Jonathan Spyer is a journalist and Middle East analyst. He is director of research at the Middle East Forum and the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict.
Travelling from Syria’s Highway 42, which runs from Tabqa to the city of Homs, you can see the corpse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Getting to Homs and from there to Damascus requires driving across 300km of desert. Once, huge and imposing checkpoints festooned with the symbolism of the regime greeted travellers seeking to reach Syria’s
When Hamas launched its war on Israel in October, 2023, it did so on the basis of a clear analysis of Israeli society, according to which it hoped to achieve its objectives. Given the nature and extent of the massacre of 7 October 2023, it was surely clear to the Palestinian Islamist movement that Israel’s
The liberation of Syria’s notorious Sednaya jail close to Damascus a week ago has resulted in a wave of belated outrage in much western media toward the former dictator and his methods. For Syria watchers, there is something rather surreal about this late discovery of the methods of Assad’s regime. Some of the precise numbers
In late February 2012 I was travelling through Syria’s Idleb province. I stayed for a few days in a town called Binnish, not far from the province’s capital. It was, at that time, under the tentative control of the newly hatched insurgency against the regime of Bashar Assad. The young host of the place I was
The astonishing and abrupt fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus is a moment of historic importance for the Middle East, in which the shifting of tectonic plates can be plainly felt. But which plates in particular? And what are the immediate implications? Firstly, it is important just to contemplate the dimensions of what has just
Syrian Sunni Islamist fighters are continuing to consolidate their gains in Syria’s Aleppo province. Almost the entirety of Aleppo city, sometimes called the capital of Syria’s north, is now in the hands of the Turkey-backed fighters. Russian and Assad regime airstrikes have begun in earnest on opposition-held parts of the country’s north west. The lightning
Nothing is yet confirmed, but it appears that a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah is imminent. The fighting, which began on 8 October last year, has claimed thousands of lives and left the Israel-Lebanon border area decimated on both sides. But there is anger that Israel is rushing into an agreement that will not
As the dust settles on the latest confrontation between Israel and Iran in the Middle East, the nature of the Israeli strikes against Tehran this weekend is becoming clear. It is a mark of the extent to which clashes between these two regional powers have become normalised over the last six months that the details, rather
Two senior US officials are in the Middle East this week, with the joint mission of negotiating an end to the current war between Israel and a number of Iran-backed Islamist militias. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived in Israel on Tuesday. US Special Envoy on Lebanon Amos Hochstein was in Beirut on Monday. Are
The killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is a key milestone for Israel in its ongoing, grinding effort to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza. The details of the killing show the extent to which Hamas no longer has any depth of control over any part of Gaza. Earlier in the war, Sinwar would
Israel’s overt ground intervention into Lebanon is now entering its third week. So far, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have advanced just a few kilometers in and established control in a number of locations across the border. The IDF itself has described its ground action on the border as consisting of ‘limited, localised and targeted
Travelling through the Gaza border area on the morning of October 8, 2023, I was struck by a sense of familiarity. The scenes of destruction, the burnt buildings, and the smashed-up cars by the side of the road were, of course, profoundly shocking. But they were not, at least to me, unfathomable. Unlike most of
Iran’s decision to launch 181 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday night followed a similar pattern to the attacks of 14 April. Israeli and allied air defences appear to have performed extremely effectively. The damage to the military and civilian sites targeted is minor to non-existent. One Palestinian Arab man was killed in a village near Jericho, not from
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the IDF spokesman’s office issued a laconic statement, according to which Israeli forces have commenced ‘raids… based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon. These targets are located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in
The assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah transcends the immediate confrontation between Israel and its Islamist enemies. Nasrallah was both a leader and a symbol of Iran’s bid for hegemony in the Arab world. His fighters advanced Iran’s cause in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond the region – into Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Israeli
Israel has carried out its largest-scale operation against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon since the summer war of 2006. Wave after wave of Israeli aircraft struck at 1,600 targets across Lebanon yesterday with the aim of targeting Hezbollah weapons stores. Nearly 500 people were killed, according to figures issued by the Lebanese authorities. After nearly twelve months
The killing of 12 people, including several Hezbollah members, and the wounding of thousands more when 5,000 pagers simultaneously exploded in Lebanon yesterday represents an obvious tactical triumph for Israel (or whoever carried it out). The sight of members of the Iran-supported Shia Islamist group suddenly collapsing in agony while performing mundane daily tasks was
As its Gaza campaign cools, Israel’s attention is returning northwards. Approximately 60,000 Israelis from northern communities are still refugees. A reckoning between Israel and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah appears to be only a matter of time. Two significant strikes this week suggest that Israel is preparing for a potentially imminent major confrontation, and broadening
The murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas in Gaza earlier this week led to an outpouring of grief and fury in Israel. For a considerable and vocal section of the public, the anger was directed – in a way perhaps surprising to outsiders – not against the Islamist group responsible for the murders, but
Hezbollah’s response to the killing of senior official Fuad Shukr, when it finally came, was a more minor event than anticipated. For weeks, both the Lebanese Shia Islamist group and its Iranian patron have been threatening a terrible revenge for the recent assassinations in Beirut and Tehran. It is now clear, however, that neither Hezbollah
