Al-Monitor's Akiva Eldar notes that the presidential campaign (and Hillary Clinton's need to appease big money Likudnik donors like Haim Saban) doesn't seem to be tempering the Obama administration's willingness to criticize illegal Israeli settlement activity: Top US administration officials are not in the habit of shooting announcements from the hip, especially when it comes … Continue reading Actions speak louder than words

Welp, they did it. Our own government, the one you and I and so many other American citizens rely upon to defend us against our foreign enemies, paid the hostile Iranian regime in what appears, and let's not mince words here, to be a straightforward hostage ransom. Oh sure, the president denied that this was … Continue reading Sick to my stomach

Over the weekend, the warring sides in Yemen came about as close as they've come yet to an agreement to end that country's ~16 month long civil war, but talks in Kuwait appeared to collapse yesterday when negotiators for the Houthi-Ali Abdullah Saleh side rejected a UN peace plan, and the negotiators for Abd Rabbuh … Continue reading Still so far away

Don't get me wrong, there's always been a disturbing element of xenophobia/racism/antisemitism/Islamophobia underlying Donald Trump's popularity, and Trump has never been entirely just comic relief, but the longer this goes on and the more unhinged he appears, the less funny his absurdity and stupidity have gotten. The whole Trump phenomenon tipped from "funny" to "curious" … Continue reading When did Donald Trump stop being funny?

It took a little longer than I probably would have guessed four months ago, but the Libyan Front in the Global War on ISIS is finally open for business--indefinitely, it appears: US warplanes carried out air strikes on positions of the Islamic State (IS) group in the Libyan city of Sirte for the first time … Continue reading To Sirte, With Love

Something unexpected happened in Syria over the weekend. No, it's not that the rebels, led by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (hey, whatever they want to call themselves), launched an offensive to try to break the siege of eastern Aleppo--as important as Aleppo is, and as prestigious as it would be for any rebel faction to get … Continue reading Watching Aleppo

I know it's late and it's Friday, but I've been trying to write an update on South Sudan all week and just keep getting drawn into other things, so I'm doing it now. When last we checked in on the world's newest country,  in ealy July, the fragile peace that had interrupted its ~two year … Continue reading South Sudan’s time loop

As I briefly mentioned earlier, Jabhat al-Nusra is no more. In its place is a brand new* organization known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, or "the Front for the Conquest of Syria." The name change is, of course, secondary to the step accompanying it; the former Nusra has now renounced* its links to al-Qaeda. Nusra Fatah … Continue reading The Jihadis Formerly Known as Nusra

Syrian state media is claiming that government forces have now fully cut off the last road into and out of Aleppo, the Castello Road, tightening the government's siege of rebel-held parts of the city. The most recent blow to the rebels' chances of keeping that corridor open a sliver, or of widening it again, reportedly … Continue reading Aleppo besieged: some quick thoughts

At Muftah.org, Thanos Petouris writes about one of the aspects of Yemen's current civil war that has gone underreported, the issue of southern separatism: A case in point is the Southern Movement (al-Hirak al-Janubi), which purports to represent the southern provinces of Yemen that were part of the former socialist People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen … Continue reading Yemen’s next civil war, if there is one, will be a rerun 20+ years in the making