Orientul Mijlociu

Lately there have been growing indications that a war against Israel may break out in September or October 2023. The trigger may be spiraling violent clashes resulting in many casualties, or the use of new weapons leading to many fatalities on the Israeli side, in the face of which Israel will be unable to suffice with its regular counterterrorism measures.[1] While neither Hamas nor Hizbullah are eager to start a comprehensive confrontation with Israel,[2] such a confrontation could result from an uncontrolled deterioration on the ground or from the use of new and unusually deadly weapons by these movements.

The announcement follows another attack on a Shiite shrine in the country, as well as renewed Iranian threats towards Iranian Kurdish groups in Iraq.

Iranian authorities said on Wednesday that they dismantled cells of armed groups with ties to Israel and Europe as the proxy war between Israel and Iran continues.

The report is horrible to contemplate. A major Western human rights organization reports that Saudi border troops may have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants attempting to enter the Kingdom’s borders from Yemen.[1] Whatever the details or context of this particular case turn out to be, the upshot is that here was a country that would defend its borders aggressively, with deadly force. Despite frequent criticism of American and European border policies, that rarely happens with those countries.

A devastating attack by jihadists has left a trail of destruction and loss in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province. On Saturday, militants belonging to the Ansar al-Tawhid group and the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) carried out a coordinated assault that claimed the lives of at least 11 soldiers. According to reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attackers strategically detonated explosives placed in tunnels beneath army positions before launching a violent onslaught.

Clashes broke out Monday between two U.S.-backed groups in eastern Syria, leaving three gunmen dead and raising tensions in the region where hundreds of American troops are deployed, opposition activists said.

In 2018, as regime troops crushed the rebel-held city of Douma in Syria, the videos emerging from the ground were apocalyptic in nature. Fire rained down from above as heavy shelling forced the civilian population underground and into basements, where yellow-green chlorine gas dropped by helicopters suffocated victims in darkness.

Saudi border guards have killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report. If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings, which appear to continue, would be a crime against humanity.

The Iranian regime is advancing its ideology and increasing its influence in Shia mosques throughout the United States, while the Biden administration is sitting idly by, presumably still seeking to return to a disastrous nuclear deal, lift sanctions against Iran, and fund the regime to launch more terrorist attacks, further repress its own citizens, and pave the way for it legally to obtain an unlimited supply of nuclear weapons.