The Middle East was on the abyss following two consequential events of immense magnitude — Israel’s incursion into Lebanon on September 30 and Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel less than a day later. In what was described as a limited and targeted operation, Israel invaded Lebanon for the third time in 46 years, following […]
Iran faces a defining moment of truth following Israel’s audacious assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on September 27. Nasrallah’s untimely death, a major castastrophe for Hezbollah, was an extremely severe blow to Iran. By all accounts, his removal from the scene elicited shock, anger and sorrow in Tehran. In one devastating stroke, […]
With the game-changing death of its long-serving secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah has been dealt a devastating blow in its long-running armed confrontation with Israel. He was killed on September 27 after Israeli aircraft dropped bunker-busting bombs on Hezbollah’s central headquarters in Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut. Four to six high-rise residential buildings were […]
Israel is fighting a two-front war along its southern and northern borders, battling Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of which are Iranian proxies. But far in the east, in Iraq, Israel faces another enemy in the guise of the Islamic Resistance movement, a member of Iran’s fiercely anti-Israel Axis of […]
Israel and Hezbollah have boxed themselves into a tight corner as the cross-border conflict in Lebanon and the Galilee intensifies and approaches the magnitude of an all-out war. In the past few days, both sides have hammered each other ferociously and relentlessly, with the scale of the fighting having reached the level of the 2006 […]
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has announced a “new phase” in Israel’s nearly year-long war of attrition with Hezbollah. It could well lead to a full-scale war with Hezbollah and possibly trigger a regional conflagration involving the United States, Iran, the Houthis in Yemen and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. In short, a significant escalation of […]
How long can Israel tolerate the intolerable status quo along its northern border with Lebanon? Since October 8, Israel has been embroiled in a low-intensity war of attrition with Hezbollah — Hamas’ ally and Iran’s chief proxy in the Middle East — that has periodically degenerated into a full-scale war. Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, has […]
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent decision to suspend the export of some weapons to Israel was disappointing but not surprising. Starmer, the leader of the left-of-center Labor Party, is far more critical of Israel than his right-wing Conservative predecessor, Rishi Sunak, who was generally supportive of Israel’s just military campaign to eradicate Hamas and […]
The recovery of six deceased hostages on August 31 in a Hamas tunnel under the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah has further divided Israel. This combustible issue has torn the country asunder far more than Israel’s acceptance of German reparations in the 1950s, its lack of preparedness for the 1973 Yom Kippur War, its […]
As Israel fights Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israeli troops have been drawn into a third front in the West Bank, which is inhabited by three million Palestinians and 500,000 Israelis. In the past few days, Israel has conducted significant counter-terrorism operations in the northern West Bank in a bid […]