Middle East

For Iran, the re-election of Donald Trump in November 2024 was its worst nightmare. Waking up the morning after the US election, Tehran feared President Trump’s unpredictability – and remembered the hard line he’d taken on Iran in the past and his killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds force commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020. With Iran already reeling from losing a chunk of its proxy network in 2024, and with its air defences and missiles degraded by Israel, it was in a uniquely vulnerable position. All of this forced a recalibration. Iran’s tactic changed from rebuffing to killing President Trump with kindness. Tehran decided to weaponise diplomacy

Imagine booing a survivor of a fascist attack. People actually did that this week. Pro-Palestine activists heckled and insulted a young woman who survived Hamas’s anti-Semitic butchery of 7 October 2023 by playing dead under a pile of bodies. Take a minute to consider the depravity of this, the sheer inhumanity of tormenting a woman who experienced such terror. It was a spectacle of cruelty masquerading as protest The woman is Yuval Raphael. She’s the 24-year-old singer who’s representing Israel at Eurovision. The last big music event she attended was the Nova festival in the desert of southern Israel on 7 October 2023. What she witnessed there almost defies belief.

This weekend in Muscat, US and Iranian diplomats held a fourth round of talks, continuing their efforts to find a way through an impasse that has bedevilled US-Iran relations since 1979. By all accounts, the negotiations so far have been a mixed bag. The overall picture remains slightly confused, particularly around the issue of uranium enrichment. Some hardliners in Tehran are getting cold feet, and old entrenched narratives on both sides of the divide are beginning to resurface as the going gets tough. Sources close to the talks have indicated that the US might agree to Iranian domestic uranium enrichment – either frozen state or limited – while, in return, Iran

War seldom has true victors – and for Bethlehem, where tourism once accounted for approximately 70 per cent of income, the Israel-Gaza conflict has left businesses shuttered and livelihoods in ruins. Since the October 7 attack, my home country of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs has classified Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank under its highest Level 4: “Do Not Travel” risk advisory. Earlier this month – despite my better judgement – I ventured into Bethlehem to witness firsthand the impact of the Israel-Gaza war on the city’s economy and dwindling Christian population. ‘There are dozens of hotels in Bethlehem, and they’re almost all empty.’ Under the Oslo

You’re more likely to see a protest against Hamas in Gaza than in London. For brave, spirited agitation against this army of anti-Semites that murders Israelis and oppresses Palestinians, forget Britain’s activist class – they’re too busy frothing about the ‘evil’ Jewish State morning, noon and night. Look instead to the bombed-out Gaza Strip itself, where, finally, fury with Hamas is bubbling over. If Palestinians vented their Hamas criticism in Britain, they would get an earful from ‘progressives’ Hundreds of Gazans took to their rubble-strewn streets to register their disdain for Hamas. Around a hundred gathered in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza, brandishing placards saying ‘Stop War’ and

As the US and Russia meet in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine, the talks potentially mark the end of a battle over who would get to serve as the mediator to help bring the war to an end. The diplomatic tussle to be the Ukraine war’s peace broker has been fractious. So how did Saudi Arabia come out on top? It comes down to the Kingdom’s cordial relations with both Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Donald Trump’s White House – and, of course, a lot of money. MBS is said to be Trump’s favourite foreign leader Saudi Arabia’s triumph was not a foregone conclusion. Prior to

There are moments in the life of a democracy when ambiguity becomes complicity. On Sunday, in the heart of London, such a moment unfolded with eerie precision and devastating clarity. During the annual Quds Day rally – an event imported from the revolutionary streets of Tehran – demonstrators hoisted images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a city that prides itself on liberty, tolerance, and pluralism, the figurehead of a regime known for repression, hostage diplomacy, antisemitism, and extraterritorial assassination plots was paraded as an icon of defiance. One might ask, defiance of what? Of Zionism? Of oppression? No. Of Britain itself:

A Kurdish-led rebel coalition which dominates north-eastern Syria has signed a deal with the interim government in Damascus. The agreement, which means the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) will look to hand over border posts and oil and gas fields under its control, recognises the Kurdish minority as ‘an integral part of the Syrian state’. Peace in Syria is now a little bit more likely. After a week of new threats to the stability of Syria, with hundreds killed in a series of massacres, this tentative deal is one that many thought might never happen. SDF commander Mazloum Abdi was not in his usual military garb when he signed the deal

There’s an old journalistic maxim: If it bleeds, it leads. But some crucial words are missing from the end: If we can hold the Jews responsible. It’s not by chance that most news organisations have more correspondents in Israel than in the rest of the Middle East put together. True, that’s partly because Israel – unlike its neighbours – is a democracy which allows dissenting voices, and is home to and welcomes a cacophony of both homegrown and foreign media voices. If you want to cover the Middle East, you’ll likely base yourself in Israel. Al-Sharaa’s arrival as Syria’s de facto president was greeted not as the ascension to power

Israeli leaders recently made clear that the IDF’s current military deployment into south-west Syria is not intended as a stop-gap measure until its northern neighbour stabilises. Rather, in a speech last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told IDF officer cadets that the force’s troops would stay on the formerly Syrian side of Mount Hermon, and in the buffer zone carved out to the east of the Golan Heights for ‘an unlimited period of time’. Israel’s incursion into Syria to disrupt a perceived threat resembles other foreign entries into Syria, In a statement appearing to hint at a yet more ambitious Israeli strategy, the Prime Minister added that Israel demanded the