Latest Analysis and Commentary
by Khaled Abu Toameh • March 19, 2026 at 5:00 am
Engagement clearly signals to terrorists that violence is an effective path to power, land, and international recognition. Hamas is a group that is explicitly and fundamentally committed, in both ideology and practice, to "armed resistance" (terrorism). Hamas is not some misunderstood political faction waiting to be coaxed into moderation. It advocates jihad (holy war) as an "individual duty [of all Muslims] for the liberation of Palestine." Article 13 of the Hamas charter says: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." [T]here is no evidence that the terror group intends to fundamentally alter its long-term goals. Talking to Hamas now, without its first adhering to Trump's preconditions, marks a sharp and potentially confusing policy reversal that weakens US credibility globally. Across the region, the Iranian regime and its terror proxies are watching closely. The lesson for them will unmistakably be: hold out, escalate, and eventually the world's most powerful democracy will come to deliver victory to you. Engaging Hamas as if it were a normal governing authority will only demonstrate to other terrorist groups that terrorism works. Launching direct talks with Hamas or other Islamist terror groups absent any fundamental change in their positions is not diplomacy. It is capitulation and surrender dressed up as "realism." Above all, direct engagement of Hamas is a concession to the jihadis, who believe Muslims are in an eternal confrontation with the enemies of Islam and must overthrow secular regimes to restore a "pure" Islamic state.
Hamas is not some misunderstood political faction waiting to be coaxed into moderation. It advocates jihad (holy war) as an "individual duty [of all Muslims] for the liberation of Palestine." Pictured: Hamas terrorists in Jabalia refugee camp, in the Gaza Strip, on December 1, 2025. (Photo by Omar Al-Qataa/AFP via Getty Images)
Envoys from U.S. President Donald J. Trump's "Board of Peace" recently met representatives of Hamas in the Egyptian capital of Cairo in an effort to safeguard the Gaza ceasefire, Reuters reported on March 16. "The weekend meeting is the first publicly reported since the start of the Iran war between the Palestinian militant group and the board, a new international body personally headed by Trump, which has been tasked with overseeing post-war Gaza.... "One of the sources says Trump's board was represented at the talks with Hamas by Aryeh Lightstone, an American aide to Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff.... Further meetings were expected this week. "
The Trump administration is making a huge mistake by engaging an Islamist terror group.
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by Ahmed Charai • March 19, 2026 at 4:30 am
[CIA Director John] Ratcliffe projected command, seriousness, and strategic clarity. He spoke like a man who understands intelligence not simply as the collection of information, but as the fuel of statecraft. He reaffirmed the administration's rationale for striking Iran, saying that Iran posed a "constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time, and posed an immediate threat at this time." Tulsi Gabbard, by contrast, appeared less at ease in a role that demands steadiness, clarity, and discipline. For years, Tehran has built and expanded an arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones while cultivating a network of coercion that has threatened not only Israel, but also Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—countries that chose peace, modernization, and partnership with Israel and the United States. To suggest that America had no obligation to stand with such partners against a regime built on intimidation, blackmail, and ideological expansionism would constitute a shocking abdication. Regimes of this kind [Iran] do not become less dangerous because democracies grow tired of confronting them. On the contrary, in Tehran, democratic fatigue is interpreted as permission. Here, the Abraham Accords offer a strategic approach. They showed that the Middle East need not be organized around permanent grievances, but can be reorganized around commerce, technology, security cooperation, and mutual recognition. Jared Kushner deserves recognition for the role he played in helping bring those accords into being and in working afterward to deepen their promise. Their deeper lesson was not merely that old enemies can sign documents. It was that the future can be built around incentives more powerful than hatred. In the end, the choice was never between war and perfect peace. It was between confronting a regime that had spent decades arming proxies, tightening a ring of fire around Israel, terrorizing America's Arab partners, and extending its reach toward the world's most sensitive maritime corridors—or waiting until that architecture of aggression became even harder, bloodier, and costlier to dismantle. History is rarely kind to powers that confuse delay with prudence. If this moment is to mean anything, it must mean more than having checked Tehran's advance. It must mark the beginning of a different regional horizon: one in which Israel can live in security, Arab states can deepen stability and prosperity, and the Iranian people can finally reclaim a future stolen from them by a regime that made regional chaos its grand strategy.
Pictured: A Fattah ballistic missile is displayed during a military parade in Tehran, on September 22, 2023. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Yesterday's Senate Intelligence Committee's Worldwide Threats demonstrated that in an age of deep polarization and mounting international disorder, the public questioning of intelligence leaders before elected representatives is one of democracy's highest disciplines. Those in power must explain their actions before the nation. Specifically, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified before the Senate committee on the Trump administration's decision to launch strikes on Iran on February 28. Their testimonies mattered not because they satisfied partisan ritual, but because they defined to the public how they assess the threats gathering against the United States, its allies, and the strategic order America sustains.
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by Lawrence Kadish • March 19, 2026 at 4:00 am
Pictured: US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 16, 2026. (Photo by Annabelle Gordon/AFP via Getty Images)
Israel has for decades understood what the American public is just beginning to appreciate: Iran has been at war with our democracy for nearly half a century. President Donald J. Trump has long recognized the threat, along with the grim reality that Iran's ayatollahs and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been zealously committed to deploying nuclear weapons that would jeopardize more than the Middle East. Their chants of "Death to America," were not just meant to inflame their citizens but to transmit their strategic intent: truly "Death to America." Without a declaration of war, the Iranian clerics have directed the murder of American servicemen, the assassination of opponents anywhere in the world, funded sleeper cells, and created a ring of terrorist organizations whose mission remains to drive Israelis into the sea. The outrage of October 7, 2023 was just meant to be their curtain-opener.
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by Nils A. Haug • March 18, 2026 at 5:00 am
Erdogan, from his comments, seems to consider himself the rightful leader of the entire Muslim world. In the interim, he evidently sees himself as "the Middle East's next great power broker, claiming leadership while chaos reigns." Now, just as Israel is overcoming its primary enemy, the Iranian regime, which seeks to wipe Israel off the map and then establish a Caliphate under Sharia law in the region -- along comes yet another Muslim extremist of a similar kind, Turkey's Erdogan. In March 2025, Erdogan doubled down on his anti-Israel rhetoric: "[I]n Turkey's largest mosque, he reportedly told a crowd of worshippers: 'May Allah, for the sake of his name, Al-Qahhar'—the Vanquisher—'destroy and devastate Israel.'" Turkey, it seems, will become Iran's successor in continuing venomous anti-Israel threats in the Muslim sphere, with "Death to Israel" voiced even in the Turkish parliament. Perhaps only when Turkey's leader openly declares, "Death to America" will the US realize that the Islamist monster it has naively supported has simply been stringing the West along.
Now, just as Israel is overcoming its primary enemy, the Iranian regime, which seeks to wipe Israel off the map and then establish a Caliphate under Sharia law in the region -- along comes yet another Muslim extremist of a similar kind, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Pictured: Erdogan meets with Iran's then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, on September 7, 2018. (Photo by the Office of the Supreme Leader of Iran)
Tehran's infamous "doomsday clock" was designed to count down to the annihilation of Israel in the year 2040. Instead, it appears finally to have ceased operating at the 2026 mark, along with many leaders of Iran's extremist Islamic regime. The irony of Iran's rout by its two most-hated enemies -- the "Great Satan" United States and the "Little Satan" Israel -- must be seismic in Iran's major centers, where much of the civilian population openly celebrates, not the end of Israel as intended by Shia clerics, but, instead, the hoped-for final days of an apparently much-hated regime. Israel long sought to destroy the clock's prominence in Tehran's Palestine Square, and has now succeeded in eliminating most of Iran's military and propaganda infrastructure.
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by Pierre Rehov • March 17, 2026 at 5:00 am
Unlike Venezuela's military elite, whose loyalty ultimately depends on financial incentives, Iran's security apparatus has always viewed itself as the armed guardian of a sacred Islamic revolutionary mission. Iran, however, represents a fundamentally different political organism. Confusing the two systems could produce disastrous strategic errors. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not merely an authoritarian government cloaked in ideological language; it is an ideological state whose institutional architecture was deliberately constructed to preserve and expand a revolutionary doctrine. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commands roughly 190,000 personnel plus hundreds of thousands of reservists, controls vast business conglomerates spanning construction, energy and telecommunications, and oversees the Basij militia, a mass organization whose membership has been estimated in the millions and whose purpose is to violently enforce ideological conformity and suppress dissent. This resilience is characteristic of ideological regimes whose institutional design ensures survival beyond any single leader. The Islamic Republic itself endured the death of founding Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, transitioning smoothly to a new leadership structure under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while preserving the same revolutionary framework. Applying the Venezuelan model to Iran would not merely fail; it would risk creating a dangerous illusion of success while leaving the underlying ideological infrastructure untouched. Some Western analysts have suggested that once sufficient military pressure weakens Tehran, negotiations could be opened with supposedly pragmatic factions inside the regime, allowing elements of the current political structure to remain in place in exchange for concessions on nuclear weapons development and regional aggression. Such thinking misunderstands the nature of ideological systems, which tend to treat compromise not as a strategic transformation but as a temporary tactic designed to preserve the revolution until circumstances change. Leaving the ideological framework of the Islamic Republic intact would therefore resemble leaving a malignant tumor inside the body after surgery: the symptoms might temporarily subside, but the underlying disease would continue to grow until it inevitably returns. The Venezuelan model succeeded because the regime it confronted was fundamentally pragmatic, corrupt and adaptable. Iran's regime is none of those things. The Islamic Republic was designed to survive leadership crises, economic hardship, and external pressure precisely because its institutions are bound together by religious ideology rather than mere patronage. Any strategy that focuses only on removing individual leaders while preserving the ideological machinery that sustains them will ultimately fail. It is naive, however, and self-defeating if the Trump Administration imagines that unarmed civilians -- with no outside assistance -- can realistically prevail against heavily armed, determined state security forces. The wish may be understandable, but even more civilians than the 40,000 already slaughtered are bound to meet the same fate. The Trump Administration needs to direct and help them. If there is eventually an end to the violent suppression from the IRGC and the Basij, the international community should be prepared to support forces capable of building a new political order that is neither Islamist nor communist. Anything less would allow the same ideological machinery to regenerate under a different name, ensuring that the crisis would return once again — and that we will still be fighting essentially the same regime but with different ayatollahs five or ten years from now.
Once Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro disappeared, the country's interim leadership and military elite simply recalculated their interests and began cooperating with Washington to preserve their positions. Unlike Venezuela's military elite, whose loyalty ultimately depends on financial incentives, Iran's security apparatus has always viewed itself as the armed guardian of a sacred Islamic revolutionary mission. Applying the Venezuelan model to Iran would not merely fail; it would risk creating a dangerous illusion of success while leaving the underlying ideological infrastructure untouched. Pictured: Maduro, in US custody, on board the USS Iwo Jima in the Caribbean Sea, on January 3, 2026. (Image source: The White House)
The spectacular American military operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power earlier this year has inevitably inspired comparisons among strategists searching for solutions to the Iran crisis.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • March 16, 2026 at 5:00 am
According to the Trump peace plan, announced late last year: "Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning..." The Trump administration and its newly established "Board of Peace," however, have failed to call out Hamas for its ongoing breach of the terms of the ceasefire plan. Hamas has evidently interpreted this silence as a green light to pursue its effort to rearm, regroup and rebuild its regime by killing, torturing, and economically squeezing the residents of the Gaza Strip. "Hamas governs from within a shattered enclave of two million people. The Board of Peace governs from a conference table in Washington. Hamas collects shekels in taxes on smuggled goods; the Board has no independent revenue stream. Hamas integrates 10,000 police personnel into proposed structures; the Board must still wait for countries to commit personnel to a stabilization force. Hamas appoints governors and mayors; the Board awaits reports." — Ranjan Solomon, Middle East Monitor, March 10, 2026. Hamas is rebuilding its financial machinery by collecting taxes, fees, and customs charges on goods entering the Gaza Strip. The money is not being invested in reconstruction. Instead, it is going toward rebuilding the terrorist group's military capabilities. The people in this photo are just some of many who have been executed, shot, kidnapped, or brutally tortured in recent weeks. The list of atrocities grows by the day, and the sheer sadism on display goes beyond anything comprehensible (even for those of us who were born and raised in Gaza and saw Hamas's brutality up close for years). We thought we had seen the floor of their depravity. There is no floor for those people." — Gaza-born journalist Hamza Howidy, March 13, 2026. "The 'crime' those people committed? Saying their own opinions. What makes this even worse than the suffering of those victims itself is the silence of the people who built entire careers screaming about Palestinian suffering... The Palestinians left to die under Hamas's boots are apparently the wrong kind of Palestinians, too inconvenient, too disruptive to the narrative, and too alive in ways that don't serve 'the cause'" — Hamza Howidy, March 13, 2026. "Hamas's fascist militias tortured my dear friend Ashraf Naser Shallah, who has been in and out of hospitals in Gaza City over the past couple of days. They took his phone, stole his wallet with critical documents, and threatened to kill him if he continued to speak out against their terrorism, the Iranian regime, the fraudulent 'resistance' narrative, the desire for peace with Israelis, and his refusal to be cannon fodder in failed Jihadi ideologies that have destroyed the Palestinian people in Gaza" — Gaza-born political activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, March 10, 2026. As long as the world's attention remains focused elsewhere, Hamas will continue to rebuild its authority in the Gaza Strip without facing serious international scrutiny. Hamas seems to believe that time works in its favor. The longer the international community's silence persists, the easier it becomes for the terror group to reestablish itself as the only legitimate power. While some international parties continue searching for diplomatic formulas and peace plans to stabilize the Gaza Strip, Hamas has made one thing abundantly clear: it has no intention of relinquishing terrorism or power. Until that reality changes, no peace plan will have a realistic chance of transforming the future of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas is rebuilding its financial machinery by collecting taxes, fees, and customs charges on goods entering the Gaza Strip. The money is not being invested in reconstruction. Instead, it is going toward rebuilding the terrorist group's military capabilities. Pictured: Masked members of the Hamas-controlled "People's Protection Committees" commandeer a humanitarian aid truck in the southern Gaza Strip on April 3, 2024. (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)
As international attention is focused on the Iran war, the Palestinian Hamas terror group has stepped up its crackdown on the Palestinian people as part of its effort to reassert its control aggressively over the Gaza Strip. Hamas's measures are in violation of US President Donald J. Trump's plan for ending the Israel-Hamas war, which erupted on October 7, 2023 when the Iran-backed terror group invaded Israel and murdered more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals. According to the Trump peace plan, announced late last year:
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by Gordon G. Chang • March 15, 2026 at 5:00 am
Xi has been supremely confident that China will dominate the rest of the century... "Change is coming that hasn't happened in 100 years," the Chinese leader told Vladimir Putin after their 40th in-person chat, in Moscow in March 2023. "And we are driving this change together." Many in Washington and New York policy circles essentially agreed with Xi as they accepted the narrative of America's managed decline. Not President Donald Trump. In a spectacular move, he extracted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from Caracas on January 3 and is now in the process of taking down Iran's theocracy.
American and Israeli strikes on Iran are finishing off Xi Jinping's most cherished narrative of the "China Dream" of national rejuvenation and dominance. U.S. President Donald Trump's moves have also triggered in the Chinese capital a reassessment of American power. Pictured: Trump and Xi meet at Gimhae Air Base in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
American and Israeli strikes have severely degraded Iran's ability to wage war. Perhaps more important, they are finishing off Xi Jinping's most cherished narrative of the "China Dream" of national rejuvenation and dominance. In Beijing these days, just about everyone knows China's arrogant leader was wrong about the long-term direction of the United States. Xi has been supremely confident that China will dominate the rest of the century, and he has not been reluctant to express his belief. "Change is coming that hasn't happened in 100 years," the Chinese leader told Vladimir Putin after their 40th in-person chat, in Moscow in March 2023. "And we are driving this change together." Xi's favorite phrase of recent years reflected this view: "The East is rising, and the West is declining." Many in Washington and New York policy circles essentially agreed with Xi as they accepted the narrative of America's managed decline.
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by Amir Taheri • March 15, 2026 at 4:00 am
Many ask whether he is more of a hardliner than his father. The answer is that his father started as a "moderate" compared to the firebrands of the time, like Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, but became a hardliner when he realized that one cannot be a moderate in an immoderate system.
Pictured: A billboard featuring Iran's new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei with military commanders, on March 13, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
"He is injured but alive!" That is the message that authorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran passed on about the newly anointed "Supreme Guide" Mojtaba Khamenei, who survived an Israeli airstrike that claimed the lives of his parents and his wife at the start of the current war. Speculation about Mojtaba succeeding his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a new dynastic twist isn't new. It started almost 10 years ago when a campaign was launched to designate Ali Khamenei as "the Imam" rather than a mere ayatollah. That campaign was inspired by the fact that the 12 imams of Twelver Shiism owe their position to their bloodline, unlike traditional Islam that bestows the title of imam on learned theologians regardless of their bloodline.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • March 14, 2026 at 5:00 am
In the end, the greatest danger of this mindset is not simply unfair criticism of a president. The deeper problem is that it weakens the ability of society to confront serious threats. When political hatred becomes so intense that it overrides basic judgment, it becomes difficult to distinguish between legitimate criticism and reflexive opposition. Perception of reality itself is broken. At a moment when the world faces overwhelming security challenges – such as from China – currently developing new deadly pathogens for biowarfare and autonomous robots programmed to kill -- and authoritarian regimes that continue to threaten both their own populations and what they regard as their enemies -- denial and blindness carry serious risks. If political discourse becomes so polarized that people can no longer recognize the nature of regimes that repress their own citizens and openly threaten the United States and the Free World, the problem is far larger than any single president. It becomes a crisis that can only be addressed when people step outside their partisan bubbles and confront reality as it truly is.
Iran's leaders have for decades chanted "Death to America" ("The Great Satan") and "Death to Israel" ("The Little Satan"), slogans that are not merely rhetorical flourishes but actual central elements of the regime's ideological identity. Yet, when Trump confronts this very regime, the focus shifts away from the Iranian regime's actions and instead centers entirely on condemning Trump himself. The atrocities committed by the regime fade into the background. Pictured: Iran's then Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei gives a speech on November 1, 2023, televised on Iran's Channel 1. (Image source: MEMRI)
If one steps back from the daily noise of partisan bickering and looks at the broader picture in the United States today, some media outlets and political figures appear so consumed by hostility toward the current president that they seem incapable of evaluating events rationally. Their reaction to almost anything he does appears automatic and reflexive. This situation, often described as "Trump Derangement Syndrome," has reached such an extreme level that at times these voices appear to be siding — whether intentionally or not — with America's enemies such as the Chinese Communist Party, or the Iranian regime, which, since its inception in 1979, has openly been at war with the United States and for decades has been described by American officials across both political parties as the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism 39 years in a row.
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by Pierre Rehov • March 13, 2026 at 5:00 am
"Spain, as you know, does not have nuclear bombs... We alone cannot stop the Israeli offensive." Critics rightly interpreted the remark as a chilling admission that if Spain did have nuclear bombs, it would have used them against Israel. That a European head of government uttered such a threat against the Middle East's only democracy speaks volumes about the moral rot at the heart of Sánchez's government. Sánchez's posture is hardly accidental. It flows directly from the fragile coalition that props up his Socialist Party government. To remain in office, he depends on the even further-left Podemos, a party born of radical activism... A former high-ranking Venezuelan official cooperating with America's DEA has confirmed that Caracas and Tehran coordinated efforts to fund emerging radical-left forces in Europe, with Podemos as a prime target. The goal: weaken Western alliances from within by nurturing anti-American, anti-Israeli voices. A European government that blocks a vital operation against Iran while maintaining alliances with movements historically tied to Iranian and Venezuelan influence networks has placed itself outside the democratic consensus. When a NATO member obstructs action against a regime sworn to the destruction of America and Israel, the question is no longer whether influence exists. The question is how far it reaches — and how much damage it has already done and is planning to do.
"Spain, as you know, does not have nuclear bombs... We alone cannot stop the Israeli offensive." Critics rightly interpreted Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's remark as a chilling admission that if Spain did have nuclear bombs, it would have used them against Israel. That a European head of government uttered such a threat against the Middle East's only democracy speaks volumes about the moral rot at the heart of Sánchez's government. Pictured: Sánchez (center) in Palos de la Frontera, Spain on March 6, 2026. (Photo by Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images)
When the United States and Israel launched their joint operation against the Iranian regime this month, the geopolitical map of the Middle East shifted within hours. Iran's leadership, strategic targets, command centers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ballistic missile launchers and nuclear facilities have been targeted in coordinated strikes aimed at dismantling Tehran's terror machine. Yet there have been unexpected obstacles — not in Tehran, but in Madrid. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's government flatly refused to authorize the use of Spanish airspace or the joint bases at Rota and Morón for American forces. For decades, these installations have been vital logistical hubs for US military operations in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. This time, Madrid said no.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • March 12, 2026 at 5:00 am
[T]he Palestinian Authority... is expected to play a significant role in the future management of the Gaza Strip. Recently, Nickolay Mladenov, High Representative for the "Board of Peace," announced the establishment of a "Liaison Office" by the PA for communication and coordination regarding the board's activities in the Gaza Strip. The newly established National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which is supposed to be an independent body of apolitical technocrats, is dominated by officials affiliated with the PA and its ruling Fatah faction. For the past 33 years, the international community has failed to track the flow and use of aid money donated to the Palestinians, enabling high-level corruption. Tens of billions of dollars in international aid given to the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip have been lost to corruption, siphoned off by terror groups or mismanaged by the PA leadership. Since October 2023 alone, Hamas has reportedly generated an estimated $500 million by seizing humanitarian aid trucks and selling supplies to Gaza residents at inflated prices. Corruption, mismanagement and diversion of aid have repeatedly undermined reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip and played a major role in preventing aid from reaching ordinary Palestinians. Cement and construction materials intended for civilian housing have repeatedly ended up being used for Hamas's terror tunnels and military infrastructure. Resources that donors believed were helping build homes and schools were instead strengthening Hamas and other terror groups. Much of the donor money has been swallowed by corruption, political patronage, and the militarization of Palestinian society. The Gaza Strip has become the only place in the world where a terror group can repeatedly wage war -- funded by the international community -- while that same international community pays to rebuild the battlefield afterward, possibly for the next war. The people of the Gaza Strip urgently need humanitarian assistance, housing, infrastructure, and economic opportunity. However, pouring money into the territory without strict safeguards will not help those residents. International aid has empowered a governing system that prioritizes rockets over reconstruction. While donors thought they were funding hospitals and schools, Hamas was appropriating enormous resources and investing them in weapons, military infrastructure, and preparation for the next confrontation with Israel. If the "Board of Peace" truly wants to help the Palestinians, it must abandon the illusion that money alone will solve the problem. Any serious reconstruction effort must begin with extremely uncompromising conditions...
Corruption, mismanagement and diversion of aid have repeatedly undermined reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip and played a major role in preventing aid from reaching ordinary Palestinians. Cement and construction materials intended for civilian housing have repeatedly ended up being used for Hamas's terror tunnels and military infrastructure. Pictured: A school run by UNRWA in Gaza City, photographed on December 1, 2022, the day the agency revealed that there was a terror tunnel under one of its schools in Gaza. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)
As US President Donald J. Trump and members of his "Board of Peace" pledged billions of dollars for "relief and reconstruction" in the Gaza Strip, two recent public opinion polls show that most Palestinians are still concerned about widespread corruption in Palestinian society. This concern should sound alarm bells for the Trump Administration and donor countries if they are about to invest billions of dollars in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians are loudly warning international donors that Palestinian leaders are not trustworthy in handling money. According to polls conducted by the Coalition for Integrity and Accountability -- a Palestinian civil society organization that seeks to combat corruption and promote integrity, transparency and accountability in Palestinian society -- 57% of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip expect the level of corruption to remain or increase in the aftermath of the war that Hamas launched on October 7, 2023.
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by Anna Mahjar-Barducci • March 11, 2026 at 5:00 am
Sudan's ongoing civil war is not just a clash between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their former military allies-turned rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It is a calculated power grab by the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, recently listed by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).... Meanwhile, the terrorist organization appears to be using the SAF as a Trojan horse to dominate northeast Africa and the Red Sea – a critical artery for global commerce. Saudi Arabia's ideological red lines have long included deep hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood — but only within its own borders. Beyond the kingdom, Saudi policy has increasingly shown support to Muslim Brotherhood-backed groups. In Yemen, for instance, Saudi Arabia, stirring up trouble in the neighborhood, has been supporting and empowering the Muslim Brotherhood's Islah Party. Since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan in April of 2023, Saudi Arabia has become the principal supporter of the SAF. Saudi Arabia also financed a major arms deal between Pakistan and the SAF, valued at approximately $1.5 billion. More recently, the Sudan's army-backed government signed a deal with a Saudi company for gold exploration along the Red Sea coast. Saudi support to the SAF risks continuing the entrenchment of Islamist jihadi aggression, whether Sunni or Shiite, that threatens regional stability. For the West, the lesson of 2026 is straightforward: oppose Iran without apology — and also oppose the Muslim Brotherhood without apology. Anything less rewards terrorism and prolongs instability in the Arab and Muslim world. If Saudi Arabia wants to be considered an ally of the United States, it needs to have zero tolerance for extremist ideology and to understand that Washington cannot accept any rehabilitation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Supporting the SAF, which is infused with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates who maintain ideological and operational links with Iran's proxies, risks undermining the very objectives that the West claims to pursue in the region. Alliances built on short-term tactical convenience may appear useful in the moment, but they can ultimately empower the same ideological and geopolitical forces that Western governments are trying to contain. The West cannot afford to have fake alliances that ultimately empower the threats the West is claiming to fight.
Sudan's ongoing civil war is not just a clash between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their former military allies-turned rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The Muslim Brotherhood appears to be using the SAF to take over Sudan. Pictured: SAF soldiers sit atop a tank after their capture of an RSF base in Omdurman, on May 26, 2025. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid/AFP via Getty Images)
Sudan's ongoing civil war is not just a clash between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their former military allies-turned rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It is a calculated power grab by the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, recently listed by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The US announced plans to formally classify the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) starting March 16, 2026, and accused it of carrying out mass violence against civilians during Sudan's ongoing war. Meanwhile, the terrorist organization appears to be using the SAF as a Trojan horse to dominate northeast Africa and the Red Sea – a critical artery for global commerce.
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by Pierre Rehov • March 10, 2026 at 5:00 am
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement... with the formulation that has become the UN's signature posture in moments of crisis: "The use of force by the United States and Israel against Iran, and the subsequent retaliation by Iran across the region, undermine international peace and security." The UN Security Council convened an emergency session. Russia and China denounced the operation as a violation of Iranian sovereignty. Several European governments echoed concerns about precedent and pressed for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to talk, talk, talk. France, Germany and the United Kingdom... quickly moved to place distance between themselves and the military operation... "We call for a resumption of negotiations and urge the Iranian leadership to seek a negotiated solution." These reactions -- never spontaneous improvisations -- reflect a dismissive European posture that has been consistent for years: a preference for managed "containment" over the inconvenience of actually having to address a problem head-on, and for diplomatic processes over taking decisive outcomes. The only goal, apparently, was "stability" -- no matter how morally flatulent -- but evidently preferable to actually having to do anything apart from lecturing everyone. The UN Human Rights Council has devoted more agenda items to maligning Israeli policies than to the far worse abuses in authoritarian states. Usually, in crises from Syria's civil war to Iran's crackdowns on dissidents, UN language is diluted through negotiated compromise and voting-bloc discipline. Abroad, terrorism has been used as a tool of coercion -- too often with the affected nations permitting success. Domestic political considerations — including the management of migration flows and relations with Arab states — have further complicated open endorsement of decisive military action. These moral gymnastics are not unprecedented. During the Cold War, debates at the UN reflected blocs more than principles. Authoritarian regimes benefited from solidarities rooted in ideology, transactional alliances, or sheer voting arithmetic. Coalitions within the UN General Assembly, including states with limited or no democratic credentials, shape the tone and content of resolutions. Within that environment, Israel has long been a focal target of attack, a convenient proxy through which regimes and blocs rehearse moral posturing while deflecting attention from the abuses they inflict at home. European diplomacy has often equated stability with the absence of open war, even if that equilibrium rests on coercion, intimidation, and the slow metastasis of threat. For those invested in negotiated containment, the US-Israeli response appears destabilizing. For others, it represents the removal of a huge source of instability — the elimination of a regime whose worldview treats conflict not as a failure of policy but as the essence of policy. The divergence reflects differing premises about how order should be maintained and what price is acceptable for maintaining it. Whether Europe and the UN will reinterpret this moment as a correction of what needs to be done to a destabilizing presence, or whether they persist in framing malignancy primarily as a procedural violation, remains uncertain. What is already visible is that the reflex of "caution" — so immediate, so uniform, so instinctive — has exposed the enduring tension between legal niceties and the urgent need to act.
The UN faces renewed scrutiny over the consistency of its posture toward authoritarian regimes versus democratic states. The decapitation of Iran's theocratic leadership is not merely a regional episode; it is a stress test for multilateral institutions that have often confused procedural language with strategic seriousness. Pictured: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hosts Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the UN General Assembly on September 25, 2025, in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Over the course of 48 hours, the strategic architecture of the Middle East shifted with a speed few could have anticipated. A coordinated Israeli-American operation, prepared in secrecy and executed with surgical exactitude, began by striking key command nodes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including senior leadership figures, nuclear enrichment infrastructure and long-range missile facilities — and culminated in eliminating Iran's Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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by Lawrence Kadish • March 10, 2026 at 4:00 am
Pictured: President Donald Trump holds up an executive order on the rapid development, deployment and use of advanced nuclear technologies, on May 23, 2025, in the White House. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The Strait of Hormuz is closed to shipping. Qatar's energy minister -- who, not surprisingly, appears to be lobbying on the side of Iran -- is warning that the conflict to prevent it from gaining nuclear weapons could "bring down the economies of the world" and that Gulf nations might shut down their production of oil and gas. Meanwhile, intelligence sources say that Russia, perhaps trying to lure the US into a larger war, is providing Iran with the means to target American military forces in the region. Kudos to President Trump for refusing to take the bait. If ever there was a case to be made for America's pursuit of unlimited energy through fusion power, it is this war and its global implications. China is investing literally billions of dollars to master this technology. Fortunately, the Trump administration recognizes the enormous threat of being an "also ran" and appears committed to pursuing a breakthrough in this sector.
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by Robert Williams • March 9, 2026 at 1:00 pm
The Trump administration needs to pay close attention: The UAE is not merely another Gulf monarchy, another energy partner. It is one of the clearest examples in the Arab world of a country that deliberately chose modernization over ideological stagnation and development over the old politics of grievance.... This choice is precisely what makes it so important — and precisely what makes it so threatening to the forces that thrive on disorder. The UAE... demonstrated that sovereignty can be defended without fanaticism, and that prosperity can be built through peace rather than perpetual war. This is why attacks on the UAE are not merely attacks on a country. They are attacks on a model for peace. President Donald Trump no doubt sees this with clarity: his extraordinary Abraham Accords remain one of the defining strategic achievements not only of the century but of history. Defending the UAE, therefore, is entirely consistent with a hard-headed American strategy. America did not help broker the Abraham Accords only to watch their boldest Arab partner become an exposed target. A serious policy... requires seriousness: tighter intelligence coordination, stronger integrated air and missile defense, firmer deterrence against Iranian aggression and proxy warfare, and unmistakable public clarity that the United States forcefully stands by the states that choose peace over terror and an alliance with the US over revolutionary blackmail. That is not charity toward Abu Dhabi. It is a defense of American interests, and a regional balance that works in America's favor.
The Trump administration needs to pay close attention: The UAE is not merely another Gulf monarchy, another energy partner. It is one of the clearest examples in the Arab world of a country that deliberately chose modernization over ideological stagnation and development over the old politics of grievance. Pictured: U.S. President Donald J. Trump meets with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed on May 15, 2025, in Abu Dhabi. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
When United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed visited the victims of the recent attacks in hospital on March 6, he did more than offer sympathy. He delivered a message to his people, to the region, and to the world. He told the wounded and their families that those living in the Emirates are "among their family in the UAE." In his first public comments after the strikes, he also made clear that the country is "no easy prey." That was not simply compassion. It was doctrine: that his country was going to align with openness without apology. The price to his country for his outstanding leadership has been enormously high.
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