Middle East

The downing of a Russian Il-20 aircraft off the Syrian coast this week with the death of 15 personnel is another reminder of the cost to Moscow of its pro-regime military intervention. A little over six months ago, nearly 40 Russians died when a transport aircraft crashed on approach to

Hours before the Thursday’s decision by the Central Bank of Turkey to raise its benchmark rate 625 basis points to 24%, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched into one of what is now a trademark tirade against higher rates. He denounced interest rates as “a tool of

In March, officials of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya announced that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, would stand as a candidate for the Libyan presidential elections expected in December. The news was greeted with caution and even scepticism

As Yemen’s deadly conflict grinds on, exactly how much assistance the Iranians are providing the Houthis is open to conjecture. The Saudi-led coalition is keen to portray the Houthis as agents, rather than allies, of Iran. And while there is certainly strong evidence of technology and

In this rather strange ABC News article that appeared on Friday, it is reported that “senior figures in the Turnbull government” claim that Washington could bomb targets in Iran as early as next month, and that Australia would assist in target identification. Bombing undisclosed

At a recent event in New Delhi, Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the United Nations, called Iran “the next North Korea” and urged India to rethink its relationship with the Islamic Republic. This was followed shortly afterwards by an American delegation, led by Assistant Secretary for Terrorist

For many months, Saudi Arabia’s young tyro Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) has given the impression he is a very different kind of Saudi leader: more dynamic, more decisive, and, most importantly of all, more transformative than his predecessors. Mohammad bin Salman is

Last week, Associated Press published a particularly shocking report on abuse and torture by United Arab Emirates (UAE)–supported forces in a number of Yemeni prisons, adding another depressing layer to the conflict’s enormous scale of human suffering.  The UAE and its

It has been a year since Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt severed diplomatic ties with Qatar. Saudi Arabia and the UAE led the boycott, instituting an economic and trade embargo that isolated Qatar by air, land, and sea from its neighbours, sternly restricting Qatari-bound

Across the Arabic-speaking world, repression comes naturally to regimes under threat, be they governments, patriarchs of families, or other holders of privilege. Within the realm of government and security apparatuses, and even beyond such circles, there is deep anxiety about the question of

Trump finally did it: in perhaps one of the most ridiculous moves of his presidency (although competition on that front is fierce), he announced that his administration would remove the US from the Iran deal and reimpose all nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. This is not only a gross violation of

Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan has been ousted only six days into his term, and protests have been voluntarily suspended while the National Assembly decides on his successor. But political uncertainty in Armenia jeopardises a fragile ceasefire with Azerbaijan over an

Research on the Middle East, where wars are being waged between and within all sides, is already rich with discussion about where things have gone wrong. Arguably, Anthony Bubalo’s Remaking the Middle East provides an unpopular future perspective amid the more racy and immediate

Anthony Bubalo’s optimism about the Middle East’s future is grounded in the notion that spontaneous cultural, social, and entrepreneurial initiatives that emerge across the region will provide the momentum and drive necessary for positive change. While what he dubs as “green shoots” are

In his latest Lowy Institute Paper, Remaking the Middle East, Anthony Bubalo deftly weaves together the various threads that have made and unmade the modern Middle East, positing that the 2011 Arab uprisings were not brought about by individual conflicts, trends, or political actors, but rather were

It’s not every day that a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, America’s premier law-enforcement body, calls the sitting president of the US “morally unfit” to hold office. Yet that is what James Comey did on Sunday in a wide-ranging interview with ABC News

President Donald Trump is under enormous pressure to respond militarily to the latest provocation by the Assad regime, but he would do so against all of his instincts and earlier pronouncements to end US military involvement in the Syrian war. Just days before the chemical attacks in Douma,

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been on an extended tour of the United States, trying to present a friendly face to the American public and bring them on side in the same way he’s won over the Trump administration. This began with a 60 Minutes extended interview 

The nexus between charitable aid and terrorism is a delicate and often difficult subject to discuss, let alone research. Some troubling relationships do exist, but the number of charities involved is small relative to the vast number of organisations doing good work. Although the sums

Last week in the Australian Parliament, the House of Representatives agreed to a motion recognising the ISIS-perpetrated genocide of the Yazidi community in northern Iraq. The motion was the last in a suite of three from both houses of parliament calling for the investigation and prosecution of

Bilateral disputes can often have a semi-amusing side when grown adults, who should know better, throw playground insults seeking some form of populist electoral response. Then New Zealand prime minister Robert “Piggy” Muldoon’s reaction to cricket’s famous 1981 underarm bowling

A little over a year ago, after the fall of eastern Aleppo in Syria, I asked “What exactly did the defence of East Aleppo achieve?”: Surely it was apparent from the time the encirclement was completed and the attempt to break the siege failed that only one outcome was possible: the defeat