Orientul Mijlociu

In recent days the death of at least 22,000 people and enormous other distress including the displacement of a vast majority of the people of Gaza have been caused as a result of the highly disproportionate response of Israel to the terrible attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

While several aspects of this tragic situation have been widely discussed, perhaps one aspect which should have received more attention relates to the oil and gas reserves of the region as a motivating cause of this entire tragedy, just as oil and gas resources have been an important factor in several earlier tragedies of this region.

Latest Developments

Jordan conducted multiple airstrikes inside Syria on January 9, targeting Iran-linked narcotraffickers and their hideouts. The Royal Jordanian Air Force carried out three strikes against dealers in the towns of Shaab and Arman, near the Jordanian border. A fourth strike reportedly targeted a farm near the Syrian village of Malah. The air force carried out similar strikes against narcotrafficking operations in southern Syria on January 4.

Latest Developments

U.S. and British forces in the Red Sea on January 9 thwarted the largest attack yet by Houthi rebels against commercial shipping in the southern Red Sea. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on January 10 that if the attacks continue “there will be consequences.” What those consequences will be remains to be seen.

Abstract: The Houthi rebels have been at war with the Yemeni government almost constantly since 2004. In the first six years, the Houthis fought an increasingly effective guerrilla war in their mountainous home provinces, but after 2010, they metamorphosed into the most powerful military entity in the country, capturing the three largest cities in Yemen. The Houthis quickly fielded advanced weapons they had never before controlled, including many of Iranian origin. The story of how they moved from small-arms ambushes to medium-range ballistic missiles in half a decade provides a case study of how an ambitious militant group can capture and use a state’s arsenals and benefit from Iran’s support.

Efrat Eldan Schechter is a native of the Northern Galilee and never even considered moving anywhere else to bring up her family – that is until the events of 7 October.

When she heard and watched reports of what was happening in southern Israel that morning, as heavily armed Hamas gunmen streamed out of Gaza, she was immediately taken back to stories from the “Yom Kippur” or 1973 Middle East war, when Israel was attacked simultaneously on two fronts.

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

The West Bank becomes a critical focus for Israel in its ongoing war against Hamas, with escalating violence and strategic operations

Alongside its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel continues its crackdown on Palestinian terrorist organizations in the West Bank.

Although Iranian regime spokesmen are denying any connection between Iran and the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by the Iranian regime’s proxy Hamas, Iranian regime officials are glorifying this attack by stressing Iran’s overall victory over the West in general and the U.S. and Israel in particular.[1]

In ideological speeches since October 7, officials such as the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, and his deputy Ali Fadavi, along with IRGC Qods Force deputy commander Mohammad Reza Fallahzadeh and Tehran Friday preacher Ahmad Khatami, a senior member of the regime system of religious officials delivering the regime’s weekly messages to the public, have praised Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for setting the Islamic Revolution on the path to becoming universal. They are unfurling the global vision of the Iranian regime, according to which the West, led by the U.S., and Western culture, are the enemies of humanity and the party of Satan that is fighting the party of God – that is, Iran and Islam.

The US carried out an illegal missile strike on Baghdad, Iraq, on Thursday in the latest escalation of the US-Israeli rampage throughout the Middle East.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed that the US killed its target, identified as Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari. Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces said that al-Jawari was the head of the Iranian-backed militia group Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and that the strike also killed an Iraqi official and wounded five people.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah revealed in a speech that his terror militia had conducted around 670 armed attacks against Israel since October 8.

Instead of blaming Hamas and Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into another war, the Lebanese government is rushing to accuse Israel of killing a Hamas fugitive and violating Lebanese airspace to attack Syria.