As I look out over Lebanon from high up on Israel’s northern border, I see undulating hills dappled with hedgerows and green brush that glows golden in the winter sun. But this is far from an idyll. Lebanese Hezbollah have …
Israel’s ceasefire conceals a bigger threat
While the Israel-Hamas truce will provide instant relief to both war-torn Gazans and the families of returned hostages, this is not a time for celebration. Netanyahu has made clear that the war will continue until he achieves “absolute victory”. This …
America and China should kiss and make up
If Presidents Xi and Biden have one thing in common, it’s that both desperately need a historic win. In the 23 years since Bill Clinton welcomed China into the World Trade Organization, the aura of the two nations’ relationship has …
How America can stop Iran
A recent edition of The Tehran Times carried a warning: “If the Zionist regime’s war crimes and genocidal attacks against civilians in Gaza do not come to an end, the region will move towards making a big and decisive decision.”…
Will Israel-Hamas cause a world war?
As Israel continues to mourn and Gaza continues to be turned into rubble, many in the Middle East are coming to a grim realisation: that things could soon become much, much worse. Huge tectonic shifts now threaten to rupture the …
A trap has been set for Israel
Israel’s forces are massed at the border awaiting orders to launch a “full offensive” against Gaza. For days, airstrikes and artillery have been bombarding the Gaza statelet where Hamas has its warfighting machinery honeycombed inside city blocks. “You will have …
Israel’s distraction is a warning to the West
How could Israel let this happen? As footage of Gazan motorbikes pelting through holes in Israel’s “smart” border fence started to circulate, of paragliders descending on a desert rave, of entire families being kidnapped or butchered in their homes, that …
Israel and the rise of a new world order
Within hours of Hamas’s attack on Saturday, the celebrations had started in Iran. The Office of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei released a new propaganda video, glorifying the so-called “Al Aqsa Storm” operation. In Tehran’s “Palestine Square”, regime flunkies …
How MBS wins friends and influences people
Prior to the 1973 Arab oil embargo, nobody cared much for Saudi Arabia: a largely nomadic, pre-industrial desert nation with a population smaller than London. But in the last 50 years, it has become a friend worth cultivating. So much …
The rise of pro-Western disinformation
When the US State Department launched its Iran Disinformation Project in the autumn of 2018, it was hailed as a new weapon in the war on hostile foreign propaganda. Staffed by diaspora Iranians and handed an initial $1.5 million of …
Jenin and the new Palestinian resistance
The armoured column drives slowly north out of Jenin. On one vehicle, a bleary-eyed Israeli soldier leans on a massive Vulcan cannon. “Fucking Saigon,” he mutters when I ask about the recent battle. He’s not far off: his unit has …
Iran is teetering on conflict
Europe’s web of alliances has always been almost incomprehensibly tangled. This is one of the reasons we still disagree so vehemently about the causes of the First World War: the assassination of Franz Ferdinand lit a fuse woven from a …
The Kurds fighting the Isis resistance
“George W. Bush is a hero.” General Sirwan Barzani utters these words with quiet satisfaction. “The best thing that happened to Iraq, at least to us Kurds, was its liberation in 2003. He liberated all of Iraq from dictatorship. It …
Mosul and the Law of the Cigarette
“Remember the Law of the Cigarette,” says my fixer Mohammed as we approach a checkpoint on the outskirts of Mosul. We’ve spent the morning driving through a landscape scarred by the war against Isis. Villages are filled with ruined buildings …
FLASHBACK: The REAL Middle East Nuclear Threat (2018)
FROM 2018: There is in fact a Middle Eastern nation that is in fact in control of a vast, undeclared stockpile of nuclear weapons. This nation does have the capability of deploying those weapons anywhere in the region. It is …