June 12th, 20260WASHINGTON / TEHRAN / BEIRUT — After a week marked by military confrontation and intense diplomacy, President Trump announced what he described as a “great settlement” with Iran, signaling a potential turning point in a conflict that had threatened to engulf the broader Middle East.
The announcement followed two nights of military...
June 5th, 20260Despite repeated statements by President Trump predicting an imminent agreement to end the conflict with Iran, developments over the past week offered little indication of a genuine breakthrough. Instead, regional tensions remained high amid what political observers describe as determined Israeli efforts to undermine any potential deal...
June 4th, 20260The Middle East is no longer drifting toward instability — it is now fully inside it. What once appeared to be a collection of separate conflicts has merged into a broader regional crisis. Across the Middle East — from Gaza to the Strait of Hormuz — the coming decade is no longer a quest for peace, but a struggle for...
May 29th, 20260WASHINGTON, D.C. — Signs of a potential diplomatic breakthrough between the United States and Iran gained momentum over the past week, despite limited military exchanges between the two sides that remained below the threshold of a broader conflict and appeared designed to strengthen negotiating positions rather than derail ongoing...
May 22nd, 20260Since returning from China, President Trump has gradually adopted a noticeably softer tone toward Iran, tempering his rhetoric day after day while still keeping military threats as an option on the table.
Only days earlier, Trump claimed he had been “one hour away” from authorizing renewed military strikes against the Islamic...
May 15th, 20260Against the backdrop of President Trump’s visit to China, the Middle East remained trapped in a temporary status quo, with Iran still caught in a state of neither war nor peace with the United States, while resistance forces in southern Lebanon continued targeting invading Israeli troops using fiber-optic drones, whose documented...
April 17th, 20260A fragile 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect Thursday evening, offering a temporary halt to more than a month of devastating war between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, even as the broader U.S.–Israel confrontation with Iran continues to expand militarily, diplomatically and economically across multiple fronts.
The...
April 10th, 20260Washington, D.C. – President Trump’s threat to wipe out Iran — warning that “an entire civilization” could be destroyed — has triggered one of the most intense waves of Democratic backlash in his second term, reigniting calls for his removal from office.
Within hours of the remarks, dozens of Democratic lawmakers publicly...
April 10th, 20261Forty days after refusing to negotiate with the United States, and amid President Trump’s escalating rhetoric and foul language, which reached the level of threatening to erase an entire civilization from the face of the earth, Iran agreed to begin indirect talks with the Americans in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, setting 10 key...
April 10th, 20260The knives are out — and this time they are not aimed at Tehran, but at Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even the ever morally flexible Chris Christie moved quickly. The former New Jersey governor and longtime Republican insider, speaking on CNN, did not merely criticize Trump; he used the moment to indict establishment...
April 4th, 20260Any serious forecast of the future of the Israel–Hezbollah war has to begin with a simple but uncomfortable truth: history does not repeat itself exactly, but in southern Lebanon it comes very close. Israel possesses overwhelming military and technological superiority, yet its past confrontations in Lebanon suggest that this advantage...
April 4th, 20260The judgment on the Trump administration’s war on Iran is already largely settled across mainstream media, public opinion, and much of the analytical sphere.
What remains supportive of the war is limited to two predictable camps: official government discourse and the president’s most loyal supporters, along with entrenched...
March 27th, 20262By Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo
The origins of chess are contested, but few dispute that while the game began in India, it was the Sassanian Persian Empire that refined it into a recognizable strategic system. It was Persia that codified its language, symbolism and intellectual framework: the shah (king), the rokh (rook) and...
February 6th, 20260A U.S. military attack on Iran would not restore deterrence or strengthen American credibility. Instead, it would confirm a deeper failure: relying on force instead of strategy. After more than 20 years of wars labeled as necessary and manageable, Washington is again on the brink of a conflict it claims can handle but hasn’t fully...
December 26th, 20252For decades, the Arab rulers of the Gulf have lived inside a fantasy — one in which their skyscrapers, oil wealth and American alliances somehow guarantee their dominance of the region. But the future of the Arabian Gulf will not belong to them. It will belong to Iran. And not because Iran is loved, admired or embraced, but because...
July 11th, 20250At the conclusion of a four-day visit to Washington, which included daily meetings with President Trump and senior members of his administration, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed conditional approval of a temporary ceasefire agreement in Gaza and a partial prisoner exchange with Hamas. He also threatened to resume his...
June 27th, 20250On the 12th day of the Israeli–Iranian war, President Trump imposed a cease‑fire between the two countries through a phone call. In that call, it was reported that he chastised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, compelling him to turn Israeli warplanes — already en route to Iran — back to base and swallow Iran’s...
June 27th, 20250On June 24, President Trump announced a truce between Israel and Iran following nearly two weeks of open warfare.
Israel began the war, launching a surprise offensive on June 13, with airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, missile installations and senior military and scientific personnel, in addition to numerous civilian...
June 6th, 20250The past week brought no breakthroughs in the multiple flashpoints across the Middle East. Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza raged on, alongside escalated military aggression on Lebanon and Syria. Meanwhile, negotiations between the United States and Iran made no meaningful progress, as Tehran insisted on its...
May 23rd, 20250There was a time when Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to have all the cards. The Palestinian Authority was largely passive, the occupied West Bank was relatively calm, Israel's diplomatic reach was expanding, and the United States seemed ready to bend international law to accommodate Israel's desire for complete control over Palestine.
The...
May 2nd, 20250A fourth round of talks between the United States and Iran, which had been due to take place in Rome on Saturday, has been postponed and a new date will be set "depending on the U.S. approach," a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Thursday.
"U.S. sanctions on Iran during the nuclear talks are not helping the sides to resolve the...
March 21st, 20250WASHINGTON — The United States and Israel will hold high-level talks on Iran's nuclear program at the White House early next week, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
The planned meeting follows President Trump's letter to Iran's leadership earlier this month in which he warned Tehran it had the choice of either...
March 14th, 20250Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has rejected negotiations with the U.S. under threats, telling President Trump to "do whatever the hell you want," according to Iranian state media.
He also criticized U.S. foreign policy, referencing the recent Oval Office clash between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"You...
October 4th, 20240
Last week was not an ordinary one in the history of the Middle East. Major events unfolded, starting with the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah by 85 tons of explosives in an Israeli airstrike. The strike targeted Hezbollah’s stronghold in Haret Hreik, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, on...
August 23rd, 20240The helicopter crash in which Iran's late President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in May was caused by weather conditions and the aircraft's inability to handle the weight it was carrying, Iran's semi-official news agency reported on Wednesday, citing a security source informed of the final investigation results.
The communications center...
August 2nd, 20241On Thursday, Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned that the conflict with Israel has entered a “new phase,” as he addressed mourners at the funeral of a commander from the group who was killed by an Israeli airstrike this week in Beirut.
Meanwhile in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei prayed over the...
May 24th, 20241President Ebrahim Raisi was buried in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad on Thursday as many thousands of mourners packed its streets for his funeral, four days after he died in a helicopter crash, footage broadcast by Iranian media showed.
Raisi, 63, was widely seen as a candidate to succeed 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who...
May 8th, 20240By Jamal I. Bittar
Last Friday, Israel launched an assault on Iran in response to an Iranian incursion onto Israeli soil the weekend prior, involving over 300 missiles and drones. Among the various options available to the Israeli government – ranging from assaults on numerous nuclear facilities, military bases and key national...
