June 30th, 20190
The United States has been at war for too long. Even today, we seem to be preparing for a new war with Iran, which would be the worst yet. Earlier this month, President Trump ordered thousands of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East to confront Tehran and its proxies. And we recently learned that the Pentagon had presented the...
May 24th, 20190NEW YORK — Half of all Americans believe that the United States will go to war with Iran “within the next few years”, according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll released on Tuesday amid increased tensions between the two countries.
While Americans are more concerned about Iran as a security threat to the United States now...
May 17th, 20190WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Trump said on Thursday he hoped the United States was not heading to war with Iran as he met with Swiss President Ueli Maurer, whose nation has served as a diplomatic conduit between the two countries.
Asked by reporters if Washington was going to war with Tehran, Trump responded, “Hope not” as he...
January 21st, 20190The head of Iran’s air force said on Monday the country was impatient to fight Israel and destroy it, a state-linked news website said.
“The young people in the air force are fully ready and impatient to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the Earth,” Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh was quoted as saying by the...
December 3rd, 20180When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his army to carry out a limited operation in the besieged Gaza Strip on November 12, he certainly did not anticipate that his military adventure would destabilize his government and threaten the very survival of his right-wing coalition.
But it did, far more than the multiple...
September 30th, 20180WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than 1,100 civilians have been killed in U.S.-led strikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria since the operation began in 2014, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
The coalition fighting ISIS militants said in a statement that during the month of August it had determined that an additional 53 civilians...
September 19th, 20180BEIRUT — The leader of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah, a key Damascus ally, said on Wednesday that his group will keep its military presence in Syria until further notice, commending the Idlib Russian-Turkish agreement as a step toward reaching a political solution in the country.
“We will stay there (in Syria) even after the...
MOSUL, Iraq — Iraqi grandmother Sana Ibrahim al-Taee has a full-time job feeding and clothing her 22 grandchildren after ISIS killed their fathers - her sons - a struggle in a cramped flat with little help from the state.
Al-Taee and her husband, who has Alzheimer’s, share their four-room apartment in eastern Mosul with the...
August 18th, 20180SANAA — Yemen’s three-year war has taken a heavy toll on Sanaa’s historic Old City, a dense warren of mosques, bath houses and 6,000 mud brick houses, which date from before the 11th century.
Part of the Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been razed by bombing. Now only rubble and straggly palm trees remain, where...
July 29th, 20181Major-General Qassem Soleimani, a powerful commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, said on Thursday, July 26, that Donald Trump should address any threats against Tehran directly to him, and mocked the U.S. president as using the language of “night clubs and gambling halls.”
The comments by Soleimani, who heads the Quds...
July 10th, 20180LONDON - Most people think the world is more dangerous today than it was two years ago as concerns rise over politically motivated violence and weapons of mass destruction, according to a survey released on Tuesday.
Six out of ten respondents to the survey, commissioned by the Global Challenges Foundation, said the dangers had...
June 29th, 20180Tuesday, June 26, 2018 will be remembered as a shameful day in the history of the United States of America. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump's executive order banning citizens of Muslim-majority nations from entering the country. The decision fulfilled a campaign promise by then-candidate Donald Trump.
No one can spin...
June 8th, 20180
By Hanan Daqqa
Fairfax County Times
"You never know where something takes you as a writer… you think you want to write about one thing and it leads you to another path."
These are the words of Mona Mansour, a Lebanese American playwright who set out to write a play about her father's choice not to go back to...
May 4th, 20180BEIRUT — Syrian militants accepted a deal on Wednesday to quit their enclave near Homs city, a militant official said, as the Syrian army crushes the last two besieged insurgent pockets in the country.
The agreement, which Russia brokered, would restore state rule, with fighters handing over their heavy weapons, the Syrian official...
April 30th, 20180By Dr. Rais Attamimi and Dr. Ali Alghail
Recently, some comparative analysis has been in the mainstream media about the way in which, to take one example, American citizens led by the teenagers protested the dangerous availability of assault weapons on the one hand, and citizens of the Middle East, Yemen in particular, when,...
April 18th, 20180SHEBAA, Lebanon — Several hundred Syrians who have lived for years as refugees in Lebanon left for their home country on Wednesday in a rare case of a mass return of those who left the country since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.
Nearly 500 people, including children and the elderly, left the Shebaa area in southeast Lebanon in...
April 16th, 20180PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday France will contribute 50 million euros ($61.9 million) toward urgent humanitarian aid for Syria following a meeting with a group of non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Paris.
“This evening I brought together NGOs working on the ground in Syria. Faced with the...
April 11th, 20180WASHINGTON/BEIRUT — President Trump warned Russia on Wednesday of imminent military action in Syria over a suspected poison gas attack, declaring that missiles “will be coming” and lambasting Moscow for standing by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Trump was reacting to a warning from Russia on Tuesday that any U.S. missiles...
March 23rd, 20180WASHINGTON — President Trump gave a warm welcome to Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday and credited U.S. defense sales to the Saudis with boosting American jobs, even as Riyadh's involvement in Yemen's civil war faced criticism.
In the Oval Office, Trump and the crown prince praised the strength of U.S.-Saudi...
March 16th, 20180By Melvin A. Goodman
As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq, which we are still paying for in so many ways, it is important to remember the misuse of intelligence that provided a false justification for war. It is particularly important to do so at this time because President Donald Trump has...
March 16th, 20180RIYADH/SANAA — Saudi Arabia and its adversaries in Yemen's armed Houthi movement are holding secret talks to try to end a three-year-old war that has unleashed the world's worst humanitarian crisis, diplomats and Yemeni political sources said.
A Saudi-led coalition is fighting to counter the influence of Riyadh's arch-foe Iran, an...
March 2nd, 20180SANAA — Yemeni street artist Haifa Subay is painting murals to help ensure that victims of Yemen's grueling three-year civil war are not forgotten.
Her latest mural, portraying a one-legged casualty of a landmine, is one of many Subay has done in the capital Sanaa during the war, which has killed thousands, driven many more from...
March 2nd, 20180Fifteen years ago this week, while the Bush Administration was busy beating the drums for an invasion of Iraq, I submitted a resolution calling on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to oppose this rush to war. The resolution, which was also endorsed by then Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who served with me on the DNC, warned that...
February 23rd, 20180Over the next few weeks, I want to take a look back to February and March of 2003, to those fateful days leading up to the Bush administration's disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. I remember all too well the lies that were told, the hysteria that was created, the bullying tactics that were used to silence debate and the mass...
February 16th, 20180ALEPPO, Syria — Traditional musicians in Syria's Aleppo say their art is flourishing again 13 months after fighting in the city ended, as new students learn the techniques of "Qoudud" singing.
At the National Choral Institute in Aleppo, singing coach Ahmed Kedah said he has between 30 and 50 pupils, including both school children...
September 13th, 20170BEIRUT/MOSCOW — The Lebanese group Hezbollah has declared victory in the Syrian war while Russia said government forces had driven militants from much of the country where President Bashar al-Assad’s rule seemed in danger two years ago.
The comments from two Syrian government allies mark the most confident assessments yet of...
September 8th, 20170"At bedtime, I am afraid to turn the lights off. I am not a coward, it is just that I worry that this bulb hanging from the ceiling is the last light that remains (shining) in my life."
Soon after he penned these words, Moath Alhaj, a young artist from a Gaza refugee camp, passed away in his sleep. After he'd disappeared for two days,...
August 22nd, 20170WASHINGTON — President Trump committed U.S. troops to an open-ended war in Afghanistan, a decision the Afghan government welcomed on Tuesday but which Taliban insurgents warned would make the country a "graveyard for the American empire".
Trump offered few specifics in a speech on Monday but promised a stepped-up military campaign...
