New Zealand must be even-handed in its response to the catastrophe unfolding in Israel and Gaza, while still trying to keep hope of peace alive.
Israelis opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan set up bonfires and block a highway during a protest in March 2023.
(AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent backtracking to ease civil unrest, Israel’s ability to deter external foes has already been weakened by wounds that are self-inflicted.
In recent days, violence has erupted between Israel and militants in Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories. It’s unclear, however, how long each side will avoid serious escalation.
Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a Kyiv residential building destroyed by a drone that local authorities consider to be Iranian-made.
Oleksii Chumachenko/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Iran has a growing role in the Ukraine war, helping Russia augment its dwindling weapons supplies. That may help Russia, but it also serves Iran’s national interests.
In July 2022, Iran provided the Russian military with training for using Iranian-produced weapons, including the Shahed-129 drone, displayed here at a 2019 military show in Tehran.
Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Criminal gangs, insurgents and terrorist groups seek to protect the people in the areas they govern, when a central government’s power is weak or nonexistent.
Mourners at the funeral of Qassem Soleimani in Tehran.
Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA
For decades, Iran has built up a network of proxies across the Middle East. Will it now use them to retailiate for the killing of its top general?
Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for slain Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major General Qassem Soleimani in Iran’s capital, Tehran, on Jan. 3, 2020.
ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
Klaus W. Larres, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
President Trump’s Iran policy took a dramatic turn when the US killed Iran’s top military commander in a drone strike. To avoid war, one foreign policy scholar says Trump has to reverse his stance.
Closing the loophole: why the UK government must clip Hezbollah’s ‘wings’.
The newly nominated secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is a foreign policy hawk who opposes the Iran nuclear deal. Scrapping it could unleash a chain reaction of violence across the Middle East.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Trump’s pick to lead the State Department believes Iran is ‘intent on destroying America.’ But ending the Iran nuclear deal could unleash a violent chain reaction, a Mideast scholar says.
A kingdom under pressure is fomenting crisis elsewhere.
A rocket is launched from Israel’s Iron Dome, an anti-missile system, in order to intercept a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip in 2011.
(AP Photo/Dan Balilty, File)
The West needs to push for local action against Islamic State’s reign of terror in the Middle East. States in the region must find solutions to the conflicts to bring peace and stability.