Middle East
Al Qaeda and Iran’s dangerous partnership
What does the world’s foremost Shia power and the most notorious Sunni terror group have in common? Given that the…
The beauty and tragedy of Lebanon
I was thinking about tragedy. Could one use the term ‘chronically tragic’? My first instinct is against. Tragedy is the…
The never-ending smugness of the NeverTrumpers
In March 2016 as Donald Trump looked likely to be the Republican party’s nominee to run for president, more than 100 foreign…
Iran vs the rest: the Middle East has reached a tipping point
The next six weeks will be crucial for the Middle East
Biden would be a fool to reverse Trump's foreign policy wins
‘We’re going to be back in the game,’ our presumptive and somewhat previous new president tells us. ‘It’s not America…
Does Trump deserve a Nobel Peace Prize?
Should Donald Trump be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? So far the President has notched up two nominations in a…
The Foreign Office has lost the plot in the Middle East
The Foreign Office has lost the plot
Have Arab nations forgotten about Palestine by accepting Israel?
The Palestinians are entering one of the most precarious periods in their nation’s history. The normalisation of relations between Israel…
The mood in Lebanon is for revolution
The mood in Lebanon is for revolution
Is it too late to save Lebanon?
The country is collapsing
Could the Covid crash spark another Arab Spring?
They said we were going to uncouple from the Middle East. Barack Obama, they said, was going to pivot to…
Will coronavirus lead to a US war with Iran?
In a roundabout way, coronavirus may have been responsible for the deaths of two American service personnel and a British…
Ten years on, the Arab Spring has only benefited the Islamists
Ten years on, the Arab Spring’s legacy is hopelessness and helplessness
Netflix's Messiah is a great concept undermined by implausible politics
Sky’s latest bingewatch potboiler Cobra can’t quite make up its mind whether it wants to be an arch, knowing House……
All forecasts are off if Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… Late last year, a range of forecasts…
The Middle East for dummies
Gstaad The French have a saying: ‘Il n’y a rien de plus bête que le sourire du gagnant.’ In…
Islam’s reformation: an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East
When Benjamin Netanyahu visited Oman in 2018 in a gesture of goodwill to Israel’s neighbours, the welcome was not universal.…
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
Trump’s anti-Iran vendetta is starting to backfire
It says something about the level of political discourse in America that Donald Trump decided to trumpet sanctions on Iran…
The true face of Islam won’t be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but at the British Museum
In Britain today, Islam in its original essence is not to be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but on…
How did mild-mannered eye doctor Bashar al-Assad end up a mass murderer?
‘How did this mild-mannered eye doctor end up killing hundreds of thousands of people?’ someone wondered about Bashar al-Assad in…
Did Jared Kushner punish Qatar because of a building on Fifth Avenue?
New York Talk about high life this is not. I smelled a rat long ago, but then the scent got…
Benjamin Zephaniah once found the leg of a man in the back of a Ford Cortina
‘For me rhyming was normal,’ said Benjamin Zephaniah, reading from his autobiography on Radio 4. Back in the 1960s, on…
BBC Arabic’s version of Woman’s Hour is rather different to Radio 4’s
When the BBC’s Arabic-language network went out on air for the first time 80 years ago, on 3 January 1938,…
Putin the peacemaker
When Russia entered the Syrian civil war in September 2015 the then US secretary of defense, Ash Carter, predicted catastrophe…
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