The Kurdish majority city of Kobane remains under the control of the SDF, and despite yet another deal between Kurdish officials and the Syrian government which was meant to resolve the conflict, the city remains under siege. As the siege of the city approaches two...
One of the early consequences of the Saudi invasion of Yemen was that the local affiliate, called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), seized substantial territory in the south. AQAP is no longer seen as nearly so high profile, carrying out occasional attacks on...
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has very publicly rejected President Trump’s demand he be prevented from returning to power, declaring it “blatant American interference in Iraq’s internal affairs,” and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Iraq held its most...
If you put aside the continued fighting in several parts of northern and eastern Syria, and the mounting humanitarian crisis among civilians displaced by the fighting, the ceasefire between the Syrian government and the Kurdish SDF is holding. The tribal-backed...
Iraq’s Coordination Framework has nominated Nouri al-Maliki as their leader to attempt to form the next Iraqi government after November’s election. Maliki was Iraq’s premier from 2006 to 2014, and has led the State of Law bloc since then, trying to return to the...
Fighting between the Syrian military and the Kurdish SDF continues with the government cracking down on perceived SDF loyalists and trying to consolidate gains from the recent offensives against them. Much has been said about the fighting, but less so about the people...
Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon have left at least three civilians dead since Monday, including a TV presenter for Lebanon’s Al Manar TV identified as Ali Nour al-Din, who was killed on his motorcycle in the city of Tyre. The IDF confirmed the strike and the...
Fresh off a new 15-day extension of the ceasefire between the two sides, the Syrian Army and the Kurdish SDF are continuing to fight in several areas across the country, and as has been the case for weeks the only thing the two sides can agree on is that the other...
Iraq had a parliamentary election in late 2025, with the results ratified in mid-December. This, as usual, led to a scramble to try to form a majority coalition out of a large number of political parties that gained meaningful seats in a situation where the plurality...
Israel is once again carrying out airstrikes across southern and eastern Lebanon today, with strikes killing at least two people and wounding one other, and the IDF offering the usual pretext that the targets were all Hezbollah infrastructure of one form or another....
