Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has a colossal problem. Syria’s infrastructure, including housing and commerce, was significantly destroyed during more than a decade of civil war. The new Syrian government will have great difficulty rebuilding Syria after more than a decade of civil war unless US and other sanctions are lifted. Syria has been under comprehensive […]

On May 4, Israel’s security cabinet unanimously approved a comprehensive plan to dismantle Hamas’s remaining capabilities, both military and governmental, while offering Hamas a pause in exchange for a hostage release. The plan involves a large-scale call-up of reserves, a “clear and hold” strategy in parts of Gaza, and civilian evacuation as part of a […]

Israel launches extensive retaliatory airstrikes against the Houthi economic heartland in northern Yemen, while the US pivots to announce a ceasefire with the Houthis. This divergence in approach between the superpower and a regional ally raises questions over whether momentum for an anti-Houthi ground offensive has been lost. An intensified American-led air campaign, “Operation Rough […]

Two men, two survivors. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu – so different in backgrounds, so similar in instinct. Trump came from business. Netanyahu came from politics. Trump stormed into Washington with sheer force. Netanyahu became a master of survival in Jerusalem, navigating decades of war, diplomacy, and domestic pressure. Trump’s “America First” doctrine never promised sentiment, […]

President Trump will be traveling to the Middle East at a time of great progress, given the terrible defeat Iran has suffered over the past eighteen months at the hands of exactly the regional alliance Trump is seeking now to further strengthen. Nevertheless, more work is needed on the three most pressing remaining Iran-related issues, […]

Iran’s nuclear program is not an arms control problem, the approach often taken by US negotiators. It is a central pillar of the regime’s survival strategy. Until that regime’s architecture of power is directly addressed and sufficiently weakened, Iran’s nuclear threat will outlast any paper agreement.  Iran’s nuclear program is also not about electricity and […]

When the abuse of inmates at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison broke into the open in 2004, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld offered to resign. Twice. Both times President George W. Bush rejected Rumsfeld’s offer; he only fired him after the Democrats took both the House and the Senate in the 2006 mid-term elections. Secretary […]

The 1994 terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires left 85 dead. While the prospect of bringing Iranian suspects to face justice in Argentina remains remote, there have been important judicial developments over the past 18 months. This could lay the groundwork for further international pressure on Iran.  Background: A Building Bombed, […]

As Israel continues its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, policymakers in Jerusalem often use the term “deradicalization” when discussing Gaza’s future, mentioning it as a condition for the end of hostilities and calm. Yet Israeli politicians have not proposed concrete plans for its implementation,though everyone agrees Hamas’s murderous ideology (and the organization itself) must […]

In late April, Sophia Jani, a young composer from Germany, traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to hear the local symphony perform her composition “Flare.” Before the performance, Jani explained that it was based on a poem by Mary Oliver and that she hoped it might bring some “sweetness” into a troubled world which, at least for […]

The Trump administration entered office with two complementary goals concerning Russia. The first, the humanitarian goal of ending Russia’s war with Ukraine, does not seem close to being achieved. The administration proposed a ceasefire between the two countries as a first step toward terminating the conflict, but while Ukraine accepted the proposal, Russia did not. […]

In northeast England, an hour south of Newcastle next to the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, sits the post-industrial city of Middlesbrough. Its story is that of the country’s industrial rise and fall. 250 years ago, Middlesbrough was a speck on the map. Coal mining and steel and iron production propelled its rapid ascent into a thriving […]

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is celebrating its 100th anniversary. On April 11, the Empire State building will light up in green to evoke the famous flickering green light that Jay Gatsby watches from his dock night after night—an appropriate homage since the book is set in Long Island and New York. Fitzgerald’s gravesite […]

“If he’s looking to renegotiate the deal, he’s got big problems,” President Donald Trump said of his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, in an impromptu interview on Air Force One on April 1. The deal in question involves the transfer to the United States of rights to Ukraine’s rare earth elements and other natural resources, in […]

While America has long focused on defeating terrorist networks like al-Qaeda and ISIS, it has largely overlooked the ideological infrastructure that gave birth to them. At the heart of that ecosystem lies the Muslim Brotherhood—a transnational Islamist movement that has inspired, influenced, and in many cases directly spawned the world’s most dangerous jihadist organizations. Today, […]

Since the Second World War and especially since the end of the Cold War, the US has promoted international policies designed to make the world in its own liberal image. Paradoxically and inadvertently some of these policies have made the world—and the US itself – less liberal. The post-World War II, US-led liberal order promoted […]

Once upon a time, the Middle Eastern media environment was predictable and staid, dominated by a few prominent outlets that in Arab countries were often owned and operated by the governments’ information ministries.  No longer. Over the past three decades, the region has witnessed an explosion in information and connectivity. In the 1990s and 2000s, […]

Anti-tank missiles in garages and artillery stashed in children’s bedrooms. Weapons stockpiled in nearly every house. This was the scene one of us encountered, in village after village in southern Lebanon, during the October 2024 ground operation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) against Hizbullah.  The IDF found Hizbullah’s battle plans for a massive invasion […]

Robert Silverman: You are an American Jew who moved to Israel, with your wife, as a young couple shortly after the Six-Day War. Then you wrote a book in the 1970s that influenced a whole generation of American Jews. It was called Letters to an American Jewish Friend. And you were talking to your counterparts […]

Yossi Klein Halevi: In terms of my personal journey, it’s framed by my evolving, understanding of the Holocaust, my relationship to the Holocaust and my generation’s experience as opposed to my father’s experience. My father was a survivor from Hungary.  I grew up in a very charged Holocaust environment in Brooklyn, in the 1960s, which […]

Gadi Taub: I believed in Oslo [the 1990s Palestinian-Israeli peace process] because I imagined the Palestinians to be like us. I imagined their national liberation movement to be a national liberation movement just like ours. Then reality just exploded outside my window. Tel Aviv is small. So from where I lived back then, when a […]