US President Donald Trump, hobbled by a two-minute attention span, demonstrated his utter lack of knowledge about the political situation in Lebanon during a recent visit to the White House of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri. During a press conference outside the White House, Trump opened his remarks by stating to an astonished Hariri and…
Though tempting to ascribe Trump’s seemingly bizarre statement lumping Hezbollah in the same box as ISIS and Al Qaeda to a gaff, this would be a mistake. Indeed, taken in the context of Washington’s wider geostrategic objectives in the region Trump’s statement was far from being a gaff. The US President’s statement came during a…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that Israel carried out dozens of attacks against Hezbollah arms convoys in Syria, oblivious to the fact that his remarks were being picked up by a live mic and relayed to reporters, Haaretz reported. “We blocked the border not only in Egypt but in the Golan Heights,” Netanyahu…
Somewhere over the Atlantic, I’ve always suspected, there’s a giant glass curtain through which Americans view the Middle East – through a glass darkly, perhaps – and which utterly distorts their vision. Even when they arrive in the region to chat to their “moderate” friends, the Sunni Muslim head-choppers, dictators and torturers who are now enlisting a mad…
The US-led war on the Islamic Sate group under the banner of fighting terrorism may be viewed by many, especially by Arab members of the coalition that is waging it, as legitimate. But in our view it increasingly looks like a cover or smokescreen aimed at paving the way, or bestowing legitimacy on, a different…
It has been more than a decade since the last open confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel; yet in the last few months, there has been a lot of chatter among Hezbollah and Israel observers over the rising tensions between the two adversaries. The drums of war have been beating even more loudly in the media….
