Expect “Israel” to try and obtain Russian diplomatic support for pressuring Iran to on Hezbollah’s post-war presence in Syria, but don’t necessarily assume that it’ll succeed. Hezbollah swiftly defeated Daesh in an effective anti-terrorist campaign coordinated with the Syrian Arab Army along the mountainous Syrian-Lebanese border. Observers were taken aback by how quickly victory was…
A very senior Israeli intelligence delegation, a week ago, visited Washington. Then, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke into President Putin’s summer holiday to meet him in Sochi, where, according to a senior Israeli government official (as cited in the Jerusalem Post), Netanyahu threatened to bomb the Presidential Palace in Damascus, and to disrupt and nullify…
Last month, President Trump made a joint appearance at the White House with a visiting head of government, during which Trump spoke of the visitor’s country being “on the front lines in the fight against” an organization that is part of that same country’s governing coalition. The visitor was Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and the…
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…
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…
