There will be a before and after to October 7, 2023, so unprecedented and traumatic have the events of the last 48 hours been for Israel, followed by massive retaliation. We can already draw several lessons from this.
Tag: hezbollah
With the complicity of leftist rulers in Venezuela, Bolivia and even Argentina, Iran’s sanction-ridden regime is spreading its tentacles in South America, and could even undermine democracies.
Lebanon’s recent elections have shrunk the legislative block led by national power-brokers Hezbollah. But will a precarious new majority be able to rid the government of the long shadow of Tehran?
The desperation to leave Islamic Iran has spread from writers, dissidents and minority groups to hundreds of thousands of Iranians willing to live and work “anywhere that isn’t Iran.”
The peace accords signed between conservative Arab states and Israel are the start of an inevitable opening for the Middle East, and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan means a new post-American, post-oil future.
Hezbollah and its patrons have spread their tentacles to South America with help from local friends including Venezuela’s socialist regime. Argentina is belatedly backing the Western stance against the international Islamist group.
Slated to open in 2020, Israel’s National Blood Services Center is a high-tech insurance policy to ward against existential threats such as chemical attacks.
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Syria, How Did It Come To This?
-Analysis- PARIS — The Syrian population continues to endure various armed conflicts. Despite all the attention this war gets from international, political and humanitarian organizations, it is now more than seven years since it began — and Syria is suffering from three open wounds. On April 9, at dawn, the Tayfur air base, located between […]
-Analysis- BEIRUT — Since its independence in 1943, Lebanon has been exposed to the vicissitudes of the Middle East’s complicated geopolitics, from the creation of Israel, which led to a massive influx of Palestinian refugees on Lebanese soil, to the recent war in Syria, not to mention Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. Since 2005 and […]
-Analysis- Lebanon can be seen as a microcosm for the entire Middle East: intractable sectarian conflict, economic potential, terrorist threats and a labyrinthine web of competing national interests. These days, it seems, the small nation of just over six million inhabitants risks again becoming the live theater for the region to play out its many […]
The Lebanese ‘Party of Hope’ calls for the immediate expulsion of more than one million Syrian refugees.
ALEPPO — In his smoke-filled office in western Aleppo, Tarif Attoura holds a copy of the draft agreement to let the rebels leave the eastern part of the city, under siege for three months. “It was the Russians who drew up the document in their Center for Reconciliation at the Khmeimim air base, near Latakia,” […]
The worst fear in the capital is a lasting truce between Russia and the United States, which they believe would halt the Assad regime’s offensive and delay the total victory.
Many locals in Lebanon’s capital are firm Hezbollah and Assad loyalists, seeing the Islamist militia that supports the Syrian regime and fights ISIS on the ground as their ultimate protector against the civil war raging across the border.
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February 16
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SPANISH ELECTION ENDS TWO-PARTY SYSTEM Yesterday’s national elections in Spain have left more questions than answers today, as two of the country’s fledgling political movements made huge gains and the conservative Popular Party lost its majority. “Spain knocks down two-party system and leaves the government high and dry,” the front page of conservative newspaper El […]
Iranian foreign policy is still a major question mark, even as Western delegations stream through Tehran in the wake of a nuclear deal that promises an end to sanctions and international isolation. But there is no denying that Iran is a major regional power, which holds the real potential of becoming a working partner with […]
As it loses territory in Iraq and Syria, ISIS may pursue the *distant enemy* that Osama bin Laden put at the heart of his own longer-term pursuit of a caliphate.
BEIRUT — An Italian diplomat once said that “the darkest corners of a crisis can be the most illuminating in understanding geopolitical dynamics.” This is where Lebanon finds itself: One of the few Middle Eastern countries that is not at war, yet one suffering in the trenches nonetheless. These days Lebanon is far from the […]
A Turkish journalist travels with an Alawite fixer to Damascus to understand what life is like in the Syrian capital as war in the country rages. Life goes on, but it’s not all grim.
NEPAL CONTINUES TO DIG OUT Photo: Pratap Thapa/Xinhua/ZUMA Rescue operations continue to find survivors in Nepal after Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake. The latest official figures number the dead at 3,726 with more than 6,000 injured. Dozens are also believed to have died in neighboring China and India. The death toll is likely to rise as rescue […]
-OpEd- PARIS — With just days to go before the Israeli election, it becomes increasingly difficult to predict who will win the race. The latest polls show the center-left Zionist Union candidates Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni leading over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud party. Of course, the country’s proportional system means […]
Syria’s tangled web grows even more intricate. Hezbollah is key to Assad’s strategy, moderate rebels avoid ISIS and al-Nusra at all cost, and Israel helps the Free Syrian Army.
Turns in the war in Syria, as well as shifting resources and alliances across the Muslim world, mean tensions are easing between Israel and both Hamas and Hezbollah.
From the Israeli side of the border, a view of how the whole of the Middle East seems to be maneuvering.
In a secret location in the Lebanese capital, a 60-bed hospital treats ISIS and other Islamic extremists whose backers must pay cash in advance. Enemies share doctors where medicine is a blind business, and cash is king.
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Iran, ISIS And Ambitions Of Empires
There has been much recent speculation about Iran working with its longtime nemesis, the United States, to confront a new, common enemy: the radical Islamist organization ISIS. Indeed, the Sunni zealots of ISIS have focused some of their rhetoric directly at Tehran, the center of Shia Islam, vowing to fight what it says are Iran’s […]
Despite a seven-year blockade, Israel’s control of movement and goods in the Gaza Strip has only strengthened the enemy Hamas and exposed Israel to global criticism. Time for a new policy.
-OpEd- PARIS — How often are war crimes being committed in Syria? Is it every time a helicopter from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime drops a barrel bomb on a school, a hospital, an apartment block? Every time a fighter-bomber launches a strike in the middle of a town? Or every time a group of Islamist […]
BEIRUT — Iran’s ambassador in Lebanon said he was confident the Islamic Republic would soon improve ties with longtime regional rival Saudi Arabia. Speaking at a Beirut conference to mark the 35th anniversary of Iran’s 1979 revolution, Ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi acknowledged that Iran’s calls for better ties had yet to receive “echoes” from Riyadh, but […]
The two explosions that killed at least 23 people this week in Beirut are the latest sign that the country is moving toward the kind of conflict that has torn it apart in the past.
TEL AVIV — It’s the joke of the evening and they tell it again and again, happy with themselves, a lukewarm glass of Coke in their hands: “Are you ready to hear a lie? Because if I tell you the truth, we’ll have to kill you.” They probably wouldn’t, but then again the participants of […]
BBC, AL JAZEERA, NEW YORK TIMES Worldcrunch BEIRUT – A previously unknown Sunni group has claimed responsibility for Thursday’s car-bomb explosion in a southern Beirut neighborhood, one of Lebanon’s bloodiest attacks in recent memory and the clearest sign to date that the conflict in neighboring Syria is crossing the border. As the death toll climbed […]
The Israeli Defense Forces’ one-of-a-kind Internet strategy aims to bypass an international media known for unfriendly fire.
While Syrian rebels and Assad’s soldiers fight each other near the border, Israelis accustomed to rhetoric but relative tranquility are getting ready to defend themselves for real.
AMMAN – The majority of Syria’s 25 million-strong population is Sunni, and while activists increasingly blame the Alawite-led shabiha Ba’ath operatives and mercenary Hezbollah forces for keeping the Assad regime in place, it is in fact the Sunni population that is quietly propping it up. Whether out of fear, genuine ideological support or financial interest, […]
The Syrian leader left open the possibility to negotiate with the opposition but ruled out stepping down in this rare interview obtained by top Argentine daily Clarin.
HAARETZ, JERUSALEM POST (Israel), NEW YORK TIMES (U.S.), REUTERS, AFP, BBC Worldcrunch DAMASCUS – The situation in Syria has gotten both more dangerous and more complicated over the past 72 hours. On Monday, Chinese officials indirectly criticized Israel’s weekend strikes in Syria, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began a five-day visit to China. During a […]
ARUTZ SHEVA, HAARETZ, JERUSALEM POST (Israel); REUTERS Worldcrunch TEL AVIV – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against civilians, an Israeli Intelligence official stated on Tuesday. Haaretz reports that the head of the Research Division at Military Intelligence, Brig. Gen. Itai Brun said: “To the best of our professional understanding, the regime has […]