Middle east

As Washington rolls out the red carpet today for the former al-Qaeda chieftain and now Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s minorities continue to live in terror. An army of destruction, half Mad Max, half Lollapalooza is rolling through the desert somewhere south of the country’s capital, Damascus. Who has ordered these militants into action? No one knows. What do they want? It isn’t clear. But, as a former prisoner of al-Sharaa’s band of jihadists, I can’t say I’m surprised by what is unfolding in Syria. Whatever else might be said about the old regime of Bashar al-Assad, no one was ever in doubt as to who was in charge.

It’s been almost a year since Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that arguably held more power in Lebanon than the government itself, signed a ceasefire to end a ferocious two-month long war. The deal couldn’t have come at a better time; thousands of Israeli air and artillery strikes had pulverized southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s traditional base of operations, leading to a displacement crisis and killing close to 4,000 Lebanese. Whole swaths of northern Israel had been vacated due to Hezbollah missile attacks, forcing the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to spend money on tens of thousands of civilians bunking in hotel rooms. But the agreement is wearing thin. The ceasefire is really a ceasefire in name only. Will it hold?

On a season eight episode of The Simpsons, newscaster Kent Brockman interviews a man who’s woken up from a 23-year-long coma, and lets him know that Sonny Bono is now a Congressman and Cher has won an Oscar. The man dies soon after. If someone were to wake up from a coma today to find out that Donald Trump, who 23 years ago was hosting The Apprentice, is now the leading candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, it would have a similar result.  But who else deserves the award? If you can give Peace Prizes to Al Gore and Barack Obama for basically being Cool Liberal Guys Who Aren’t Dick Cheney, you can give one to Donald Trump. Look at who’s nominated him: Benjamin Netanyahu, the government of Pakistan, The Israeli Hostages Family Forum.

In her new memoirs, 107 Days, Kamala Harris recounts that in July 2024 she had an important meeting about Israel and the Gaza Strip. Harris, who was running for the presidency, hoped to show that she could pressure Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu into reaching a ceasefire with Hamas. “Netanyahu’s hooded gaze and disengaged demeanors,” she writes, “made it clear to me that he was running out the clock." His only goal was a temporary ceasefire and to undermine the Biden administration. “He wanted Trump in the seat opposite him,” Harris recalls. “Not Joe, not me. Netanyahu wanted the guy who would acquiesce to his every extreme proposal for the future of Gaza’s inhabitants and add his own plan for a land grab by his developer cronies.

Donald Trump is perhaps one of the world’s most gifted salesman. But as he was speaking at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, even he had trouble selling his 20-point peace plan to end the war in Gaza. This wasn’t for a lack of trying. “Today is an historic day for peace,” Trump told the assembled press corps. Calling today "a beautiful day, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization,” Trump went on to outline in broad strokes his diplomatic initiative, which aimed to thread the needle between Netanyahu’s vocal objections to a Palestinian state and the Arab world’s demand that any plan put forth provide the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with an opportunity to take control of their own future.

I write at the very beginning of July. Where I live in Connecticut, people are unpacking flags and bunting in preparation for the July 4 festivities. Elsewhere, the trumpets sounding to accompany Donald Trump’s triumphant announcement of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel have subsided. It is clear that the President dearly wants peace. So does Israel. For its part, Iran wants the extermination of “the Zionist entity” and, beyond that, the eventual extinction of the “Great Satan,” America. How do I know? Iranian spokesmen keep telling the world just that. I wonder if Salman Rushdie has reached out to Trump now that he has joined the exclusive club of those upon whom the lunatics in charge of Iran have explicitly pronounced a fatwa – a death sentence.

China is surely America’s most dangerous threat over the medium term, but Iran is surely the most dangerous right now. The Islamic Republic would be even more dangerous if the Israelis had not decimated the Mullah’s deadly “ring of fire,” the proxy forces across the Middle East funded, armed, trained, and directed by Tehran. But removing these proxies (all except the Houthis in Yemen) does not remove Iran’s nuclear threat. That threat now faces the Trump administration and Netanyahu’s coalition in Israel, leaving only difficult choices. To understand the current problems, we need to grasp a series of fundamental issues surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. • What are Iran’s objectives?

After the cautious optimism of the early rounds of US-Iran talks, and Donald Trump’s Gulf roadshow, the US government has claimed that Israel is preparing for a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, a parallel piece of political theatre to the ongoing talks between US and Iranian negotiators.  This is nothing new. B-52 bombers and Israeli fighter jets have been rehearsing this for the past few months, and many years before that. This is some very public cold water being poured on the talks, just as they set to advance to the complicated bit. Aware that there is every chance the talks may not progress beyond these thorny rounds, both sides are preparing the ground for that failure.

From the election in November to the presidential inauguration in January, media commentators took turns to pronounce the Trump “Resistance” dead. I know I did. The line was too tempting. As Trump stormed back into the White House, his power looked irresistible. His enemies seemed so broken and defeated. We all spoke too soon. “NeverTrumpism” is a reaction to Trumpism, as natural as magnetic repulsion and the urge to defy and destroy his presidency hasn’t vanished. In fact, look closely and you can see a “Resistance 2.0” gathering momentum in response to the second Trump administration.

The United States has begun what may well prove to be a long — and likely doomed — campaign of airstrikes against Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, in Yemen. For a year and a half since October 2023, the Houthis have been highly successful in disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, launching missiles and drones at cargo ships, oil tankers, and passenger vessels — hitting some, sinking fewer, and inconveniencing millions. Every conflict the US has engaged in since 2001 has ended before America achieved its objectives. While few ships have been hit, even fewer have been sunk, and fewer still have resulted in casualties, the numbers speak for themselves.

Donald Trump’s ascension to his second presidency comes with a new cadre of followers and sidekicks, in the form of a cabinet built almost entirely from fresh faces. This is not a president interested in continuity, which he signaled early on, stating on social media that Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo — his erstwhile United Nations ambassador and secretary of state — would have no place in his second administration. The first name wasn’t a surprise, given the obvious tension he had with the woman who was his last challenger in the primary. The second was because Pompeo had been a dutiful supporter of Trump while in office, wrote a book defending their shared record on foreign policy and rejected the opportunity to run himself.