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.
Assad meets French delegates in Damascus following the Paris atrocities.
EPA
The Paris atrocities came just as Assad’s military position was improving. Can the dictator harness international fury at Islamic State to strengthen his position in Syria?
Lebanon’s garbage protests are spiralling out of control. Where will it end?
Increased oil and gas revenues amid lifted sanctions are set to raise Iran’s economic fortunes, which ease Middle Eastern tensions.
EPA/Abedin Taherkenareh/AAP Image
Opponents of the Iran nuclear deal say it raises the nuclear weapons threat in the region. But Middle East tensions are actually likely to ease as Iran grows richer without being shackled by sanctions.
We’ve secretly got your back.
EPA/Alaa Al-Shemaree
The Shia militant group Hezbollah has suggested its fight against Islamic State has given it a common purpose with the West. In an interview with the BBC, Mohammed Fneish, a Lebanese Hezbollah minister…
Australian links to political violence in Lebanon run deeper than a single attack.
AAP/Stringer
An Australian has been linked to the July 18, 2012 Bulgarian bus bombing, that killed five Israeli tourists, the driver of a bus and a man carrying a bomb. Several of those responsible for the attack are…