Middle East
How did US intelligence get Afghanistan so wrong?
It may well go down as the understatement of the year. In a quite extraordinary address to the nation after…
Who cares what Ben & Jerry’s think about Israel-Palestine?
When you think of the Israel-Palestine conflict, ice cream doesn’t usually come up. But that may be about to change.…
The Afghan withdrawal will only embolden the West’s enemies
‘How many thousands more Americans, daughters and sons, were you willing to risk?’ Biden asked critics of the decision to…
How China won over the Middle East
How China won over the Middle East
Is the worst yet to come in the Middle East?
If Iran steps in, the worst is still to come
The strange tale of NEOM: Saudi Arabia’s struggling desert megacity
Prince Mohammed bin Salman is desperate to shake Saudi Arabia’s addiction to oil. Its price has still not recovered from…
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…
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