Orientul Mijlociu

Latest Developments

Hezbollah launched rockets at northern Israel amidst ongoing tensions at the Lebanese border. The Iranian-backed terrorist group fired approximately 20 rockets at northern Israel in the morning of December 22, according to reports. Hezbollah also targeted the Shomera area in northern Israel. Israel returned fire into Lebanon with artillery and struck the sources of the launches, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. “IDF fighter jets struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including military sites where Hezbollah terrorists operated, as well as terrorist infrastructure,” the IDF added.

Iran’s regime has secretly executed political prisoner Ali Saber Motlaq in Lakan Prison, Rasht, according to information received from the families of prisoners in this facility. Motlaq, 62, was a longtime supporter of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). He was once arrested an imprisoned in the 1980s due to his support for the PMOI. He was arrested again in 2020 and remained in prison until his execution.

If the Biden administration thought that by rescuing Iran’s economy, which had hit bottom, and removing the Houthis from the list of Foreign Terror Organizations would make both Iran into an ally, the generosity appears to have backfired.

If the Iranian regime is allowed to advance to nuclear weapons capability, it will be on course finally to drive the US out of the region; threaten its oil-rich neighbors; destabilize Europe; deploy military assets in Venezuela and Cuba, and, at last, come for the “Great Satan,” the United States.

Un blog militaire russe publié jeudi 21 décembre à 11h33, heure de Moscou, a révélé les positions jusqu’ici secrètes de tous les navires de guerre dans la zone annoncée par le Pentagone pour son OPERATION PROSPERITY GUARDIAN.

Les données récentes et la carte ouverte (ci-dessous) n’étaient pas disponibles hier à 09h32, heure de Moscou, sur la stratégie «à deux voies» de la Russie pour s’opposer aux États-Unis et à l’OTAN, et pour protéger les expéditions de pétrole russes tandis que le drone houthi et des opérations de missiles sont en cours contre Israël.

This timeline was last updated on Dec. 20, 2023.

The Israel-Hamas war has brought renewed attention to the enduring Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This timeline chronicles some of the major events that shaped Israeli-Palestinian relations within the past three decades — from the 1993 Oslo peace agreement to the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s war in Gaza that has killed thousands of Palestinians. Many of these moments are featured in FRONTLINE’s 2002 documentary Shattered Dreams of Peace, recently re-broadcast on PBS, as well as Netanyahu, America & the Road to War in Gaza, which premiered on PBS on Dec. 19.

The war that began on October 7 between the terrorist group Hamas and the state of Israel is many things. It is, of course, part of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, but also a new episode in the history of Islamism and Islamist terrorist organizations. It is many other things. It is also a test, a test for Iran’s strategy of developing a diffuse network of proxies – states, militias, terrorist groups – which it can use to project power, against Israel and against the Americans and other adversaries. As such, it is a bloody “feasibility study” or deadly “proof of concept” in how this strategy actually works. During the last major confrontation between Israel and a major Iranian proxy – the Tammuz 2006 War between Hezbollah and Israel – the Iranian network was far less developed than it is today. In 2006 American troops were still in Iraq, Syria was whole and at peace, and the old dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh still ruled in Yemen.

Amid the growing international consensus that the atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza amount to genocide, a UN panel has also concluded that “genocide is already happening” in Gaza.

The UN-mandated Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) convened this panel at UN headquarters in New York City on December 12, ahead of the vote in the General Assembly on the resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”

Kurdish autonomous regions in Iraq and Syria are increasingly coming under threat by regional powers, namely Iran and Turkey. They are also increasingly becoming vulnerable to internal challenges posed by the central governments in Baghdad and Damascus. The United States, at different stages, played a central role in the establishment of two autonomous Kurdish regions in Iraq and Syria. But the changing dynamics in both countries and the broader region may compel Washington to get even more involved in preserving these Kurdish entities.[1]

Abdullah Al-Na’ami, a member of the political bureau of the Houthi Ansar Allah movement discussed an American-led international naval coalition to combat Houthi threats in the Red Sea on a December 18, 2023 show on Al-Alam TV (Iran). He said that the Houthis are not worried by this step and that have been saying that they wish to enter a direct confrontation with the U.S. and its “Bedouin Lackeys.” Al-Na’ami added: “We are ready to fight at any moment.” He warned that if the U.S creates such a coalition, this would mean exposing international waterways in the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the Arabian Sea to “real and imminent danger.”

On December 20, 2023, the leader of Yemen’s Ansar Allah Houthi Movement, Abd Al-Malik Al-Houthi, delivered a televised address two days after the United States announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, a recently formed U.S. naval coalition tasked with safeguarding international shipping routes in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks.[1]