People demonstrate in support of Palestinians on Oct. 14, 2023, in Dearborn, Mich.
Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images
Though Arab Americans voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, polling suggests that support has eroded since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel.
Mahdi Shaban, a Palestinian living in Gaza, paid for his master’s degree with earnings from digging graves.
Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Political and economic forces across the Middle East and North Africa combine to mean well-educated young people spend years looking for work, which delays their independence and adulthood.
Nawid Tanha/EPA-EFE
Afghanistan’s strategic location, and the support for the Taliban from neighbouring countries, means the current Taliban advances were unavoidable.
Hardliner: recently elected Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi.
EPA-EFE/Abedin Taherkenareh
The US and Israel are warning that Iran could build a nuclear bomb very soon. But is it that simple?
The Natanz nuclear facility.
Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA
Most observers believe Israel was behind the a cyberattack on Iran. But what was the thinking behind it?
Cry freedom: pro-democracy protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo calling for the ousting of Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak.
EPA/Khaled Elfiqi
The underlying issues of inequality, corruption and poverty are still dogging the region, ten years after the protests.
Hosni Mubarak, the late former President of Egypt.
EFE-EPA/Amel Pain
Mubarak held power for three decades, on the foundation of a personality cult.
A lack of understanding between American and Middle-Eastern culture is a national security risk.
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National security isn’t just about warding off physical attacks. It’s also about understanding cultural forces that drive a society to think, feel and act in certain ways, a political scientist says.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may soon exit the political stage.
Reuters/ Ammar Awad
The longtime prime minister has reshaped Israel in profound ways. The military is stronger but Palestinian suffering has grown.
Russia, Turkey, Iran and Israel will keep vying for power in Syria long after the US is gone.
from shutterstock.com
Now that the US has pulled out Syria, is the war actually over?
Syrian refugees in Haouch El Nabi in the Bekaa valley, Lebanon.
Wael Hamzeh/EPA
The intricacies of Lebanese politics mean Syrian refugees continue to be scapegoated.
Rare photograph of the formal transfer of Jerusalem to British rule.
The British Mandate in Palestine had its origins in the end of World War I and lasted until 1948. What happened next has devastated the Middle East ever since.
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Muhammad bin Salman is set on transforming the oil-rich kingdom into a modern, economically diverse superpower. It won’t be easy.
Ready to roll.
EPA/STR
An economy and society like Saudi Arabia’s cannot survive the modern world without giving in to change.
EPA/Mohammed Saber
Palestinian nonviolent protests and mass movement of resistance is one of Israel’s biggest fears.
EPA/Abir Sultan
Hugely divisive and controversial at home, Avigdor Lieberman is both an outspoken hawk and a political opportunist.
Netanyahu “exposes” Iran.
EPA/Jim Hollander
Israel’s prime minister failed to undermine the validity of Iran’s nuclear deal, and instead ended up demonstrating just how important it is.
Assad’s 2007 re-election campaign underway.
EPA/Youssef Badawi
Despite all claims to secular egalitarianism, the Assad family’s decades of rule have been brutally elitist.
Everybody needs good neighbours.
Claudio Divizia/Shutterstock.com
With Iran and India on manoeuvres and the war in Yemen still unfolding, Pakistan’s stakes in the Middle East are as high as ever.
EPA/Abir Sultan
The events of summer 2011 proved that Israel incubates the same sort of socio-economic discontent that upended the wider Middle East.