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Middle East

The Fall Of Assad And What It Means For The Middle East

December 10, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , ,
The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ending a 55-year dynasty begun by his father, dramatically shifts the pieces on the chessboard of the Middle East. The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is armed and backed by Turkey and was once allied with Al Qaeda. It is sanctioned as a terrorist group. Turkey’s primary goal is to prevent an independent Kurdish state in northern Syria where Kurds have formed an autonomous enclave. But it may not only be Turkey that is behind the overthrow of Assad. It may also be Israel.

Israel’s Genocide Day 430: Progress Reported In Ceasefire Talks

December 10, 2024 Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , , ,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel’s dissolution of its commitment to the 1974 forces disengagement agreement with Syria, which ended the 1973 war between the two countries. Netanyahu made his announcement in a televised statement from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights on Sunday. Netanyahu’s declarations came shortly after Israeli forces breached the de-militarized buffer zone between the Israeli-occupied and the Syrian-held territory in the Golan. Israeli forces invaded and took over several positions inside Syrian sovereign territory, including the summit of Mount Al-Sheikh, with no resistance according to Israeli reports.

Israel Unleashes Hell Across Syria With Over 250 Airstrikes

December 10, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , ,
Israeli jets have launched well over 250 airstrikes across dozens of locations in the north, east, west, and south of Syria as of 10 December, targeting all of the country's air defense systems, military bases, and overground military assets. Heavy airstrikes have destroyed weapons and ammo depots, factories, research facilities, and all military airfields and naval bases since extremist armed groups entered the capital, Damascus, and seized power on Sunday morning. Israeli media described the blitzkrieg as the “most intense” bombing of Syria since the October 1973 War. Channel 12 reported that "the air force is operating on a very broad scale across Syria to destroy the remnants of the Syrian Army."

Is The United States Headed For Another Middle East War?

December 1, 2024 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. , , , , ,
Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has taken a hardline position against Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, advocating policies aimed at reigniting the conflict between Riyadh and Sana’a. Critics warn that his approach could risk dragging the United States into a direct confrontation, escalating tensions in an already volatile region. As vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio has carved out a reputation as a steadfast proponent of hardline policies, particularly against Yemen’s Ansar Allah-led government and its allies. Rubio, who has received over $1 million from pro-Israel donors, has consistently aligned himself with neoconservative hawks.

Trump II And The Middle East

November 30, 2024 As'ad AbuKhalil, Consortium News. , , ,
It is too early to draw an outline of the Middle East policy of the incoming Trump administration. The cabinet and other senior positions are shaping up, while Democrats are doing their best to badger Arab-Americans for their vote against the Democratic Party. We can draw on a variety of factors to understand the general direction of Donald Trump’s Mideast policies. Will Jared Kushner play a role in the new administration? Trump viewed his son-in-law as an in-house Middle East expert not because of his academic credentials or his experience in the region, but purely because of his fanatical attachment to the Likud agenda.

Escalation Of Wars In Ukraine And The Mideast

November 25, 2024 Consortium News. , , , , , , , ,
Two wars, dragging humanity into despair and existential peril, have in the past week sunk to levels difficult to comprehend. The danger of a nuclear confrontation between Russia and the West over Ukraine has been theoretically with us for nearly three years, but last week it took on terrifyingly concrete form. And in the metastasizing wars in the Middle East, which carry their own more distant atomic threat, the genocidal rage of an unbalanced Israel spread deeper into Lebanon, while all-out war with Iran simmers; the ethnic cleansing of at least the North of Gaza is no longer denied in the Israeli press, and much of the world’s patience with the Zionist state ran out as its prime minister was indicted by an international criminal court never intended to pursue Western and allied leaders.

Arab And Muslim States Prepare For Trump 2.0

November 17, 2024 Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss. , , ,
Donald Trump’s electoral victory means that other states, particularly in the Middle East, have to prepare for a range of possibilities. At a summit in Riyadh earlier this week, the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) came together to discuss Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its violent incursion into Lebanon, and the threat of regional war in preparation for dealing with the incoming American administration. The meeting and recent events have showed the Saudis, Qataris, and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world are trying to consolidate their positions, to maximize their options and flexibility, as they prepare to try to stave off a regional war under conditions that are wholly unpredictable and unstable with Donald Trump.

Meet The US Soldiers And Bureaucrats Defecting Over Gaza

November 12, 2024 Chris Lombardi, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , , ,
As the crisis in the Middle East rages on, a growing movement is confronting U.S. funding of Israel’s wars — including a perhaps-surprising number of those once charged with enforcing U.S. policies. Some are military veterans, while others worked for the State Department and other federal agencies. Such resistance is critical to any nonviolent revolution, says Erica Chenoweth, co-author of “Why Civil Resistance Works.” Chenoweth describes such “defections” as foundational to any hope of real change; dissent by the government’s enforcers — security forces, civilian bureaucrats — show cracks in a regime’s powers.

The Palestinian Struggle’s Necessary Realignment

November 8, 2024 Yara Hawari, Consortium News. , , ,
Over the last year, Palestine has been irrevocably changed in ways that, for many of us, were once inconceivable. Since the beginning of the genocide, the Israeli regime has killed over 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza — an estimate provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health that includes over 6,000 unidentified bodies in the ministry’s possession and an additional 10,000 assumed to be still buried under the rubble. Devastatingly, some will never be retrieved. Meanwhile, a July article in The Lancet medical journal on the importance of accounting for Gaza’s fatalities argued that a conservative estimate of total deaths in conflict scenarios equated to “four indirect deaths per one direct death.”

US Tries To Entice Israel Into Minimizing Its Attack On Iran

October 26, 2024 Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , , ,
On October 15, two American officials told the Associated Press that they “believed” the White House had gotten assurances from Israel that it would not strike Iran’s oil or nuclear facilities when it launched its eventual retaliation for the October 1 missile barrage that Iran had fired at Israel. The officials’ cautious tone reflected their lack of confidence in Israel’s verbal agreements. Nothing was in writing, and Israel had made no public declaration about limiting its options regarding Iranian targets. Given Israel’s long history of defying and deceiving its credulous benefactor, it’s remarkable that it’s taken this long for Washington to display this kind of caution with Israel’s promises.

Chris Hedges Report: The Escalating Crisis In The Middle East

October 25, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
Decades of Islamophobia, relentless propaganda campaigns and heavily financed lobbying efforts have made it difficult to understand the political realities of the Middle East. John Mearsheimer, prominent political scientist, University of Chicago professor and self-proclaimed realist, has consistently demonstrated the courage and ability to bypass the noise, delivering honest and well-informed analysis on global affairs. He joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to lay out what’s happening in the Middle East, from Israel’s genocide in Gaza to its escalating attacks on Lebanon and Iran.

Extermination Works – At First

October 15, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , , ,
Extermination works. At first. This is the terrible lesson of history. If Israel is not stopped — and no outside power appears willing to halt the genocide in Gaza or the destruction of Lebanon — it will achieve its goals of depopulating and annexing northern Gaza and turning southern Gaza into a charnel house where Palestinians are burned alive, decimated by bombs and die from starvation and infectious diseases, until they are driven out. It will achieve its goal of destroying Lebanon — 2,255 people have been killed and over one million Lebanese have been displaced — in an attempt to turn it into a failed state.

Could Palestine Be The Catalyst For An Islamic Renaissance?

October 14, 2024 Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation. , , , , , , , ,
Of all the countless analyses across the lands of Islam about the profound significance of fateful Al-Toofan (Al-Aqsa Flood) on October 7, 2023, this one stands out: a cycle of conferences in Istanbul earlier this week, including October 7, titled Palestine: the Lynchpin of Civilizational Renaissance, linked to the Kuala Lumpur Forum for Thought and Civilization. Call it a Malaysia-Turkiye partnership: Southeast Asia meets West Asia, a graphic illustration of the multi-nodal world that will be congregating in less than two weeks in Kazan, capital of Muslim Russia, for the long -awaited BRICS summit under the Russian presidency.

Arab States Are Coming Together To Prevent A Regional War

October 12, 2024 Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , ,
In a welcome, but under-reported, development last week, Arab states from the Gulf Cooperation Council reportedly “sought to reassure Iran of their neutrality” in the brewing conflict between Iran and Israel. The stance was expressed by Arab ministers to their Iranian counterparts at a meeting last week in Doha. It was not a formal, public declaration, but rather a commitment expressed in the meetings directly. Initially, reports—particularly the main one from Reuters on which much of the other reporting was based—also said that the Gulf states had explicitly stated that they would forbid the United States from using their airbases to attack Iran, although more recent and updated reports have mysteriously omitted this point.

The Fall Of Israel

October 9, 2024 Scott Ritter, Consortium News. , , , , ,
I have previously written about Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, calling it “the most successful military raid of this century.” I have described the Hamas action as a military operation, while Israel and its allies have called it a terrorist action on the scale of what transpired against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. “The difference between the two terms,” I noted, “is night and day — by labeling the events of October 7 as acts of terrorism, Israel transfers blame for the huge losses away from its military, security, and intelligence services, and onto Hamas. If Israel were, however, to acknowledge that what Hamas did was in fact a raid — a military operation — then the competency of the Israeli military, security, and intelligence services would be called into question, as would the political leadership responsible for overseeing and directing their operations.”
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