In vowing to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Donald Trump has torn up the diplomatic rule book, satisfying his base but at what cost? An Israeli soldier looks at the Western Wall at the Old City of Jerusalem with the Dome of the Rock in the background,...
By Alistair Lyon Arriving in Amman the other day, I boarded an airport taxi into town and began chatting with the driver. I’ll call him Yusuf. He told me he used to work as an engineer, calibrating ground instruments for the Jordanian air force. I mentioned that...
Rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, aspirants for leadership of the Islamic world, is at the crux of conflict across the Mideast, with deadly results. An Iranian woman in Tehran holds up a poster showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent opposition Saudi Shiite...
We originally published this article in February after Donald Trump took office as U.S. president and said he was not committed to a two-state solution in Palestine. We are publishing it again because of the continuing importance of the issue, which was the focus of a...
By Chermaine Tay Islamic State fighters are on the run in Syria, squeezed on all sides by armed opponents whose only common goal is to annihilate the militant group. The eventual defeat of ISIS would be welcomed by their many disparate foes, who range from the Syrian...
The Kurdish region of Iraq is under pressure to scrap an independence vote that critics say could hinder the fight against Islamic State militants. Kurds rally for an independence referendum in Iraq, Beirut, Lebanon, 17 September 2017 (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)...
Below is an account from a resident of the Gulf following a decision by Saudia Arabia and allies to impose a blockade on Qatar. We are withholding the author’s name for security reasons. This first-person account complements our earlier stories on the importance...
The region is energy-rich, torn by conflict and at the center of a struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. All reasons why the blockade of Qatar matters. A container ship in Doha, Qatar, 14 June 2017. (EPA/Noushad thekkayil) The region holds about half of the...
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have punished Qatar. The real target is not the small, gas-rich emirate but the regional powerhouse that is Iran. The “crisis” enveloping the tiny Gulf state of Qatar is a classic case of that regional diplomatic specialty:...
The U.S. strike against Syria has drawn Washington deeper into a messy conflict and set back ties with Russia. But a military escalation is not sure. Abdul-Hamid Alyousef holds his twin babies who were killed during a suspected chemical weapons attack, in Khan...