambitions, Israel is really the only local counterweight that counts.
Turkey-Russia Relations Under Erdogan and Putin
After weeks of fruitless negotiations between the Taliban’s political leadership and senior leaders of the National Resistance Front in Panjshir, the Taliban launched a multi-pronged attack on the Panjshir...
Ethnic Politics in the Islamic Republic
Domestic Azerbaijani Opposition May be Rising
Iran faces the democracy conundrum: in multi-ethnic states where one non-majority group prevails over others, democratization entails risk of loss of empire.
President Trump’s strategy of getting out of Syria but keeping the oil continues to stir up policy debates and emotions. Opponents of the U.S. withdrawal see this as a betrayal of the Syrian Kurds,...
The Mosul operation has made the predominantly Turkmen city of Tal Afar the latest focus of Turkey a...
The Mosul operation, launched on October 17, has once again highlighted the complicated nature of Turkey’s involvement in the fight against the Islamic State (IS). Ahead of the offensive, T...
Demet Muftuoglu-Eseli is standing perilously close to the fire. The Turkish fashion mogul turned gallerist is hosting a gala dinner for “Istancool,” the annual arts and cultur...
On Jan 1, news broke that a big rig was stopped i...
It’s hard to get our minds around the dimensions of the slaughter underway in the Middle East and Africa, and harder still to see that the battlefields of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, S...
An al Qaeda in Iraq suicide assault team attacked an Iraqi police headquarters in the northern flashpoint city of Kirkuk today. The tactic is being employed with increasing frequency by al Qaeda...
The US launched another drone strike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan today. Five "militants" are said to have been killed in the latest strike in an area k...
The US launched its first airstrike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agencies in 11 days, killing four "militants," possibly inkling some foreigners. The remotely-piloted Pre...
The US killed another al Qaeda commander in a drone strike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan today. The remotely-piloted Predators or the more deadl...