SYRIA NEWS | ZAMAN ALWSL

Syrian demands to evaluate government's performance

Zaman Al Wasl — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:33:00 +0300

While the president reaffirms his unwavering faith in the awareness and resilience of the Syrian people, suffocating economic and living challenges are emerging, placing citizens under unprecedented pressure. This necessitates a review of the performance of certain service and economic ministries, whose decisions have become an added burden on families.

Ministries in the Eye of the Storm: Energy, Finance, and Trade

Observers believe that the gap between government promises and the reality on the ground is widening alarmingly, particularly in areas directly impacting citizens' daily lives:

- Energy: Recent bills, described as "exorbitant," have sparked widespread public discontent, with warnings of their negative repercussions on family stability and purchasing power.

- Ministry of Finance and Employee Salaries: With the holy month of Ramadan halfway through and Eid approaching, employees are facing delays in receiving their salaries, disrupting their financial planning amidst soaring prices. - Markets and High Prices: Prices of basic commodities, including vegetables and meat, have skyrocketed (with the price of tomatoes reaching unprecedented levels), making the Ramadan table a daily challenge for the middle and lower classes.

Calls for Compassion and Mercy

Voices are rising today calling for a return to the principles upon which the state was founded in combating poverty and achieving social justice. Loyalty to the blood of the martyrs and the wounded is embodied in securing a dignified life worthy of the patience of this people, and in implementing the Prophetic approach that urges those in authority to be compassionate towards those under their care.

"The Syrian citizen, who has persevered in the face of the most difficult circumstances, needs today policies that address their suffering and transform the slogan 'fighting poverty' into a tangible reality that protects them from the monster of high prices and the oppression of daily life."

Urgent Demands on the Government's Agenda

Many agree that the time has come to take swift and practical steps to restore trust between citizens and institutions, most notably: - Reassessing electricity bills to align with citizens' actual incomes.

- Expediting the disbursement of salaries and bonuses to enable families to meet their Eid needs.

- Firmly activating price controls to combat price gouging by merchants and regulate the prices of basic food items.

The leadership's reliance on the people necessitates, in turn, a government that prioritizes the "dignity of the citizen" to ensure continued national unity in the face of all challenges.

Abdi's agreements: Illusions of stability when decision is held hostage in Qandil

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 08:54:00 +0300

The March 10th agreement with the Syrian government can only be interpreted as a smokescreen. The problem with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has never been a lack of signed agreements or announced initiatives, but rather the "decision-making doctrine" that remains entrenched in the caves of the Qandil Mountains, far removed from the aspirations of the Syrian people and their national interests.

It has become clear that Mazloum Abdi is playing the role of a "diplomat" attempting to market the militia internationally, but in reality, he has no real power against the transnational "cadres."

These cadres see Syrian territory only as an arena for settling regional scores and a platform for implementing the agendas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The control exerted by Qandil's leadership over the financial, military, and intelligence apparatus within the SDF renders any promises to halt violations or partner with Syrian groups mere political maneuvers with no basis in reality.

How can a document signed by Abdi prevent a militia from continuing its crimes of demographic change, arbitrary arrests, or the recruitment of minors, when the actual leaders who give the orders do not recognize Syrian sovereignty or the unique characteristics of the local community?

For these individuals, a "pledge" is not binding because their allegiance is not to the "state" or the "people," but rather to a "transcendent ideology" that permits committing crimes to ensure the organization's survival. Signing documents is a tactic to absorb popular and international anger, while actual implementation remains contingent on the adventures of Qandil, which have brought nothing but destruction and displacement to the region. This also applies to the recent agreement signed yesterday, Sunday.

The Existential Dilemma of the SDF

The bitter truth that must be faced is that the SDF is not a purely Syrian entity with which one can negotiate; rather, it is a "military hybrid" manipulated by non-Syrian figures. As long as these imported leaders remain the true decision-makers, any agreement with Mazloum Abdi is a "bet on a mirage."

The Syrians in the areas east of the Euphrates don't need new paper agreements; they need to "liberate their decision-making" from the grip of outsiders who are profiting from the bloodshed of the region's people to serve their transnational nationalist delusions.

The adventures orchestrated from the Qandil Mountains will continue to wreak havoc, and Abdi's cries and signed documents will be of no use then. He who does not control his own destiny cannot keep his promises.

Al-Hussein Al-Shishakli - Zaman Al-Wasl

Syrian Fuel Company: Lack of Vision and Escalating Violations

Zaman Al Wasl — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 00:12:00 +0300

In the absence of vision and a decline in priorities by the CEO of the Syrian Petroleum Company, Engineer Youssef Balawi, at a time when the energy sector faces increasing challenges, the Mahrukat Company is experiencing a worrying state of decline and administrative inefficiency. This is compounded by the lack of a clear vision and the failure of the company's executive management to give it the necessary attention.

After Zaman al-Wasl and the "Syrian Shadow Government" initiative highlighted the widespread corruption in Mahrukat's gas bottling plants, particularly the Adra gas plant, no concrete action was taken by the Mahrukat Company's management, represented by its Director General, Agricultural Engineer Akram Hammouda. Furthermore, the Syrian Petroleum Company's executive management showed no serious interest in these alarming findings.

Approximately two weeks after the publication of this information, the Central Agency for Control and Inspection commendably took action, uncovering serious irregularities, organized corruption, and widespread manipulation of gas cylinders within the Adra gas plant. This raises a fundamental question: Was this time insufficient for Mahrukat's management to demonstrate its commitment to combating corruption? The painful truth: Yes, it was sufficient… but the administration failed and turned its back on the matter.

This neglect reflects one of the most prominent reasons for the profound decline plaguing this giant company, which is the Syrian Petroleum Company's direct representative to the public. The sharp decline in its performance has become evident, amidst rampant corruption within its ranks and the blatant squandering of public funds, coupled with the near-total absence of an effective management role, detached from a reality it is well aware of. Examples of some of these violations include:

In the Damascus and Rural Damascus fuel distribution branches, violations are entrenched daily:

- Tampering with gasoline and diesel meters at major government-run stations in the capital, such as Azbakiyah, Kafr Souseh, and Al-Siyasiyah, and mixing kerosene and water with gasoline in collusion with the tanker truck delivering the fuel.

- The transformation of distribution vehicles in Rural Damascus into private mobile fuel stations, operating under the supervision and undeclared partnership of the branch management.

- Theft of fuel allocations intended for bakeries and the public sector, specifically gasoline and diesel, at critical facilities, most notably the Damar and Sahnaya centers.

Despite the seriousness and multiplicity of these cases, the management of the Mahrukat Company remains incapable of addressing them, while the Syrian Petroleum Company maintains an unjustified silence—a silence that borders on complicity or at least acceptance of the status quo.

So, where is Mahrukat headed? Is it conceivable that the most important face of the energy sector can remain mired in this level of corruption without accountability or decisive intervention?

Syria is caught between outstretched American hand and containment price

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 08:28:00 +0300

Syria today cannot be read from headlines, White House statements, or even the smiles of international envoys in group photos; rather, it is read from the "gaps." From the things that have not yet been said, from the pressures that have not been exerted, and from the American silence when the voice should be loud.

Washington lifted sanctions, the Caesar Act was repealed, channels were opened with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and its name was quietly removed from the terrorism lists, like someone changing a ship's course without making a sound. All of this happened with remarkable speed, but what hasn't happened is the most important: no real pressure on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), no serious restraint on Israel, and no declared vision for the future of the Syrian state. This is where the concern begins and never ends.

The United States is not acting out of emotion, nor out of morality, nor even out of a desire to "help people," as it likes to claim. Rather, it acts when it feels that chaos has become too costly to manage, and that continued collapse threatens larger interests: Israel's security, energy pipelines, the balance of power with Russia, and spheres of influence with China. Syria, after the fall of the Assad regime, is no longer a moral burden, but an open arena that could spiral out of control if left unchecked.

Lifting sanctions was not a reward, but a "reset." It's like untying someone's leg, not so they can run, but to redirect them. The Syrian economy was dying, and prolonged dying breeds monsters: a shadow economy, warlords, and cross-border smuggling networks. Washington realized that strangulation was no longer effective, and that control through "conditional breathing" was more efficient; I allow you to breathe, but I keep the lung in my hand.

Dealing with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham falls within this context; it wasn't a moral recognition or an ideological conviction, but a cold reading of reality: this force exists, is relatively disciplined, and possesses a local governance structure, so it can be contained, its behavior modified, and it can be tested. The alternative? A vacuum that allows for the infiltration of more extremist organizations, or chaos whose course is unpredictable. Washington doesn't favor "pure" players; it prefers those who are easily manipulated.

But why this leniency toward the SDF? And why the silence in the face of Israeli expansion? Here, the picture becomes clearer. The United States doesn't yet see Syria as a fully formed political entity, but rather as a temporary administrative space. The SDF is a bargaining chip that it doesn't want to burn too quickly, and Israel is a regional deterrent that it doesn't want to restrict now. For Washington, balance isn't about justice, but about "function"; each party is used to the extent that it serves the current moment.

This scenario is eerily reminiscent of the "soft containment" scenario in Bosnia. After the war, no radical solutions were imposed, and the deep structures of the conflict weren't dismantled. Instead, the state was left fragile, constitutionally divided, and sustained by international support. No war, but no normal political life; no explosion, but no recovery. Bosnia became a state standing on international crutches, neither falling nor walking.

The danger is that Syria will be pushed down a similar path: a state without full sovereignty, without a strong central authority, and without the ability to impose its will across its entire territory. It will be governed by agreements, not by law; its crises will be contained, not resolved. And herein lies the undesirable consequence: an entire generation living in a gray area; neither war nor peace, neither outright tyranny nor genuine freedom.

The United States is not planning to destroy Syria, nor to rebuild it as Syrians dream, but rather something simpler and more dangerous: that Syria cease to be a "problem"—nothing more. If it stabilizes sufficiently to prevent the export of chaos, and if it remains within regional red lines, that is enough from Washington's perspective. As for justice, sovereignty, and unity of decision-making, these are always postponed issues.

The real question is not: What does America want from Syria? But rather: What do Syrians want for themselves under these circumstances? Because the most dangerous aspect of soft containment is that it encourages political inertia, numbs the pain without addressing the wound, and leaves everyone in a state of waiting, while time works against fragile states.

If Syria does not quickly, clearly, and boldly develop its own national project, others will do it for it, not out of malice, but out of self-interest. History is unforgiving to nations that leave the task of defining themselves to others.

Syria today faces a critical juncture; neither a moment of victory nor defeat, but a moment of testing. It will either become a state governed from abroad by internal proxies, or a state that negotiates with the world from a position of equality, even if gradually. The difference between the two options lies not in Washington's intentions, but in the awareness of the Syrians themselves.

And here, and only here, does the question become both painful and honest: Do we want to break free from tyranny… or merely escape it?

Ahmed Mahmoud Al-Ahmed - Zaman Al-Wasl

Netanyahu's Historic Test Between Syria’s Opportunity and Pitfalls of Escapism

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 17:07:00 +0300

The Arab region is experiencing an exceptional moment that may not be repeated soon. After decades of wars and destruction, a real possibility is emerging to redraw the map of regional stability, with the relationship between the new Syria and Israel being its cornerstone. The recent statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he hinted at the possibility of an agreement with Syria, point to this potential.

However, they arrive tainted by the features of military escalation, as in the "Beit Jin" raid, and by personal attacks on Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa. This raises a fateful question: Will Israel and its leader, Netanyahu, truly choose to put "Israel First" by seizing the historic opportunity for peace, or will they remain captive to narrow partisan interests and attempts to evade trial on corruption charges?

Syria: From Conflict Zone to Compelled Peace Partner

The fall of the Assad regime and the transition to a government led by Ahmad al-Sharaa has created a geopolitical earthquake. Syria is no longer a tool in the hands of the Iranian axis or a proxy conflict arena. It has regained its national will and become an actor seeking stability and reconstruction.

This transformation, as the analysis clarifies, has not only weakened Iran but also opened the door to reconciliation with its Arab neighbors and created objective conditions for peace with Israel. The new Syrian position, clearly expressed by President al-Sharaa and his Foreign Minister, raises the slogan "Syria First": peace is possible, but it must be based on the restoration of full sovereignty and the rights of the Syrian people, primarily Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 line (referred to as the December 7, 2024). This is a government that deals pragmatically, as shown in its visits to Washington and its refusal to respond militarily to provocations, because its priority is state-building, making it a realistic and understanding partner.

Israel: Between Hesitant Peace Rhetoric and Provocative Field Practices

In contrast, the Israeli position, specifically Netanyahu's, appears contradictory and even dangerous. On one hand, he speaks of the "possibility of an agreement" with Syria, and on the other, he launches personal attacks on al-Sharaa, reinforces military presence in the buffer zone, and imposes impossible conditions such as disarming southern Syria and creating a corridor to the Druze stronghold of Suwayda. The military operation in Beit Jinn, which resulted in human and political losses for Israel itself, was a harsh lesson that the logic of force alone is no longer effective against a stable Syria with national will. This contradiction reveals that the motive may not be a genuine peace strategy, but rather an internal political maneuver. It seems that Netanyahu, besieged by corruption cases and a struggle for political survival, is using security rhetoric and limited escalation to achieve immediate goals: appeasing the radical right, showing "strength" to voters, and distracting public opinion from his trial.

The True "Israel First": A Call to Incline Towards Peace

Here lies the historic paradox. The slogan that Netanyahu and the people of Israel truly need is not "more land" or "more security through repression." A true "Israel First" means ensuring Israel's future security and prosperity by establishing genuine peace with its now stable and powerful northern neighbor.

The regional and international situation is ripe for this shift: the United States under Trump explicitly supports Syria's stability and urges Israel not to obstruct it, major powers like Russia and China support this direction, while Iran suffers from isolation and internal crises, and the peoples of the region suffer from economic hardship.

The Quranic verse from Surah Al-Anfal, "And if they incline to peace, then incline to it [also] and rely upon Allah" offers timeless wisdom. Inclining towards peace is an obligation when the inclination is present. Today, the inclination for peace is clear from the Syrian side, which raises the slogan of reconstruction and stability.

The contemporary political interpretation of this verse dictates that the inclination should begin with the aggressor party, the party capable of ending occupation and lifting injustice. Israel must take the initiative, not set impossible conditions that violate Syria's sovereignty and dignity.

A Choice Between History and the Courtroom

The region is at a crossroads. The first path leads to comprehensive stability, where Syria becomes a bridge for economic cooperation between the Gulf and Europe, one of the oldest gates of the Arab-Israeli conflict is closed, and everyone enjoys security and prosperity. The second path, the path of tactical escalation and procrastination, leads to wasting an opportunity that may not return, continuing a state of imbalance, and possibly more fierce confrontations in the future.

Benjamin Netanyahu must choose. Will he be a leader who truly puts "Israel First," seizing this rare window for peace with Syria, and building a legacy of lasting security for his people? Or will he remain a prisoner of his narrow calculations, using the Syrian issue as an internal political game and an escape forward from the courtroom, to be recorded in history as the one who squandered the chance for peace to save his seat? The tired Israeli people, weary of wars, and the peoples of the region, exhausted by poverty and destruction, await the answer. Time is not on the side of the procrastinators.

_____________

Mohamed Hamdan, an academic researcher in cultural studies and ancient Eastern heritage.

Syria Journal

As investments raise hope, how can Syria navigate economic revival?

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 10:56:22 +0300

Syria has signed deals worth billions in energy, ports and manufacturing, raising hopes of recovery but also questions over the challenges ahead
Expert lauds Syrian government’s steps towards becoming a liberal economy, but says some sectors still need to be protected
Government should prioritize productive and strategic sectors like energy, transport and manufacturing, says senior research analyst Benjamin Feve

ISTANBUL

After more than a decade of war and international isolation, Syria’s economy is entering a new and uncertain phase.

Entire sectors were left in ruins by years of conflict, and the country’s infrastructure, currency and workforce remain severely depleted. Now, with Bashar al-Assad gone and sanctions easing, regional allies and foreign investors are showing renewed interest.

Dozens of investment memoranda worth billions have been signed in energy, ports and manufacturing – raising hopes of recovery but also questions over whether these projects could deliver broad-based growth or deepen existing inequalities.

The scale of devastation makes the stakes enormous. The Baath regime’s 61-year grip on power left behind weak infrastructure, stalled development and entrenched corruption. In 2011, the civil war plunged the economy into freefall – GDP collapsed by more than 40% and the Syrian pound lost over 99% of its value against the US dollar during 14 years of conflict.

After the Assad regime was toppled in December 2024, Western states began lifting sanctions and encouraging foreign investment to help rebuild the nation.

In July, Damascus hosted the first Syria-Saudi Investment Forum, during which 44 deals worth $6 billion were announced. The same month, Syria sealed an $800-million deal with Dubai Ports World (DP World), one of the world’s largest port operators, to strengthen port infrastructure and logistics services.

In early August, Syria signed $14 billion in investment memoranda with companies from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, and Türkiye.

In late August, Saudi Arabia signed an agreement and six memorandums of understanding with Syria covering energy cooperation.

Another $7 billion energy investment deal signed by Turkish, Qatari and US companies in May promises to significantly boost Syria’s electricity supply and improve living conditions for millions.

Foreign investment remains key

Benjamin Feve, a senior research analyst at Karam Shaar Advisory Limited, told Anadolu that the new government led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa has pledged to steer Syria toward a freer, more liberal economic model.

“They’ve lifted most tariffs on products, on imports, so the countries import and export as they wish. They have also lifted subsidies on many products, on goods, on oil, on gas,” he said.

The investment law has been amended to make it easier for foreign companies to bring in capital and repatriate profits.

“What the government is trying to do is attract foreign investment, because without it, the Syrian economy won’t be able to recover,” Feve said.

Despite some $50 billion in pledged investments, Feve noted that the vast majority has yet to materialize.

“They’re not contracts, not agreements, not actual investments or capital that has entered Syria just yet,” he noted.

Even in Europe, only around 60% of the investment pledges materialize into actual investments, he said, suggesting this figure may even rise to 90% for Syria due to the uncertain environment.

“But even if only 10% of the investments materialize, that equals $5 billion, which is really huge for the Syrian economy,” Feve added.

Still, recovery will be long and slow, he stressed.

“We will have to wait decades before the economy really recovers. Maybe even in 10 years, the economy will not be as strong as it was before the beginning of the uprising and the war,” he added.

Challenges to recovery

Feve stressed that security remains a fundamental issue for the Syrian economy, with risks ranging from continued internal strife to Israeli bombings.

“I think what the government needs to do to ensure speedy recovery is to secure the country,” he said.

He also pointed to current shortcomings in the business environment.

“The government also needs to continue opening the economy and being transparent, especially with regards to investments, investment laws and with how it’s proposing projects for investors,” he said.

“If you want to open a company in Syria, or if you want to invest in a project, it’s very difficult to know who to talk to, how to proceed.”

While Damascus has taken steps toward liberalizing the economy, Feve argued it is still too early for a full free-market transition.

“Some of the industry and some sectors should be protected, especially now,” he said.

He described existing subsidies as “quite wasteful” but said lifting them outright would require safeguards – compensating price increases with financial support and the social safety net.

Priority sectors

Feve urged Syria to work with international institutions such as the World Bank and UN to repair basic infrastructure.

“If you cannot power your factory, you’re not going to invest, or you’re not going to build a factory at all,” he said.

While tourism, banking and real estate may attract quick capital, he argued they should not be the focus. Instead, he would like to see the government steering investment toward productive and strategic sectors like energy, transport, and manufacturing.

“Sure, you can invest in real estate, in tourism, but these sectors are not so productive. They’re good on paper and they bring in a lot of money, but having huge buildings in Damascus is not going to help the overall population prosper,” he said.

What goals behind Washington's increased operations in Syria?

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 11:04:16 +0300

Experts believe that the current escalation by the US-led international coalition in Syria reflects a dual strategy that combines military and intelligence pressure, focusing on eliminating terrorist organizations, especially ISIS, while maintaining the stability of various areas of influence.

The experts added that the involvement of the interim authority in Damascus in this activity is not directly military, but rather involves intelligence coordination, which contributes to reducing chaos among armed factions.

They explained that the goal of this escalation is to keep any terrorist presence under constant pressure and ensure the readiness of forces for any rapid action, while employing intensive operations to strengthen and sustain American influence in the region.

Bypassing Terrorism

In this context, political researcher Ibrahim Muslim said: The international coalition seeks to eliminate terrorist groups, and when the interim authority in Damascus is involved in coalition operations, not militarily but through intelligence, this creates animosity between armed factions, represented by ISIS and other groups, and the new authority.

Muslim added to "Erem News" that the international coalition wants to prove to the Syrians that the existing issue of extremism is being resolved by eliminating everything related to terrorism, and that the future will be clear through the presence of moderate governments and an authority emanating from all components of the Syrian people.

The political researcher explained that no wars will occur on a large scale, and if they do, they will be limited. The coalition's escalation of its operations, in part because it has not completely eliminated ISIS and is working to heal this rift. At the same time, eliminating the organization is a matter of interest to Damascus and the coalition's strongest ally, the Syrian Democratic Forces.

He concluded his remarks by saying that what is happening today is closely linked to the withdrawal from Iraq and is a tactical mobilization that will be distributed between Iraqi Kurdistan and northeastern Syria.

Joint Cooperation

For his part, political researcher Amjad Ismail Al-Agha believes that strategic accumulations governed by precise security and political visions that reflect the nature of the current phase of the Syrian conflict and its regional complexities are the most prominent determinants of the US-led international coalition's escalation of its activity in Syria.

Al-Agha added to "Erem News" that this parallel situation cannot be understood in isolation from the security challenges posed by terrorist organizations, particularly ISIS, whose threats have not ceased but have evolved to take on more diverse and flexible forms of operations and recruitment. This requires the coalition to maintain its military pressure and update its tools and tactics.

He explained that the escalation of field operations indicates the coalition's attempt to keep any terrorist presence in a state of continuous decline, through ongoing training to enhance the efficiency of forces and ensure constant readiness for rapid response, and emergency airdrops aimed at cutting off communication lines and weakening the capabilities of organizations in hard-to-reach areas.

Official Understanding

The political researcher explained that the presence of these operations in areas under the control of the Damascus government "can only be read as evidence of cooperation or an official understanding between it and the coalition. In addition to confronting ISIS, the United States views Syria as a strategic arena for restructuring influence among regional and international powers, and does not want to give any party the opportunity to completely dominate this geography."

He stated that the new American strategy in Syria appears to be a plan for continued presence in various forms and with varying intensity, commensurate with security and political developments. He added that this includes a reduction in official military numbers while simultaneously intensifying operations and enabling flexible movement.

Agha noted that "the intensive operations of the international coalition do not appear to be the result of direct cooperation or a means to enter a new phase of political relations with Damascus, but rather a continuation of the policy of military and intelligence pressure within a complex arena."

By Sarah Issa, Erem News

Will the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria really dissolve itself?

Al Jazeera, Omar Kush — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 11:44:53 +0300

The call by Ahmed Muwaffaq Zidan, media advisor to Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, for the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria to dissolve itself has sparked widespread controversy among Syrians, particularly Islamists, given the timing of the call, its implications, and the messages it conveys.

In addition, calls for dissolution have been met with increasing frequency recently from both within and outside the group. There have also been demands for a comprehensive review of the previous period, which has sparked divisions within its ranks and led to the withdrawal of several Brotherhood leaders from the organization, most notably Mulham al-Droubi.

Timing and Grounds

The basis upon which the call for a solution was based was the sacrifice of the organizational structure of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria for the sake of the new state project and the policies pursued by its leadership. The group's adherence to its current organizational form was considered detrimental to the country's interests and isolated from the new Syrian situation. "The Brotherhood's insistence on remaining outside the fold, with statements here and there hinting at their dissatisfaction with the situation, is deepening the rift and gap with the street that supports the government," the statement added.

There were other justifications related to its distance from Syrian society, given that its members were forced to flee Syria since the 1980s.

However, there are several reasons and considerations behind Zidan's call, the most important of which are:

First, Zidan's call to dissolve the group came at a specific time, just weeks after his appointment to his official advisory position. This gives it the character of a clear political message from the new Syrian government to the Brotherhood not to resume operations within Syria during the transitional period, which requires everyone to stand with the new leadership for the country's recovery and reconstruction of what was destroyed by the former Assad regime.

Second, the call aligns with the new government's efforts to dissolve all political and military parties and formations, in line with the announcement by 18 military factions that they would dissolve themselves, including Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, by the end of December 2024 and join the Ministry of Defense.

In addition, the constitution was suspended, the People's Assembly was dissolved, and the Ba'ath Party was dissolved. The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the Syrian Islamic Council were subsequently dissolved.

Third: The new Syrian government seeks to gain Arab and Gulf support by banning the banned group's activities in several of those countries. Some believe that preventing the Muslim Brotherhood from operating in Syria is one of the conditions set by some Gulf states in exchange for their support and embrace of the new government.

Fourth: The call for dissolution can be viewed as a response to the statement issued by the group's Shura Council on August 7, which affirmed that dissolution was not an option and that it "will remain, as the Syrian people have known it, a national Syrian group, independent in its decision-making, adhering to its moderate Islamic approach." However, it has not yet made a decision to return to work inside Syria, and its return is now postponed and will not occur in the foreseeable future.

The statement by the group's Shura Council affirmed its supportive, sincere, and faithful stance, keen to ensure the success of the process of building a modern civil state with an Islamic frame of reference. It also affirmed that it will always strive to achieve reconciliation and close the gaps, ensuring the success of the revolution and its principles in building our nascent state.

However, he considered that "stability can be achieved by effectively involving all Syrian components in the development and building of the state within a pluralistic political program. The Syrian parties' sense and reassurance that the state—after the transitional period—will be built on participatory, representative foundations and free, pluralistic parliamentary elections is an important factor in establishing stability."

The statement can be considered a response to calls from some within the group itself to dissolve it or change its name and organization. However, Zidan's call does not fall within the scope of the call issued by the Brotherhood, where he used to live as a former member. This is despite his adoption of an approach that presented other experiences of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in which national interests were prioritized over partisan and organizational interests, as happened with the Muslim Brotherhood itself during the period of Syria's union with Egypt in 1958.

The Muslim Brotherhood also dissolved itself in Iraq and Qatar, and changed its name and organization in Morocco. This is in addition to the experiences of Hassan al-Turabi in Sudan, Rashid al-Ghannouchi in Tunisia, and the "Islamic Action Front" in Jordan, among others.

However, the question is: Will the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria respond to calls to dissolve itself?

The Brotherhood's Path

The Brotherhood's history indicates a winding path since its inception, marked by fluctuations, challenges, and numerous transformations in its positions and propositions. Recently, a number of questions have been raised regarding the Brotherhood's future and its fate in the coming period, now that it has been banned in most Arab countries.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria has a rich history of events and twists and turns, which have marked its journey since its founding by Mustafa al-Siba'i in 1954, following the merger of several charitable organizations with social programs, focusing on education and health services in major Syrian cities.

It achieved relative political success, winning a few seats in the Syrian Parliament between 1946 and 1958. It dissolved itself during the period of Syrian-Egyptian unity, but it reappeared after the secession from Egypt. It was banned by the leaders of the Ba'ath Party coup, who seized power in Syria in 1963.

Deviating from the position of the Brotherhood's leadership, Marwan Hadid led the first armed rebellion against the oppressive Ba'ath regime in 1976, when he founded the "Mohammad Brigades." In the late 1970s, the "Fighting Vanguard" was formed, leading a rebellion against the authoritarian regime of Hafez al-Assad. Assad responded by issuing Decree No. 49 in 1980, which stipulated the execution of any member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Assad regime committed horrific massacres in the cities of Hama and Aleppo. The Brotherhood then attempted to negotiate with the regime after Bashar al-Assad inherited power, but the regime refused to lift the ban and maintained Law 49.

The Muslim Brotherhood undertook revisions, culminating in the issuance of the "Draft National Charter of Honor for Political Action in Syria" in 2001, which affirmed its commitment to national dialogue and democratic political tools as a means of action, and its rejection of acts of violence.

The Brotherhood then issued the "Political Project for the Future of Syria" in 2003, presenting its vision for the state and institutions, national challenges, and paths to political and economic reform.

In 2005, the group joined the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change, which united the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime. However, it soon joined the National Salvation Front, led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, Bashar al-Assad's deputy, after his defection in 2006. It later withdrew from the Front for the Protection of Civilians, led by Turkish politicians at the time.

The Muslim Brotherhood revived after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in mid-March 2011 and played a significant role in Syrian opposition formations, including the Syrian National Council, formed in early August 2011, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces in 2012, and the Syrian Negotiations Commission.

The Muslim Brotherhood also contributed to military action, announcing the establishment of a military group called the Revolutionary Council Shields or the Revolutionary Shields Commission, to protect civilians. It also supported several opposition military factions.

Opening Windows

The Syrian revolution provided an opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood to play a major role within the ranks of the political and military opposition. However, it remained mired in disagreements and conflicts with other opposition forces, paralyzing the opposition formations for many reasons.

As a result, it was unable to achieve the slogans it had been raising and was surprised by the dramatic change and rapid progress achieved by the "Deterrence of Aggression" factions, led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which led to the overthrow of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024.

There is no indication that the Muslim Brotherhood will dissolve itself in the foreseeable future, despite its weak ties to the Syrian interior and the new government's efforts to control the levers of government, away from political parties and forces.

Although the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and its affiliates dissolved themselves, this was because they were formed under specific circumstances and for a purpose that ended with the fall of the Assad regime. The same applies to the Syrian Islamic Council, but the case of political parties differs. Most of these parties were formed before the Assad regime and are deeply rooted in Syrian society. Therefore, their dissolution would deprive Syrians of an important window for organization and expression.

Perhaps, after the fall of the Assad regime, more opportunities should be opened for all Syrians, rather than leaving them trapped behind the doors of closed-off sectarian groups.

The new government argues that the transitional phase requires harmony in leadership and unity of ranks. Therefore, it is working to dissolve military formations and seek to dissolve political parties.

While this argument has merit on the military level, as it requires unifying and restricting arms to the state, preventing the continued spread of weapons, in line with the state's right to monopolize the means of violence, it differs significantly on the political level, as there is nothing preventing Syrians from participating in political life under a new party law.

The state is supposed to protect political rights, which enable citizens to participate in the political and civil life of society and the state, without coercion, fear, or discrimination, and guarantee their right to vote and join political parties.

Political life contributes to strengthening the country's unity and encourages people to express their aspirations and ambitions. Most importantly, it ensures their participation in building their country's future, especially since political activity is peaceful in nature. Political parties and movements rely on presenting their programs and visions that seek to address the interests and concerns of the people. Their political work elevates individual affiliation to the civil level, transcending all pre-civil affiliations.

Syrians have the right to form parties to express their political views. They should not be viewed as regional, ethnic, or sectarian entities, but as political entities as well.

Perhaps it is the state's duty to guarantee all forms of expression and to regulate political life and public freedoms in accordance with the law, in order to realize the notion that Syria is a state of law, as President al-Sharaa himself has stated on more than one occasion.

By Omar Kush

East of Euphrates and the international influence

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 01:39:00 +0300

The eastern Euphrates region is witnessing unprecedented complexity, as the interests of regional and international powers intersect. American, French, and Russian forces are deployed alongside a Turkish military presence, while the SDF imposes its control over vast areas. Tribal factions operate in a volatile landscape, while Israel attempts to infiltrate through intelligence channels.

This region is the most sensitive in Syria, containing oil and gas fields and border crossings with Iraq and Turkey. This has made it an open arena for competition between Moscow and Washington, amidst close Turkish surveillance and security concerns related to the presence of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Syria is Syrian Kitchen

The internal equation is more complex, as the region's residents face a dual reality: the SDF administration, based on a local security and military structure, and the influence of tribes demanding the handover of the region to the Syrian state.

Deir ez-Zor appears more volatile due to its dense oil fields, while Raqqa faces increasing service and security challenges. Hasakah has become a center of gravity for the conflict, with the presence of American and Russian military bases and its status as a key gateway to Iraq and Turkey.

With increasing international pressure to seek a settlement, various scenarios are being proposed, most notably: gradual reintegration of the regions into the central administration, or maintaining a form of administrative decentralization in exchange for guarantees of Kurdish cultural and political rights. Ankara, on the other hand, believes that any formula that does not take into account the security of its borders will remain unacceptable, while Washington and its allies insist on a military presence conditional on continuing the war against ISIS.

So far, there are no indications of a final agreement determining the fate of the region, but it is certain that any widespread security collapse will lead to a new war of attrition, which could drag the region into a prolonged cycle of violence and leave tens of thousands of casualties.

State of Sacred Salvation: Between Criticism Betrayal and Flattery Nationalism

Zaman Al Wasl — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 23:44:44 +0300

Anyone studying history with a discerning eye that observes God's laws in societies and the laws of human society—which He has commanded us to do as human beings to learn lessons and as Islamically to establish remembrance—realizes that in the stages following revolutions and major transformations, complex psychological and political phenomena emerge in societies emerging from the womb of oppression and chaos. Sometimes, we even say death, which is not an acceptable expression.

Among the most important of these phenomena is the overwhelming desire to protect the state from any criticism, even if it is constructive and necessary for reform and improvement. Criticism of the government, state institutions, or even its individuals becomes a reprehensible act, met with accusations of treason, sabotage, or collaboration. This often unintended, sometimes intentional, confusion exists between the enemies of the victors, lurking in hypocrisy or appearing to be subservient, and the free, victorious sons of the revolution, who owe their allegiance solely to the idea of the homeland and the awareness of freedom, not to any individual or symbol. There is no more current manifestation of this phenomenon than the current scene in Syria after the victory of the revolution.

The Political Concept of the Phenomenon:

This phenomenon can be defined politically by what we can call "total loyalty to the state." It is a state of absolute identification with the state, stripping society of its right to criticize and question. In this case, the state transforms from a tool serving the people into a sacred entity that cannot be approached or even touched. This sanctity is often built on a backdrop of fear of chaos, terror at the mere thought of the risks of relapse, or on the narrative of the savior state or the redeeming regime, making any criticism of it a threat to the national entity itself.

This totalitarian loyalty branches out into two levels:

• At the level of central authority: The state is reduced to the existing government, with the government at the head of power and the political leadership. This produces a closed political structure that obstructs accountability mechanisms and inflates the executive role at the expense of the legislative and judicial.

• At the popular and media levels: New national narratives are constructed that link the safety of the nation to the silence of the citizen. Nationalism becomes synonymous with conformity, and criticism is viewed as a symbolic betrayal, even if it comes in the name of reform.

This situation is not much different from what totalitarian regimes throughout history witnessed, such as fascist Italy and Nazi Germany—and even formerly Ba'athist Syria. And herein lies the secret: we have not culturally rid ourselves of the remnants of this Ba'athist-Assadist phenomenon—where the nation was reduced to the person of the ruler, and the state to slogans devoid of content. However, the paradox today lies in the fact that this phenomenon stems from within societies emerging from revolutions against these concepts, which were supposed to establish a culture of accountability. Instead, some of their people, and the sons of their revolution, are attempting to reproduce tyranny in a new symbolic guise, embodied by the slogan of the new era and its altered symbols.

Hence, the most dangerous threat to the state at this stage is not criticism, but its absence. A state that is not criticized is a state that becomes a closed ideology, not an institution capable of growth and reform.

The Philosophical Roots of the Phenomenon:

This phenomenon is linked to what is known in political philosophy as "political theology," whereby the state is transformed into a superhuman entity, "the deification of the state," similar in religious logic to the image of a transcendent God who is not questioned about what he does. The state becomes the new god in modern societies, commanding unquestioned obedience and endowed with attributes of perfection and wisdom. This identification with the fetishization of the state is further heightened if yesterday's revolutionaries and today's leaders hail from a religious background grounded in holy jihad. Conversely, the individual is stripped of his position as an active, critical citizen and is re-produced as a subordinate being, finding security in his submission.

This approach was strongly criticized by the German philosopher Karl Popper in his book *The Open Society and Its Enemies*. He argued that transforming the state into a sacred entity reproduces the old myths of obedience and closes the door to reform, because any questioning constitutes an attack on the sanctity of the system. Michel Foucault also warned against the illusion of absolute knowledge of power, explaining that when the state positions itself as the sole knower, all power becomes knowledge, and all knowledge becomes a tool of oppression.

This kind of thinking produces closed political models that combat criticism as sedition and mobilize the masses in defense of infallible institutions, within a prevailing culture that views the state as something to be obeyed, not contracted with.

From an Islamic perspective that examines God's laws and the Quranic precepts, this model of deifying the state is fundamentally at odds with what can be called "political monotheism," derived from the term "monotheism" in Islam; that is, stripping human beings, whether individuals or groups, of political infallibility. Only God is not questioned about what He does, while others are "questioned" and "held accountable."

Many verses in the Quran establish this understanding, including the Almighty's statement: "Stop them, for indeed, they will be questioned." (As-Saffat: 24). This is a fundamental Quranic principle that holds every authority accountable and every political action liable to accountability. Indeed, prophethood itself is not immune from criticism, as in the verses: "Allah has pardoned you. Why did you give them permission?" (At-Tawbah: 43) and "O Prophet, why do you forbid what Allah has made lawful for you?" (At-Tahrim: 16), a direct reference to the necessity of correcting political decisions, even at the highest levels of prophetic purity. This is the reality of what the Prophet's Companions emulated in many famous instances, too numerous to list here. We will mention, for the sake of reminders only, the following: (The occupation of the wells in the Battle of Badr, the desire of the people of Medina to leave for Uhud despite the Prophet's desire to remain there, the digging of the Trench, the Treaty of Hudaybah and the positions of Umar and some of the Companions regarding the peace formula, and many other events that occurred during the era of the Rightly-Guided Caliphate as well.)

The Qur'anic vision stems from a conception of man as a free agent, accountable and held accountable, and from a conception of the state as a tool for achieving the goals of regulating public order and civilized development based on justice, not as an absolute source of truth. Hence, any political discourse that cloaks the state in a false sanctity is, in reality, a deviation from the objectives of monotheism.

Psychological and Social Roots:

This phenomenon is deeply rooted in the collective psyche emerging from major traumas, through what can be called the "sacred rescue complex" or "savior syndrome." It's a psychosocial condition that arises when people lose their sense of existential and political security during years of oppression, war, or collapse. They look for someone to save them from the path of suffering they are enduring. Consequently, they cling to the first new authority that promises stability, projecting their emotional aspirations and sometimes their prophetic beliefs onto it more than their critical thinking. Here, the state transforms from a contractual institution into a therapeutic symbol, sanctified not because it achieves justice, but because it shields people from the specter of chaos.

This complex manifests itself through a pathological adherence to the idea that the only alternative to absolute loyalty is falling back into the abyss. Criticism becomes treason, accountability becomes a crime, and different thinking becomes a "timeless luxury." This contributes to the prevalence of collective behavior known in political psychology as "repressive internalization," where individuals censor themselves in defense of an authority that may demand not only obedience but also reverence, as countless historical examples bear out.

Socially, traditional structures (clan, sect, patriarchy, patriarchy, and patriarchy) play a role in perpetuating a culture of subordination. These structures reproduce obedience through the language of honor, loyalty, and prestige, making criticism an abnormal act that threatens familial or sectarian peace, not just political peace. Vertical relationships become the basis of political understanding, with no room for accountability but for allegiance.

Implications for the post-revolutionary scene in Syria today:

The date of December 8, 2024, a pivotal moment in Syria's history today, represents in the current Syrian consciousness a moment of birth from a difficult labor, a bright dawn of a long, heavy night, and a moment of awakening from a nightmare that has haunted Syrians for decades. Thus, a wave of popular emotion began to present the new state as the final salvation from the absurdity of destruction, and the infallible hand after the revolution's triumph. However, this emotional rush toward the state was not accompanied by the establishment of a genuine critical mindset. On the contrary, the rhetoric of prohibition against criticism returned to dominate the public sphere, but this time in the name of the revolution, not the regime.

The slogan "Don't criticize the state, the state knows best" no longer emanates from the head of state alone. It has also become echoed in people's conversations, on social media platforms, in the media, and even in the tone of some longtime opponents who have transformed into defenders of the new regime in the name of political realism.

For example, we have witnessed public campaigns of treason against journalists and activists who wrote about transitional justice and holding criminals accountable. Some of these campaigns may have targeted administrative corruption in some emerging revolutionary institutions, or questioned the economic priorities for the next phase, or called for a national debate about the shape of the new political system. These people were confronted not with arguments, but with ready-made accusations: that you are destroying the state, that you are an agent of chaos, that you have not understood the meaning of this stage.

The bitter irony is that the old Ba'athist mentality, which monopolized patriotism and criminalized criticism, has been recycled with revolutionary language. The revolution itself has become a tool of silencing rather than a space for freedom. This brings to mind Jean-Paul Sartre's statement: "Revolutions that do not produce freedom produce tyranny of a different color."

Thus, patriotism has become measured by the amount of applause, not by the depth of questioning. The fear of falling once again has become a sword hanging over every critical mind. Many intellectuals have withdrawn, civil society has become confused, and the revolution has been reduced to the slogans of the state rather than its liberating logic.

Comparative Lessons from Other Experiences:

Before commenting on this phenomenon from the perspective of Syrian society, it is important to highlight some experiences inspired by the story:

1. Germany after World War II: The model of "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" (confronting the past) was encouraged in Germany, or more precisely, "acknowledging and reconciling with the painful past." This model saw both society and the state subjected to a public and comprehensive self-criticism. German identity was reconstructed on the basis of accepting mistakes and opening the door to institutional and popular criticism. Independent accountability institutions were established, and freedom of the press and academia were given essential roles in reshaping the relationship between the citizen and the state.

2. South Africa after apartheid: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established, which encouraged the exposure of violations rather than their cover-up. Society was involved in the new justice process, and the state was held accountable through the voices of the victims, not by name. This model restored the morality of the modern state, and the concept of political authority was separated from the concept of truth.

3. Chile after Pinochet: After decades of authoritarian military rule under General Augusto Pinochet, Chile underwent a serious democratic transition based on reforming legal institutions and strengthening the role of an independent judiciary, in addition to reopening files on past violations through commissions of inquiry and accountability. The new state was not sanctified, but rather, from the outset, was subject to constant popular and constitutional scrutiny, which allowed for the development of a society more aware of the concept of political justice.

4. South Korea after Military Rule: South Korea lived for decades under authoritarian military regimes until the end of the 1980s, but it managed to transform into a democracy through widespread civil struggle and student and popular protests that led to free elections. The new state was not established as a sacred entity, but rather as a shared project open to criticism and correction. Thus, democracy there rested on the principle that a state's legitimacy is measured by its accountability, not its symbolic status. Stability and necessity.

The Necessity of a Realistic Ethical Approach:

The fundamental concept in the relationship between authority and society is freedom from human sanctification, while adhering to the balance of truth and justice. From an ethical perspective, the relationship between the citizen and the state is not one of blind dependence, but rather a contract based on mutual responsibility. The legitimacy of government is measured by its commitment to the goals of justice, not its symbolic status or revolutionary slogans. An individual's patriotism is measured by their commitment to the values of truth and justice as a method for fulfilling their duties and exercising their rights toward their society and state.

In this context, Quranic values such as equity, consultation, and honesty become normative tools for holding authority accountable. Allah the Almighty says: “O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives” (An-Nisa’: 135). This confirms that the standard of justice in the Qur’an is not what the state or people deem right, but rather what conforms to the divine right. The Qur’an warns against concealing political and moral testimony, even from the closest of people, let alone from employees authorized to serve. This is confirmed in other places: “And do not conceal testimony. And whoever conceals it, his heart is sinful” (Al-Baqarah: 283). Remaining silent about deviations is not neutrality, but rather hidden participation in an injustice upon which reform cannot be built. As for Shura (consultation), it is not merely a formal constitutional principle. Rather, it is a Quranic spirit based on testimony, accountability, and the rejection of tyranny of opinion: “And their affairs are decided by consultation among themselves.” (Ash-Shura: 38)

From a realistic political perspective, the absence of these ethics from the public sphere renders the state a closed structure based on fear, not conviction. Citizenship becomes a mere collective silence, patriotism a tool for expelling dissent, and religion itself is used to numb the public conscience. Therefore, reviving the Quranic moral dimension in this way in politics does not mean Islamizing the state, but rather restoring the free individual, as honored by God, as the center of responsibility, and restoring the state as a means of justice, not an end in itself.

No to Bush's political narrative:

The political narrative is based on the principle of "whoever is not with me is against me." Between enemies of the state, who are described as lurkers with vile agendas threatening the nation, and loyalists who identify with the state to the point of appeasement, this constitutes a dangerous reduction of collective consciousness and reduces the space for participation to mere approval or hostility.

This binary mode of thinking excludes all other areas of opinion, which are colored across the spectrum, and which in reality represent the most important space for reform, correction, civilizational development, and the establishment of construction, construction, and beauty in society. No room is left for the critical citizen, the independent intellectual, or the one with a different opinion, because they do not belong to either pole. Critical awareness becomes an accusation, neutrality becomes a cowardly position, and anyone who seeks to construct a third narrative based on truth and the public interest is criminalized.

From a philosophical perspective, this situation represents what Habermas calls a "crisis of public communication," where the public sphere is stifled and discourse monopolized by those with power, not those with arguments. From a Quranic perspective, it contradicts the Almighty's statement: "And let not the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just; that is nearer to righteousness." (Al-Ma'idah: 8) because the binary narrative is based on hatred, not justice.

Building a modern state requires something broader than two opposing camps; it requires a third space where those who disagree can come together for justice, not division. Note that this division certainly serves the camp of the nation's enemies, who are truly lurking and have infiltrated society itself through their hammers of demolition, not criticism. They wield criticism, not through the opinions expressed by those who wield constructive criticism, which support reform and help the government rebuild on sound foundations and adhere to a progressive path of improvement that ensures sustainability. This is achieved by pushing the government into self-isolation and withdrawing into its own opinions, immune to criticism from its supporters, on the one hand. On the other hand, it gives the nation's enemies the pretext to exploit this division to their advantage by misleadingly marketing every critical opinion as an opposition calling for the overthrow of the regime and the destruction of the state, within the framework of the standards of the state's own supporters, unfortunately.

Finally, it is striking that many of these defenders of the new state within a framework of sanctity are themselves victims of the old state, which raises a bitter question: Are we reproducing tyranny under the guise of revolution? This paradox means that the revolution has not yet succeeded in establishing a collective critical mind, and that political and cultural elites are now required to construct a new discourse that consolidates the principle that criticizing the state is not treason, but rather the essence of citizenship.

The essence of the modern state is not based on obedience, but on a balance between authority and accountability. Any state that is elevated above criticism transforms into an updated version of tyranny. In the new Syria, we need to revolutionize consciousness, not just institutions, and build a state that is not afraid of criticism, but rather thrives on it sustainably.

The most dangerous thing revolutions face is not only their enemies, but also their supporters, who turn into guardians of blind silence, rather than builders of a conscious collective conscience.

Ayman Qasim Al-Rifai - Zaman Al-Wasl

How to save Syrian oil from bureaucratic mafia?

Zaman Al Wasl — Sat, 10 May 2025 11:08:35 +0300

Corruption as an Integrated System Corruption in the Syrian oil sector is not limited to individual cases. Rather, it constitutes a system based on three pillars: information monopoly, alliances of influence, and the absence of accountability. Achieving reform requires dismantling these pillars through simultaneous steps encompassing management, finance, law, and technology.

Administrative Reform

This is achieved by dismantling networks of influence, enhancing efficiency, and restructuring senior leadership (which has been partially implemented but not fully implemented). It also involves forming an independent (local) investigative committee to review all appointments over the past decade and eliminating those based on favoritism, political loyalties, or unethical relationships.

Implementing administrative reform requires preventing the reuse of dismissed officials in advisory or informal roles, establishing an effective mechanism to break the monopoly on information and share data across all administrative levels, and ending the rigid vertical hierarchy.

Adopting a permanent and confidential evaluation that includes all levels of work, especially the lower levels, given their direct connection to performance, contributes significantly to administrative reform. Activating internal oversight, while granting each directorate clear powers for evaluation and accountability, also contributes to this.

Building Independent Staff

Launching training programs in partnership with local and international universities to qualify a new generation of administrators, engineers, and technicians. Linking promotions to the results of semi-annual performance evaluations, and activating weekly training programs to transfer expertise. Adopting internal training in each directorate, while ensuring knowledge exchange, and establishing an electronic "competency bank" containing employee records and skills, ensures transparency in appointments.

Financial Reform: Contract Transparency and Combating Waste

To reform the tendering system, the ministry must publish all contracts on a unified electronic platform, detailing all parties, values, and justifications, in accordance with Transparency International standards. Direct contracts with shell companies must be abolished and replaced with public tenders monitored via live broadcast.

Strengthening Financial Oversight

To strengthen oversight, a blockchain system must be implemented to track the revenues of every barrel of oil from extraction to export, similar to Norway. Establish an independent internal audit unit with the authority to refer corrupt individuals directly to the judiciary.

Legal Reform: Holding Corrupt Individuals Accountable and Closing Loopholes

A law should be passed criminalizing incompetent appointments and requiring officials to disclose their financial assets and the contracts of their immediate relatives. Impose prison sentences and fines on anyone involved in deals that harm the public interest, with assets confiscated during investigations. An electronic platform for reporting corruption should be established that ensures complete confidentiality and prevents the prosecution of whistleblowers, as in the Iraqi experience.

4. Technological Transformation: From Chaos to Digital Governance

The key steps of digital transformation include digitizing all procedures (contracts, purchase orders, production reports) and linking them to a central database. Artificial intelligence should be used to analyze spending patterns and detect duplication and suspicions, such as the recurring "emergency maintenance" clause. A national center for oil and gas data management should be established, with precise powers of access to information defined to prevent leakage. Investing in the Future: From a Rentier Economy to Diversification

- 20% of oil revenues should also be diverted to building modern refineries and petrochemical plants, with the goal of reducing imports and creating jobs. Small businesses should also be encouraged to invest in renewable energy through generous tax exemptions, and 5% of the ministry's budget should be allocated to support research and development in environmentally friendly extraction technologies and converting waste gas into energy.

Community Participation: From Marginalization to Partnership

To this end, an application should be launched that allows citizens to report suspected corruption (oil spills, broken equipment) in exchange for financial rewards. Periodic reports should be published in simplified language detailing oil sector revenues and expenditures. Periodic conferences should be held to discuss energy policies, involving youth and local and international experts, and learning from experiences like those of the UAE.

Reform is not an option, but an existential necessity.

The need to transform the Ministry of Energy from a "deep state" into a national institution requires political will to confront networks of influence, absolute transparency in every action, and investment in human resources. International expertise should also be sought to ensure the integrity of the reform.

Without this, oil wealth will remain a burden on the country rather than a source of prosperity.

Marshall Plan? Inside Iran’s multi-billion-dollar bet on Syria and how it failed

Reuters — Thu, 01 May 2025 19:42:33 +0300

Iran had a grand plan for Syria – taken right from the playbook of a country it considers its arch-enemy.

Just as the United States solidified its global dominance by investing billions in rebuilding Europe after the Second World War, Iran would do the same in the Middle East by reconstructing a war-ravaged Syria.

The ambitious program, outlined in a 33-page official Iranian study, makes several references to “The Marshall Plan,” America’s blueprint for resurrecting post-War Europe. The US strategy succeeded: It made Europe “reliant on America,” a presentation accompanying the study says, by “creating economic, political and socio-cultural dependence.”

The document, dated May 2022 and authored by an Iranian economic-policy unit stationed in Syria, was found by Reuters reporters in Iran’s looted Damascus embassy when they visited the building in December.

It was among hundreds of other papers they uncovered there and at other locations around the capital – letters, contracts and infrastructure plans – that reveal how Iran planned to recoup the billions it spent saving President Bashar al-Assad during the country’s long-running civil war. The Syria-strategy document envisions building an economic empire, while also deepening influence over Iran’s ally.

“A $400 billion opportunity,” reads one bullet point in the study.

These imperial hopes were crushed when armed opposition forces hostile to Iran toppled al-Assad in December. The deposed dictator fled for Russia. Iran’s paramilitaries, diplomats and companies beat their own hasty exit. Its embassy in Damascus was ransacked by Syrians celebrating al-Assad’s demise.

The building was littered with documents highlighting the challenges facing Iranian investors. The documents and months of reporting reveal new insight into the doomed effort to turn Syria into a lucrative satellite state.

Reuters interviewed a dozen Iranian and Syrian businessmen, investigated the web of Iranian companies navigating the gray zones of sanctions, and visited some of Iran’s abandoned investments, which included religious sites, factories, military installations and more. Those investments were stymied by militant attacks, local corruption, and Western sanctions and bombing runs.

Among the investments was a €411 million power plant in coastal Latakia being built by an Iranian engineering firm. It stands idle. An oil extraction project is abandoned in Syria’s eastern desert. A $26 million Euphrates River rail bridge built by an Iranian charity linked to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei collapsed under a US coalition airstrike years ago, and was neither repaired nor fully paid for.

The roughly 40 projects in the abandoned embassy files represent a fraction of Iran’s overall investment. But in this assortment alone, Reuters found that Syria’s outstanding debts to Iranian companies toward the end of the war amounted to at least $178 million. Former Iranian lawmakers have publicly estimated the total debt of al-Assad’s government to Iran at more than $30 billion.

Hassan Shakhesi, a private Iranian trader, lost €16 million in vehicle parts he shipped to Syria’s Latakia port just before Assad fled. “I’d set up an office and home in Syria. That’s gone,” said Shakhesi. He said he was never paid for the goods, which disappeared. “I hope Iran’s long history with Syria isn’t just wiped out. I’m now having to look at business elsewhere.”

Ultimately, Iran’s hopes to emulate the Marshall Plan and build an economic empire encompassing Syria went more the way of America’s debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Early intervention in Syria’s civil war on the side of al-Assad deepened Iran’s influence over this gateway to the Mediterranean

Sea. The story of the squandered investments reveals the financial risk that brought, and how the mutual reliance of the pariah governments of Syria and Iran hurt both.

For Iran’s rulers, al-Assad’s fall and the collapse of their Syria plans come at a precarious time.

They have been weakened by Israel’s decimation of the Islamic Republic’s key proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. They are under pressure from US President Donald Trump to negotiate a deal that could neuter Iran’s nuclear program, or face possible military action if they balk.

Iran’s regional rivals, including Turkey and Israel, are rushing to fill the vacuum left by its departure. The nascent Syrian government, for its part, has to contend with multiple frozen infrastructure projects as it tries to rebuild the war-ravaged country.

Reuters reporters discovered an array of documents as they visited Iran’s centers of soft power in Syria after al-Assad’s fall – diplomatic, economic and cultural offices.

They photographed nearly 2,000 of the records, including trade contracts, economic plans and official cables, and left them where found. Reporters then used artificial intelligence, including the AI legal assistant CoCounsel owned by Thomson Reuters, to summarize and analyze the texts.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said in December he expected the new Syrian leadership to honor the country’s obligations. But it’s not a priority for the new government, led by a former armed opposition forces group, “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,” that fought al-Assad and his Iranian backers.

Iranian government officials did not respond to requests for comment about the findings by Reuters.

“The Syrian people have a wound caused by Iran, and we need a lot of time to heal,” the new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said

in an interview in December. Neither al-Sharaa nor other officials from Syria’s new government responded to requests for comment from Reuters about Iran’s role in the fallen regime.

Al-Sharaa’s HTS, initially an offshoot of al-Qaeda, severed those ties years ago and says it wants to build an inclusive and democratic Syria. Some Syrians, especially non-Sunni minorities, fear it retains the extremist goal of establishing an Islamic government.

For most Syrians, the departure of al-Assad and the Iran-backed militias was cause to celebrate. Those Syrians who worked with

Iranians have mixed feelings, however, about the exodus of Iranian business, which has left many of them without an income.

“Iran was here, that was just the reality, and I made a living from it for a while,” said a Syrian engineer who worked on the idled Latakia power plant.

The engineer asked not to be named for fear of reprisals for working for an Iranian company, after a spate of revenge killings last month against Syrians associated with the old regime.

He said the Latakia project was hobbled by financial problems, Syrian corruption and underqualified workers from Iran, but that once completed would have boosted Syria’s struggling grid.

“The power plant was something for the future of Syria,” he said.

Iran’s man in Syria

The man tasked with executing Iran’s economic plans in Syria was a bearded construction manager from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) named Abbas Akbari. He was promoted with fanfare in March 2022 to lead a unit called the Headquarters for Developing Economic Relations of Iran and Syria. Its task was to boost trade and recoup Iran’s investment. His team produced the study that held up the Marshall Plan as a model.

Akbari enlisted comrades in the IRGC, an elite branch of Iran’s military, to help with logistics on civilian projects.

Reuters found letters signed by Akbari in Iran’s looted embassy. The documents include details of projects he supported and the money spent. Near the scattered papers was a vault and a pack of C4 explosives discovered by fighters who were guarding the building. Akbari did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Iran’s foray into Syria began long before Akbari’s arrival.

Mapna Group, an Iranian infrastructure conglomerate that hired the Syrian engineer who worked on the Latakia project, won its first major contract in 2008 to expand a power plant near Damascus. That was soon followed by a second contract to build another plant near the city of Homs.

The deals were part of a growing Iranian investment in Syria in the years ahead of the 2011 uprising against al-Assad, as US sanctions shut off both countries to the West. They were the fruit of a relationship dating back to the Iranian revolution of 1979, which led to the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

Al-Assad’s father, President Hafez al-Assad, was the first Arab leader to recognize the republic and helped arm Ruhollah Khomeini’s fledgling Shia Muslim theocracy in its 1980s war with Iraq. They fought Israel during the Lebanese civil war – Iran via its Hezbollah proxy – and later sent fighters and weapons to resist the American occupation of Iraq after 2003.

Iran’s political investments in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon paid off for years.

Like Iran, Iraq and Lebanon have significant populations of Shia Muslims, and Shia paramilitaries nurtured by the IRGC dominated successive governments in Baghdad and Beirut. Syria became the key transit route for weapons and personnel across the “Axis of Resistance,” the name Iran gives to the armed groups and states it supports against Israel and the West.

Syria also held religious importance for Iran, which sent hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year to visit the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine, the mausoleum of the Prophet Mohammed’s granddaughter, situated just south of Damascus.

Economic ties took off in the mid-2000s, around the time Mapna got its first contracts.

But then came the Syrian uprising against al-Assad in 2011, part of the wave of Arab Spring uprisings. The uprising threatened a range of Iranian military, political, religious and, increasingly, economic interests.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians rose up against the al-Assad government, which he ruled through an elite of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam.

His crackdown turned the uprising into an armed insurgency dominated by extremist groups. The civil war caused ethno-religious rifts, bringing chaos to a country home to Sunnis, Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Kurds and others, with minorities increasingly fearful of a sectarian rebellion.

Iran – along with al-Assad’s other main backer, Russia – came to al-Assad’s aid, sending arms and manpower. Iran also sent engineers and entrepreneurs.

‘Never left its brothers alone’

In late December 2011, the reality of operating in wartime Syria hit Mapna. Syrian armed opposition forces kidnapped seven Iranians working on the Jandar power plant near Homs, Iranian state news reported. Two were killed, according to a 2018 letter from the company to Syria’s electricity minister seen by Reuters.

But the strife deepened Mapna’s investment, bringing it newcontracts to repair Syria’s battle-damaged power grid, which by 2015 was producing less than half of pre-war output. The most ambitious deal was to build the Latakia plant.

The projects were troubled and costly from the outset, according to letters from the company seen by Reuters, and the Syrian engineer who worked at Latakia.

“Latakia was supposed to take 20 months, starting around 2018,” he said. “Now it’s frozen.”

Mapna announced in November 2024, a month before al-Assad’s ouster, that it was about halfway through construction.

The engineer said Syria insisted on using a subcontractor with links to the al-Assad family that hired largely unqualified builders and engineers. He said Mapna’s own staff included capable workers, and some who appeared to have got their jobs through Iranian connections.

“There were always financial issues: delayed payments between the governments, plus currency fluctuations,” he said.

The engineer’s account of payment issues and Syrian bureaucracy was corroborated by letters in the embassy, which also show how Mapna’s own capital was at risk.

A 2017 letter from the company to the Iranian ambassador said that Syria was changing the terms of finalized deals, leaving Mapna to finance the Latakia power plant entirely, as well as another project initially agreed with 60 percent Mapna financing. A year later, the company president complained in a letter to Syria’s electricity minister that the government had ignored an offer to ship parts for an Aleppo plant and dragged its feet on approving other contracts with Mapna, which had incurred tens of millions of euros in costs.

“Mapna Group has never left its brothers alone in the Ministry of Electricity of Syria … during seven years of civil wars while all foreign companies left,” is how Mapna President Abbas Aliabadi, now Iran’s energy minister, ended his frustrated 2018 letter.

The Energy Ministry, Aliabadi and Mapna employees and managers contacted by Reuters did not respond to requests for comment.

The company has not publicly announced how much it spent in Syria or whether payments were settled.

The company sometimes received logistical help from Akbari, the Revolutionary Guards construction manager, internal letters show. This included asking IRGC units to allocate fuel for Mapna.

Mapna had partially repaired the Aleppo thermal plant by the summer of 2022. Al-Assad triumphantly toured the plant in a photo op. Other projects were still in the works. The Jandar plant, damaged during fighting, operates at reduced capacity.

The Syrian engineer left the Latakia project in 2021 because he refused to work for the al-Assad-linked Syrian subcontractor because of the corruption, and viewed the project as doomed. “I’ve struggled to find permanent work since then,” he said. A member of the minority Alawite sect, he sheltered at home while the country plunged into new sectarian violence last month.

Sanctions and debt

Mapna’s security and financial troubles were replicated across a host of other Iranian companies in Syria.

Copper World, a private Tehran-based electrical wiring firm, won a tender to supply a Syrian cable company just before the war.

When fighting began, the investment looked shaky.

Armed opposition fighters stole a cargo worth millions of dollars in Syria in 2012, a person with knowledge of the contracts told Reuters.

Copper World pushed ahead in Syria because sanctions closed off other markets, the source said. Copper World claimed damages through Syrian courts and recovered some of the lost exports.

The rest, due from the Syrian national insurance company, was never paid.

The source said the Syrian cable company demanded $50,000 as a condition for awarding Copper World a new contract – while doing the same deal with a rival Egyptian company.

The two companies compared notes and discovered what was happening. Reuters could not determine how the deal was finalized.

On another occasion, a Syrian money-transfer company tasked with transmitting funds to Copper World used old rates for payments as the Syrian pound plummeted, leaving Copper World short.

“Bank transfers and currency fluctuations killed that business,” the source said.

A Copper World letter at the Iranian embassy sought Akbari’s help with its financial difficulties in Syria. The letter asked him to lobby the Syrian Central Bank and money-transfer company to pay $2.4 million due to Copper World.

A separate table of projects, outstanding payments and extra costs, annotated by Iranian officials, listed dozens of delays and payment issues for other firms.

Yet throughout the ordeals of Mapna, Copper World and others, Iran doubled down on its Syrian investment.

Iran signed a 2011 free trade deal with Syria, days before the Mapna kidnappings, focusing on industry, mining and agriculture.

The government in Tehran issued Damascus a credit line worth $3.6 billion in 2013, and a second worth $1 billion in 2015, the first of a series of major loans to help the Syrian state pay for imports, including oil.

The United Nations most recently estimated Iran to be spending $6 billion a year in Syria by 2015. Iran has called estimates of its spending in Syria exaggerated, but not provided an official figure.

Iran and Syria signed a series of agreements between 2015 and 2020 aimed at Tehran recovering its debts. They included giving Iran land for farming, a licence to become a mobile phone operator, housing projects, phosphate mining rights and oil exploration contracts.

Reuters reporting found that several of those projects ran into similar difficulties related to sanctions, manpower and security with little income to show for their troubles. None of the companies involved responded to requests for comment.

Iran was meanwhile losing deals to other countries. Akbari’s Headquarters for Economic Development reported in its study that Syria’s other big ally, Russia, had focused on “profitable sectors” in the country such as oil and gas. And seven months after agreeing that Iran could manage the port of Latakia, Syria renewed the lease of a French company instead.

‘Identify the Syrian mafias’

Akbari and his bosses in Tehran were acutely aware of how little their Syria investment had yielded by the time the Iranian government announced his new post leading the development agency in 2022.

The study that references the Marshall Plan was produced on Akbari’s watch. It lists a litany of troubles Iran endured in Syria – banking and transport problems, “lack of security” and red tape.

It also mentions USAID, the American aid agency that Trump has been defunding.

Like the Marshall Plan, the Iranians viewed USAID as a highly effective vehicle for establishing American economic and soft power – a “nation building” model they wanted to adopt in Syria. It would help Iran “achieve goals such as increasing regional security,” as well as “neutralize” US sanctions, the study said.

Without mentioning other countries in detail, it said Syria was on the “front line” of Iran’s battle with Israel, and a key link with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran’s regional soft power projects include charity and construction work in Iraq and funding for seminaries in Lebanon. This spending is an increasing source of criticism at home by Iranians reeling from its ailing economy.

By the time Akbari started his job, al-Assad had largely beaten back the uprising with Iranian and Russian help.

Iran had reaped some strategic rewards, deepening its influence in the Syrian military, developing local militias alongside those it imported into Syria, and deploying paramilitaries in key centers like Damascus, Sayyeda Zeinab and Aleppo.

But Iranian businesses were losing interest. After fighting subsided, just 11 Iran-linked companies registered annually in Syria in 2022 and 2023, barely more than during the worst years of the civil war, according to an analysis by the Syrian political economist Karam Shaar shared with Reuters.

“Syrian banks’ failure to pay Iranian companies is discouraging investment,” a letter from Akbari’s agency to Iran’s Syria ambassador read, listing a litany of complaints.

The agency blamed “complicated Syrian bureaucracy.”

A Powerpoint presentation that lay next to the agency’s study at Iran’s embassy suggested a workaround: “becoming familiar with the key stakeholders and economic and business mafias” of Syria.

The agency assessed that sanctions would still stop Syria from doing business with the West, making Iran one of its few options. Others were Arab states and Turkey, which had rekindled relations with al-Assad after years backing his opposition.

Akbari pressed on.

In a photo accompanying a printout of internal meeting minutes, he sits smiling opposite Syria’s industry minister at an Aleppo hotel. “Mr. Akbari asked the Syrian side to identify incomplete factories” for Iranian companies to build, the minutes read.

Iran signed new agreements with Syria in 2023 and 2024 that included establishing a joint bank, zero tariff trade, and a second attempt at setting up transactions using local currencies – a move that would avoid sanctions by cutting use of US dollars.

But time would soon run out on Akbari and his mission.

Root and branch reversal

The scattered papers, belongings and military hardware left around the Iranian embassy in Damascus, a hotel for Iranian engineers and workers adjoining the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine, and a nearby cultural center, are a mix of contracts, plans, proselytizing and military-industrial logistics.

Next to tomes on Islamic jurisprudence and a “knowing Shi’ism” book at the cultural center are applications by Iranian women for membership of Iran’s Basij paramilitary organization.

Among abandoned plans for shrine decorations, an Iranian worker at the nearby hotel was teaching himself Arabic in his personal notebook.

Despite the many problems, Iran was still pouring money into the upkeep of the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine. It was providing stipends for Iranian families who had moved to the area – according to Iranian documents seen at Sayyeda Zeinab – and maintaining militias nearby.

The fall of al-Assad last year brought down the curtain on Akbari’s Syria plan.

By then, Israel had all but crushed Iran’s Axis of Resistance, killing the leadership of Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and key IRGC commanders in Syria.

An Israeli strike in April 2024 flattened the consulate building attached to the Damascus embassy, leaving one less site for Syrians to pillage when Iranian embassy staff fled.

Abu Ghassan, a fighter for the new Syrian government, guarded the embassy in the days after al-Assad fell. He said he and his comrades found a pack of explosives hidden in a corridor and some empty ammunition boxes.

“Locals keep coming in looking for money or gold,” he said.

“There’s nothing of value left.”

US divisions hinder the formulation of clear policy towards Syria

ASHARQ Al-AWSAT — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 23:13:42 +0300

In December 2019, US President Donald Trump signed the long-awaited Caesar Act to tighten the noose on the regime of then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The sanctions were set to expire in December 2024, but Congress renewed them in a text agreed upon just hours before the fall of the Assad regime and the assumption of power by the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who became President Ahmed al-Sharaa. These rapid developments surprised Syrians both inside and outside Syria, and shocked the administration of US President Joe Biden in his final weeks in office.

While Biden celebrated the fall of Assad, his administration did not make any significant or decisive decisions regarding the Sharaa government, other than issuing some sanctions waivers, deferring these decisions to the incoming president, Donald Trump, who assumed office on January 20.

Internal Divisions

Since that date, the US administration has been mired in a cycle of internal conflicts that have prevented the development of a clear US strategy toward Syria that provides guiding frameworks for dealing with al-Sharaa and his government, according to several sources in the current administration who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. Meanwhile, the US State Department announced yesterday that "some officials of the transitional authority in Syria are in New York, but the US is not normalizing relations with Damascus at this stage," referring to Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani's visit to the United Nations headquarters.

The Syrian file in the Trump administration is publicly and officially headed by former Special Envoy to Yemen Tim Lenderking, who is assuming this role pending Senate confirmation of Joel Raburn, Trump's nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

However, according to informed sources, the actual leader of the file is Sebastian Gorka, Trump's deputy assistant and director of counterterrorism at the White House, who is highly reserved about dealing with the al-Sharaa government for ideological reasons.

James Jeffrey, the former Special Envoy for Syria and former US envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, spoke about these divisions within the Trump team, saying in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat: "There appear to be disagreements about Sharaa within the US government, and these disagreements have led to a freeze in strategic thinking about how to deal with the issue." He added: "A freeze of this kind, especially regarding sanctions relief, could undermine the entire Syrian project."

David Schenker, former Deputy Secretary of State, agrees with Jeffreys' assessment of these disagreements, telling Asharq Al-Awsat: "There are skeptics of Sharaa and his jihadist past within the US government, and these are reluctant to lift sanctions, while others want to test Sharaa to try to determine how he governs and gradually lift sanctions based on his performance."

Schenker believes that this is why Washington has put forward a list of eight conditions for lifting sanctions, ranging from placing Syria's chemical weapons under international control to removing foreign fighters from key positions in the military. He noted that Sharaa has complied with some of these demands and is reluctant to implement others. Schenker warns that, without economic development, Sharaa will fail in his efforts to unify Syria, and the country could deteriorate into a scenario similar to what happened in Libya. He adds, "The US government does not appear to be dealing with the issue from an emergency perspective to prevent this grim prospect. There is little interaction from the administration with the new Syrian government." Schenker notes that the National Security Council currently leads the Syrian issue, as the State Department appointees have not yet been confirmed.

An Ideological Battle

These divisions are evident to those observing the statements issued by various figures in the administration regarding the Syrian file. Lenderking says that the United States is "looking for opportunities to build confidence," indicating that these issues will not be resolved overnight, and that the administration is open to engaging with the Sharaa government to assess them.

Gorka repeatedly points out that Sharaa was a founding member of Jabhat al-Nusra. In an interview with the conservative Breitbart website, he said, "(Jabhat al-Nusra) was part of (al-Qaeda). So you have someone who won a battle to oust the secular Alawite leader (Assad) and replace dictatorship with what? We don't know. All we know is that the so-called interim president said that Islamic Sharia would be the law of Syria. So we're still uncertain about al-Julani and what he wants to do in Syria." Gorka, who insists on continuing to use the title al-Julani, not Sharaa, in his statements, said, "If anyone says they know the future of Syria, they're lying. Everything is flexible, everything is changing."

Natasha Hall, a senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies, believes that a US strategy regarding Syria is absent because "the United States has always approached Syria through the prism of confronting Iran and protecting Israel, and has rarely focused on the Syrians and Syria itself." In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, she points out that the absence of this strategy has become problematic since the fall of the Assad regime, as there is no future-oriented strategy where the administration and even members of Congress can exploit this historical moment as an opportunity. Hall believes that figures such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Joel Raburn view Syria through the prism of Iran and Israel, rather than based on Syria's own circumstances, reflecting their reluctance to engage with the current Syrian administration. On the other hand, there are individuals such as Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who has a different perspective and may be more aligned with the beliefs of President Trump, who is seeking opportunities without a strong ideological background. This could be useful in moving things forward, she says. But she adds, "Of course, there are Gorka and Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence), who want to avoid dealing with the Shara government, saying, 'If someone is a jihadist, they'll remain a jihadist.'"

Lifting Sanctions

Amid these divisions, the fate of US sanctions on Syria is in jeopardy. While some are calling for a complete lifting of sanctions, others are warning against haste. Republican Senator Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Asharq Al-Awsat, "We must not make a mistake. There are real risks, both in lifting sanctions on Syria too quickly and in wasting the opportunity before us. While America must not rush into Syria, we can create space for our regional and other allies to do so." Regarding the divisions within the Trump administration, Risch continued, "I have full confidence that the Trump administration will handle the situation with the precision it deserves."

The term "opportunity" is often repeated by many in Washington, regardless of their differing positions on the Shara government. The decline of Iranian influence in the region represents, for Americans, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In this context, Jeffrey calls on the US administration to prioritize ensuring that Iran and its proxies do not return, on the one hand, and that ISIS does not return, on the other. He added, "To achieve these goals, the United States must work to ensure that Syria is united and stable, not weak and divided. Therefore, it must join the international community in gradually easing sanctions and engaging with Damascus, in addition to mediating Israeli-Turkish tensions."

Jeffrey stated that, while some of the demands set by the US administration for lifting sanctions are reasonable, ongoing communication is necessary to clarify these demands in preparation for reaching an agreement with the Syrians who demonstrate cooperation.

Here, Schenker believes it is good to set high standards with the new Syrian government, "especially given its past jihadist ties," but he warns, "Unjustified delays in easing sanctions, even if minor and temporary, could lead to the government's failure, with repercussions for neighboring countries." He continues: "Washington must engage intensively with Damascus to push the new government to take steps toward meeting US demands that would allow the lifting of existing economic measures against Syria. If the street government does not meet these demands, these and other sanctions can always be reimposed." However, Hall believes that the time has come to lift the sanctions imposed on the Assad regime as soon as possible, warning that they "push regimes toward engaging in black markets and illegal activities, placing them in the arms of other countries like Iran, China, and Russia."

Congressional delegation

Recent days have witnessed a flurry of domestic and foreign American activity regarding the Syrian issue. These include modest efforts, such as an unofficial visit by Republican lawmakers to Syria, which was described as ineffective due to the legislators' lack of influence in Congress. Other messages from prominent lawmakers, such as Senator Jim Risch and the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Jeanne Shaheen, to the Trump administration, urging him to "remove barriers to expanded engagement with the Syrian Interim Government, with the US approach aiming to achieve the appropriate balance between opportunity and risk." Perhaps messages of this kind are more likely to be heard by Trump than the congressmen's visit. This is what Frederic Hof, the former envoy to Syria, alluded to when he called on the Trump administration to appoint "a high-level diplomat in Damascus capable of forging decent relationships based on trust and confidence with the new leaders in Syria." At a roundtable event with Think Research and Consulting, affiliated with the Saudi Research and Media Group, attended by Asharq Al-Awsat, Hof said, "What's needed is someone who can convince President Trump that what's happening in Syria doesn't stay in Syria. It's always been that way, and American interests are tied to it, whether we like it or not." Hof continued in a caustic tone, "I don't think the two uninfluential congressmen who recently visited Syria can convey this idea to the president."

An Expected US Withdrawal

Here, Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi recalls a very important point: the US withdrawal from Syria in September. Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, he noted that "Trump wants to say that the withdrawal was a success, unlike Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan." He added, "The US withdrawal requires regional consensus on the stability of Syria, the stability of the Kurds, addressing Turkish reservations, trying ISIS members in prisons, and organizing these prisons. Part of this organization is for the Syrian government to commit to not allowing the Taliban or the jihadist movement to expand its influence." His authority after America's withdrawal from Syria."

Barbandi believes that the US administration is approaching the Syrian issue from the perspective of the timing of the withdrawal from Syria, rather than from the perspective of what Syria needs. He explains this by saying: "The conditions proposed are linked to Israel and are related to how the administration views the entire region. The implementation of the US conditions must be expedited and the opportunity must not be wasted." Barbandi believes that the biggest challenge here lies in the White House's requirement that all eight conditions be met, adding, "If they are met before the fourth deadline for the suspension of some sanctions in July, more sanctions could be lifted. If compliance is not met, then cooperation with the Syrian government is not a good idea."

Syria on brink: Who plays sedition card?

Sky News — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 14:12:00 +0300

In light of the escalating bloody violence on the Syrian coast and the assassination of prominent figures, urgent questions are emerging: Who truly benefits from fueling strife in Syria? Are they internal forces seeking to consolidate their influence, or are external parties reshuffling their cards in a complex regional game?

International Studies Professor Shaher Al-Shaher told Sky News Arabia's Newsroom that the situation in Syria is tense, and that there are several motivations for assassinations and killings, both personal and political, without ruling out any external role.

He added, "If the interior is strong and cohesive, the outside world will be unable to do anything." This sums up the complexities and events facing Syria today, as internal interests intertwine with external interventions, making the country an arena for multifaceted conflicts.

For his part, political and human rights activist Adnan Al-Ahmad believes that Syrian society is experiencing a state of instability and mistrust among its components, making it vulnerable to targeting by external forces.

He says, "When there is injustice and exclusion of some segments of the population, the seeds of discord begin to form, and this is where the forces that seek to exploit this negative atmosphere intervene."

Iran: A Regional Player in the Syrian Scene

Al-Shaher points out that Iran is a major regional player in Syria and emphasizes the need to reset relations with it.

He says, "Iran must not feel that it has emerged defeated, and that it is working to obstruct what Syria has achieved."

He also believes that communication between the Syrian government and Iran, especially through Qatari mediation, could be a positive step toward easing tensions. However, Al-Ahmad offers a different perspective, saying, "Iran has no popularity on the Syrian coast, and it is considered responsible for a large portion of Syrian bloodshed from the perspective of the community there."

He points out that the presence of Iranian forces in Syria further complicates the crisis, especially with the ongoing daily violations and the proliferation of weapons outside state control.

Internal Causes: A Collapsed Economy and Armed Chaos

The Syrian crisis cannot be understood without considering the internal causes that fuel it. Al-Shaher says, "The economic situation on the Syrian coast and in other areas is stressful, pushing people toward illegal and illegitimate behavior."

He adds that armed factions that previously operated outside state control are now part of the government, further complicating the situation.

Al-Ahmad highlights the systematic violations on the Syrian coast, saying, "Today we are talking about hundreds of thousands of displaced people who have been forced from their homes for fear of being killed."

He points out that the formation of investigative committees without the participation of the victims' families increases suspicion and mistrust, deepening the crisis.

Who controls Syria's fate?

With the involvement of regional and international parties in the Syrian crisis, many are wondering whether Syria is witnessing a recalibration of the map of influence. Al-Shaher believes that the constitutional declaration may be a step toward relative stability, but he warns that the complexities are much deeper.

He says, "This crisis could be an opportunity for the legitimate president to firmly and decisively prove that he is capable of holding any negligent parties accountable."

On the other hand, Al-Ahmad points out that the absence of the United States from the Syrian scene opens the door to new regional interventions, especially from Turkey and Israel. He says, "The absence of the United States leaves the door open again, especially in light of a country that lacks control over its territory."

Sedition is a tool in a larger game

It appears that inciting sedition in Syria serves the interests of multiple parties, both internal and external. While the regime seeks to exploit the crisis to strengthen its position, regional and international powers are working to rearrange the cards of influence in the country. Amid this complex situation, the Syrian people remain the most affected, suffering from insecurity and deteriorating economic and social conditions.

Syria today is on a hot plate, with each party playing its cards, but the price is paid by the Syrians who seek stability that seems elusive in light of these intertwined interventions.

Has Syria become a theater for a proxy war between Turkey and Israel?

Al Jazeera — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 14:07:41 +0300

The Associated Press reported that the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime has exacerbated the already tense relations between Turkey and Israel, noting that the two sides' conflicting interests in Syria are pushing the relationship toward a potential collision course.

The agency noted that Turkey, which has long supported groups opposed to Assad, advocates for a stable and unified Syria where a central government maintains authority over the entire country. It welcomed an agreement signed this week by the new Syrian government with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to integrate them into the Syrian government and military.

On the other hand, the Associated Press says that Israel harbors deep suspicions of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, is wary of Turkish influence in Syria, and appears to prefer a fragmented Syria now that the country has become a launching pad for Iran and its proxies under Assad's rule.

Turkish-Israeli Clash

Asli Aydintasbas of the Washington-based Brookings Institution said, "Syria has become a proxy war between Turkey and Israel, who see each other as regional rivals. This is a very dangerous dynamic because there is a clash in Turkish and Israeli positions on everything related to the political transition in Syria."

Following Assad's fall, Israel seized territory in southern Syria. Israeli officials said this was aimed at keeping "hostile groups" away from its border. Israel also launched airstrikes targeting military positions abandoned by Assad's forces and expressed plans to maintain a long-term presence in the area.

The Syrian government and the United Nations asserted that the Israeli incursions violated the 1974 ceasefire agreement between the two countries and called on Israel to withdraw.

Analysts say Israel is concerned about the possibility of Türkiye expanding its military presence inside Syria. Since 2016, Turkey has launched operations in northern Syria against militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), maintaining influence in the north of the country. Turkish Defense Ministry officials have stated that Ankara and Damascus are now cooperating to bolster the country's security.

A Fragmented Syria

Nimrod Goren, head of the Mitvim Institute, an Israeli foreign policy think tank, said that unlike Turkey, which supports a strong, centralized, and stable Syria, Israel currently appears to prefer a fragmented Syria, believing it can enhance Israel's security.

He noted that Israel is "concerned about Sharia and its Islamic connections, and fears that its unified force could pose what Israel describes as a jihadist threat along its northern border."

For her part, Işgül Aydintasbas of the Brookings Institution considered the escalation of tensions a serious concern, saying, "In the past, Israel and Turkey occasionally clashed, but were able to separate the security relationship from everything else. Now, however, they are actively seeking to undermine each other. The question is: Do the two countries know their red lines?"

A report from the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank headed by a former head of Israeli military intelligence, suggests that Israel could benefit from engaging with Turkey, "the only regional power with significant influence over the Syrian leadership, to reduce the risk of military conflict between Israel and Syria."

Syria clashes may be a sign of worse to come

Sat, 08 Mar 2025 16:02:17 +0300

The battles between Syria’s security forces and Alawite groups point to the chaos that still reigns in parts of Syria, according to Century International fellow Aron Lund.

“The Syrian coast is a very fragile place, with sectarian hatred, a legacy of brutal conflict and weapons everywhere,” Lund told Al Jazeera.

“The new al-Sharaa regime is weak and depends on security forces that are only partly under its control and that are full of anti-Alawi chauvinists,” he argued, adding that “unrepentant ex-regime Alawi figures [are] provoking clashes and stoking more violence”, leaving civilians in the crossfire.

“This round of fighting will probably be brought under control, but it’s perhaps a sign of worse to come,” Lund added.

Populism poses risks to the new Syria

Zaman Al Wasl — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 11:37:00 +0300

Populism weaves its own narrative in response to the challenges facing society without thinking about the rationality of that narrative or its political and social consequences.

When it does so, it resorts to the unconscious stock of the group, or let us say the collective mind, which consists of a set of vague feelings rooted somewhere in the collective memory, a place that enjoys protection from examination because it does not appear in its original components in a crystallized form and with specific concepts that can be touched and exposed to the mind.

Let us note that the unconscious stock or the Arab-Islamic collective mind constantly tends towards sectarian-religious standards, while the other standards are modern and fragile, trying to ride on the collective mind from above and not from within it to a large extent.

Because this is the case, we find that populism constantly has the ability to regain its position in society, when culture declines to become confined to elites isolated socially and politically.

This is true in closed societies, as it is true in societies where political tyranny has prevailed for a long time, this tyranny that constitutes a real obstacle to the interaction of elites with society, so that culture and awareness can be transferred to the depths of the collective mind in an effective manner.

What is happening today in Syria is that Syrian society has emerged from a long period of political desertification that produced an intellectual desertification that paved the way for the collective mind to dominate, this mind that produces nothing but populism in the field of politics.

The worst thing that populism does is that it places a barrier in the way of rational trials, and thus in the way of seeing the self with a critical vision and not considering the self as a sacred god and considering the other as a stranger and an entity closed to understanding.

*Ego inflation

Thus, the ego of society, or more frankly, the ego of the group, inflates until it no longer accepts the other except as outside of it, which is a feeling very similar to the tribal feeling, and in fact, the division into sects finds its only historical explanation as being in one way or another a projection of the oldest and most ancient tribal division in the field of religiosity.

Perhaps this explains why sectarian divisions gathered in the Levant, but not in Egypt? Rather, they were sometimes born in Egypt but exported to the Levant, and Egypt remained a single sectarian societal bloc to a large extent?

Simply because tribal influences in the Levant are more deeply rooted, so societies here have a natural tendency to vertical division, unlike Egyptian society.

This is just a digression, and to return to our original topic, we in Syria still deal to some extent as tribes that have adopted sects or as sects that are aware of themselves with tribal awareness.

The result is that we see the collective mind before us today weaving its narrative in each party's view of the other freely and effectively, far from any rational thinking.

The Sunni Arab majority no longer sees minorities as anything but an obstacle to be overcome, and minorities no longer see the majority as anything but a project for comprehensive domination that leaves them with only a narrow window of life.

*A place that does not resemble our hopes and dreams

This mutual vision has become the root of a political crisis that cannot be ignored without examining it and addressing it socially and politically, not in a spirit of victory.

Perhaps the gateway to this lies in penetrating the prevailing populist narrative on the ruins of the political-intellectual desertification that we inherited from the defunct regime.

But that requires a real societal dialogue in which cultural and rational concepts intervene.

A dialogue that is not built from above but from below, from the foundations of society, and does not take place between the authority and society but within society, and such a dialogue requires an atmosphere of freedom and independence.

Without that freedom, it will not be possible to achieve any progress, meaning that populism will ultimately triumph.

As for what its victory means and where we will go, no one knows, but what can be certain is that it will lead us to another place that does not resemble our hopes and dreams that blossomed after we breathed freedom with the fall of the defunct regime.

By Makal Zohour Adi

1st National Syria Gathering Conference in Damascus: New era for reconstruction, development

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 11:32:00 +0300

After seven years of operating discreetly in exile, the National Syria Gathering held its first conference in Damascus under government auspices and in the presence of over 100 Syrian businessmen from inside and outside the country.

The conference, opened by Finance Minister Mohamed Abazid, addressed vital issues related to education, health, technology, and the economy from Feb. 27 to March 2.

New economic vision and promised reforms

The conference was opened by Abazid, who emphasized the government's commitment to establishing a transparent and fair tax system that balances investor interests and public rights.

He clarified that privatization does not mean selling public assets but rather forming strategic partnerships to revitalize struggling enterprises and boost comprehensive economic growth.

Agriculture Minister Mohammad Taha Al-Ahmad, for his part, highlighted the pivotal role of the agriculture sector in Syria’s economy.

He pointed out that Syria’s unique agricultural products such as durum wheat, pistachios, olives, Arabian horses, and medicinal herbs hold significant export potential.

Collective vision for stability and development

In his opening speech, Moufid Karameh, head of the National Syria Gathering, underscored the urgent need for all Syrians to contribute to rebuilding their homeland.

"This Gathering was established abroad by patriotic Syrian businessmen, and now the time has come to work from inside Syria to support the government and uphold the principles of freedom, democracy, social justice, and the rule of law," he said.

Co-founder Tamer Al-Tunsi urged Syrian entrepreneurs to leverage their international connections to support government efforts in lifting sanctions.

He stressed that while the previous regime left behind a devastated economy and dire humanitarian conditions, the new leadership has initiated genuine reforms, including dismantling the Captagon trade, a major illicit drug industry, and eliminating exploitative laws.

Another founding member, Iyad Al-Najjar, emphasized the critical role of media in the success of national projects, citing Dubai as an example where strategic media policies played a key role in its rapid development.

Key themes for Syria’s future

The conference tackled major issues concerning education, healthcare, technology, and economic revival.

Mouayad Al-Rashid, an organizer of the conference, stressed the need for investing in human capital before focusing on infrastructure, proposing the establishment of a supreme education council to redefine Syria’s educational policies.

On the humanitarian front, Monzer Al-Bazreh, another member, highlighted the importance of immediate food aid distribution to affected families. In the legal domain, Dr. Moussa Metri, another member, called for judicial reforms to ensure legislative stability and economic confidence.

Economically, Dr. Layla Al-Samman, another member, emphasized the necessity of tax justice to stimulate investment while Haitham Joud said that Syria could achieve a $70 billion GDP through carefully planned and swift economic measures.

The conference was not just a theoretical discussion as specialized committees were immediately formed to ensure that the vision of the National Syria Gathering is translated into tangible actions, paving the way for a prosperous and independent Syria.

Syria's new administration makes progress on internal security, easing global isolation within 1st 2 months

AA — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 02:15:29 +0300

Since taking power in December, the new Syrian administration has prioritized internal security issues and breaking international isolation in the first two months after Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, collapsing the Baath party regime's 61-year rule.

Syria's new government initially focused on measures to ensure the safety of citizens and protect public property.

Various prison sentences were introduced for those who possessed state-owned weapons but failed to surrender them to the relevant authorities, for those who fired indiscriminately, and for those who stole state property, motor vehicles, or machinery.

The new Syrian government, focusing on operations against drug manufacturing—a major revenue source for the fallen regime—conducted numerous raids in the capital of Damascus, as well as Latakia, Homs, and Aleppo provinces.

During these raids, drugs and equipment used in their production were seized and destroyed.

Thousands of former regime soldiers, police officers, and military and security officials surrendered their weapons at the new government's identity verification and reconciliation centers.

Armed groups agree to merge under Defense Ministry

The armed groups that overthrew the Baath regime agreed to disband all factions and integrate them under the supervision of the Defense Ministry.

The Syrian government intensified its operations against the fallen regime's forces, including several war criminals who had refused to surrender their weapons.

Several elements of the fallen regime were neutralized in provinces such as Damascus, Homs, Latakia, Tartus, Aleppo, and Hama.

Syrian intelligence reorganized

The country’s General Intelligence Directorate chief, Anas Hattab, said the security institutions of the fallen regime had tormented the public for over 50 years and announced that the institution would be reorganized to its original purpose.

After the fall of Assad's regime on Dec. 8, the uncertainty that followed led to the reopening of universities, and education and teaching resumed.

Syria’s military operations administration advanced south of Raqqa, taking control of two oil fields occupied by the PKK/YPG terror group.

Damascus International Airport became operational again, and the first commercial flight in Syria since the toppling of the longtime Assad regime took off from Damascus Airport to Aleppo.

Turkish foreign minister meets with Syrian administration leader

Following the overthrow of the Baath regime, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited Damascus, marking the first official ministerial visit.

Fidan held a joint press conference with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Foreign ministers and prime ministers from several countries visited Syria and made their first official contact with the Syrian president.

Western countries, which had imposed sanctions on Syria during Assad's rule, promised to gradually lift the sanctions if the Damascus government adopted an inclusive, transparent model that respects fundamental rights and freedoms.

The US and European countries took steps to ease some of the sanctions.

Outlines of transition period

In the first stage, a temporary government was established in the country, and appointments were made for numerous ministries.

Several people with prior civil administration experience were appointed in Idlib.

Al-Sharaa, the leader of the new government in Syria, was declared the president of the transition period.

The 2012 constitution was abolished, and the military, security forces, and parliament affiliated with the fallen regime were dissolved, and the Syrian government declared Dec. 8 a national holiday.

Al-Sharaa pledged to create an inclusive transitional government reflecting Syria's diversity and promised to build a Syria where all Syrians, inside and outside the country, could freely and honorably shape their futures without exclusion or marginalization.

He announced that, given that half of the Syrians live outside the country and there are many unregistered births and deaths, the country's elections would be held within a four- to five-year timeframe.

Al-Sharaa's 1st official visit to Saudi Arabia, Türkiye

After visiting Saudi Arabia, Al-Sharaa traveled to Türkiye for his first official meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Al-Sharaa said the Syrian people would never forget the historical stance of the Turkish state and its people, expressing his desire to transform relations with Türkiye into a deep strategic partnership.

Priorities of new Syrian administration

Al-Sharaa and other officials reiterated that the new administration's priorities are stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

Syrian officials called for the PKK/YPG terrorist group to disband before the National Dialogue Conference, but the group has yet to accept it.

Israeli advances its occupation in Syria

During the days following the collapse of the Baath regime, the Israeli military destroyed the makeshift military infrastructure left behind by the regime in Syria through intense airstrikes.

Advancing its occupation of the Golan Heights, the Israeli army entered the buffer zone and pushed further, advancing to within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of Damascus.

While the Syrian government refrained from military conflict with Israeli forces, it called on the international community to take action to stop Israel.

Israel-Hamas ceasefire: What’s next for Gaza and the future of the conflict?

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 15:47:37 +0300

Celebrations erupted across the world after the US, Egypt, and Qatar announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas to end more than 15 months of fighting in Gaza, in return for the release of hostages and gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the war-torn strip.

The muti-phased deal will be a “day-by-day” process, experts say, the outcome of which cannot be predicted just yet. The success of the agreement largely depends on both sides holding their end of the deal, starting with the successful release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and the peaceful withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.

As the six-week deal goes into effect today and the initial excitement settles down, questions linger over the impact of the agreement on the future of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

While the deal ensures the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza, it also comes with a caveat: Israel failed to achieve its main objective of eliminating the rule of Hamas in Gaza – a point repeatedly emphasized by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to keep the war going.

The ceasefire agreement also threatens Netanyahu’s political position as key Israeli leaders in his already fragile coalition government have publicly spoken against the ceasefire, calling it a “catastrophe” and even resigned from the cabinet.

“This deal will lead to an ultimate permanent ceasefire, which currently means that Hamas essentially stays in power in some way,” Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, told Al Arabiya English.

Speaking from Tel Aviv, Rosner described how the ceasefire agreement has left many Israelis debating if it was irresponsible on Israel’s part to accept the deal. While a lot of people in Israel welcomed the ceasefire, including the families of the hostages in Gaza, others protested it, citing the presence of Hamas as a significant threat to Israeli safety.

For Palestinians, the agreement is a means to stopping the “genocide” and putting an end to the devastation in the Gaza Strip.

“This [ceasefire agreement] means stopping the genocide in Gaza and the war crimes faced by Palestinians, including starvation, collective punishment, and ethnic cleansing,” Mustafa Barghouti, the political leader of Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), told Al Arabiya English.

“For us, the most important thing is to stop the devastation and the destruction.”

Will the ceasefire last?

The ceasefire agreement promises a permanent end to the war. Still, experts remain apprehensive, given that both Israel and Hamas have accused each other of backtracking on agreements in the past and resumed fighting. A small miscalculation on either side can derail the deal and plunge the region into another cycle of war.

The truce rollout already got delayed on Sunday after Netanyahu said at the very last minute that it would not take effect until the Palestinian militant group provided a list of the hostages to be released.

Hamas, in its part, while “affirming its commitment” to the terms of the ceasefire, said the delay was due to “technical reasons.”

Meanwhile, Israel continued to strike Gaza, killing at least eight and wounding 25 others.

Netanyahu said in a televised address on Saturday that Israel retains the right to resume the war in Gaza should negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire deal prove futile.

“If we need to resume fighting, we will do that in new ways and we will do it with great force,” he said.

Sunday should see the return of the first three Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Later, Hamas is supposed to release an additional 33 hostages. In exchange, Israel will release 1,890 Palestinian captives from prisons.

“It is very much up to Netanyahu and what his interests are,” Haggai Matar, the Executive Director of the Israeli magazine +972, told Al Arabiya English.

“[Donald] Trump and Netanyahu will decide whether or not this deal will materialize and how long it can survive from the first phase to the next two phases and end the war.”

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The incoming Trump administration in the US might just be the key to ending the war, according to experts, many of whom have credited Trump for putting additional pressure on Netanyahu and getting him to sign a deal much like what the administration of US President Joe Biden had proposed almost eight months ago.

“Trump has, in the past, said he wants the war to end and prevent it from escalating again,” Matar said, adding that the US can be really powerful when it “chooses to put its foot down.”

Experts also say that war fatigue and heavy casualties on both sides and continuous protests might push Israel and Hamas into following through with the ceasefire agreement.

According to Thabet Abu Rass, the co-executive director of the Abraham Initiatives in Israel, the war has taken its toll on Israel – tanking Tel Aviv’s economy and causing deep fragmentation in Israeli society marked by continuous protests – and Hamas – due to its weakened allies and the mounting death toll in Gaza.

“Israeli people are tired of this war,” Abu Rass, who resides in Israel, said. “I have seen petitions from parents of soldiers who are not willing to fight anymore.”

He added: “Hamas has also been weakened over time, given the destruction and the loss of life in the Gaza Strip. I think it is in the interest of both parties to end the war.”

Preventing history from repeating itself

The ceasefire deal is a milestone in the months-long brutal war that has wreaked havoc on the besieged Gaza Strip, but experts say it’s a long road to peace and there is still work that needs to be done to ensure “history does not repeat itself.”

“It is very easy to be excited about the ceasefire, but the core of the underlying problems of this reality that has led us to where we have been in the past few months is still there, and nobody is talking about solving them right now,” Matar said.

World leaders have issued statements, celebrating the ceasefire, but there has been little talk on resolving the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what the future looks like for Palestinians in the war-torn strip.

“Right now, it is really important to move ahead with the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Gaza, but in the longer term, it is about ending the entire system of occupation and siege,” Matar concluded.

Yusra Asif, Al Arabiya English

Countdown to Middle East war? Region can step back from brink

Reuters — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 18:17:00 +0300

With Israel poised to attack Iran, having already blindsided friends and foes alike with its blitz against Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, all the talk is of an inexorable slide towards a new, pan-Middle Eastern war.

Yet brakes remain to halt a regional fall into a wider conflagration that would lock Israel and Tehran into escalating conflict and suck in other nations, according to several people with experience in intelligence and military decision-making.

Israel is unlikely to flinch from launching an aerial barrage on Iran as soon as in the coming days in retaliation for Tehran’s decision to launch about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, the experts told Reuters.

“Whoever attacks us – we attack them,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his security cabinet on Tuesday night, summing up his doctrine of deterrence.

Israeli officials have nonetheless told US counterparts their response to Iran’s attack will be “calibrated,” though have yet to provide a final list of potential targets, according to a person in Washington familiar with the discussions who requested anonymity to discuss security matters.

“I think that the targets that will be selected, will be meticulously, very carefully selected,” said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and a negotiator during the Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, of the 1980s and 2000s. Sites of Iranian military importance such as missile infrastructure, communication centers and power plants are likely candidates, he added.

Israel is less likely to hit the oil facilities that underpin Iran’s economy or its nuclear sites, according to many of the experts interviewed, who include more than half a dozen former military, intelligence and diplomatic officials from the United States and Middle East.

These highly sensitive targets would be expected to draw an escalated Iranian response including the potential targeting of the oil production sites of US allies, they said.

US President Joe Biden said on Thursday he would not negotiate in public when asked if he had urged Israel not to attack Iran’s oil facilities, hours after he contributed to a surge in global oil prices when he said Washington was discussing such Israeli strikes.

Israel has surprised much of the world with the scale of its offensive against the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah, from the detonation of thousands of militants’ pagers and walkie-talkies, to the assassination of leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a Beirut airstrike and a ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

“It would be unwise for outsiders to try to predict Israel’s attack plan,” said Norman Roule, a former senior CIA officer who served as the US intelligence community’s top manager for Iran from 2008 to 2017.

“But if Israel decides on a proportional yet substantial strike, it may elect to limit its attacks to Iranian missile and IRGC-Quds Force architecture that supported attacks by Tehran and its proxies on Israel.”

The Quds Force is a branch of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards military unit.

Roule, senior adviser to the United Against Nuclear Iran advocacy group, said Israel could strike Iranian installations that refine gasoline and diesel for domestic consumption while sparing those that load oil exports.

Iran: A cautious adversary

Any wider Middle Eastern conflict is unlikely to resemble the grinding ground wars of past decades between opposing armies.

Only two sovereign states, Israel and Iran, have so far militarily locked horns over the past year, and they are separated by two other countries and vast tracts of desert. The distance has limited their exchanges to strikes by air, covert operations or the use of proxy militias such as Hezbollah.

Iran has long vowed to destroy the state of Israel, yet has proven to be a cautious adversary in this crisis, carefully calibrating its two aerial attacks on Israel, the first in April - after Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria, killing several commanders - and the second this week after Nasrallah’s killing.

The only reported death from Iran’s two attacks was a luckless Palestinian hit by a missile casing that fell from the sky into the West Bank on Tuesday.

Egypt, which fought wars with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and signed a peace treaty in 1979, is widely thought to have little interest in getting pulled into the conflict. Syria, an Iranian ally which has also battled Israel in the past, is sunk in economic collapse after a decade of civil war.

Nuclear sites in sights?

War is already a grim reality for many in the region.

The Oct. 7 attack on Israel by fighters from Palestinian group Hamas killed 1,200 people, while the ensuing Israeli battering of Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 people and displaced almost all the enclave’s 2.3 million population, according to local officials and UN figures. Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have also forced thousands of families in northern Israel and southern Lebanon from their homes.

The United States is not pressing Israel to refrain from military retaliation against Iran’s latest attack - as it did in April - but encouraging a careful consideration of potential consequences to any response, according to the person in Washington familiar with the discussions.

Washington has proved to have limited influence over Israel though, and Netanyahu has remained implacable about the targeting of his country’s enemies since the Hamas attack.

“The Israelis have already blown through any number of red lines that we laid down for them,” said Richard Hooker, a retired US Army officer who served in the National Security Council under Republican and Democratic presidents.

The US presidential election on Nov. 5 also means Biden’s powers of persuasion are limited during his final months in the White House.

Biden told reporters on Wednesday that Israel has a right to respond “proportionally.” He has made it clear he does not support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, where Israel and Western states say Iranians have a program aimed at building nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

Hooker said targeting such sites was possible but not probable “because when you do something like that you put the Iranian leadership in a position to do something pretty dramatic in response.”

Israel, which is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state though neither confirms nor denies that it possesses such weapons, has long considered Tehran’s nuclear program an existential threat. Iran’s nuclear sites are spread over many locations, some of them deep underground.

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Oil facilities: ‘Hit them hard’

In Washington, whose sanctions on Tehran have failed to shut down Iran’s oil industry, there are calls for strikes on refineries and other energy facilities.

“These oil refineries need to be hit and hit hard because that is the source of cash for the regime,” US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement.

Oil prices have traded in a narrow range of $70-$90 per barrel in recent years despite the war between Russia and Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.

Analysis: Attack on Trump could spark further US political violence

Reuters — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 14:22:25 +0300

In a country already on edge, the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has enraged his supporters, paused the Democratic campaign and raised fears of further political violence in the run-up to November’s election.

Trump’s Republican allies painted him as a hero on Saturday, seizing on the image of him with his ear bloodied and fist raised, appearing to mouth the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Whereas Trump has regularly used violent language with his followers, advisers and allies of the former president flipped the script on his Democratic opponent President Joe Biden, saying it was the demonization of the Republican presidential candidate that led to the assassination attempt.

“Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” US Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, a top candidate to be Trump’s running mate, said on X.

Biden moved quickly to try to defuse the situation, denouncing the attack as unacceptable political violence and pulling election ads attacking Trump.

“There’s no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick,” Biden told reporters.

The motivation of the shooter is not yet known. The suspect, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was a registered Republican, according to state voter records. He previously made a $15 donation to a political action committee that raises money for left-leaning and Democratic politicians.

In the short term, the attack will likely boost Trump’s appearances in Milwaukee this week at the Republican National Convention as he accepts his party’s presidential nomination, fortifying the sense of grievance and estrangement his supporters already feel toward the nation’s political class.

Within hours of the shooting, Trump’s campaign sent out a text asking voters to contribute to the campaign. “They’re not after me, they’re after you,” the message read.

Billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Ackman also swiftly endorsed Trump. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk said on X, the social media site he owns.

Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of Trump’s campaign, said on X that “for years and even today, leftist activists, Democrat donors and now even Joe Biden have made disgusting remarks and descriptions of shooting Donald Trump ... it’s high time they be held accountable for it ... the best way is through the ballot box.”

LaCivita was apparently referring to recent remarks by Biden made in the context of asking his supporters to focus on beating Trump rather than his own performance. “So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,” said Biden, who has always condemned any political violence.

Political attacks

The US is grappling with the biggest and most sustained increase in political violence since the 1970s. Of 14 fatal political attacks since supporters of Trump stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in which the perpetrator or suspect had a clear partisan leaning, 13 were right-wing assailants. One was on the left.

Despite being a former president, Trump has campaigned as an outsider insurgent, complaining that he has long been targeted by the federal “deep state” and Biden’s administration to prevent him from reclaiming power.

He has typically employed violent, degrading and even apocalyptic rhetoric while doing so, warning of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected and saying immigrants in the United States illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Some Republicans were already agitated by his continued stoking of the fire.

“If the country wasn’t a powder keg before, it is now,” said Chip Felkel, a Republican operative in South Carolina who has opposed Trump.

Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, said the shooting could benefit Trump politically because it feeds into his campaign narrative that the country is off-track.

“The attempted assassination creates sympathy for Trump,” Bannon said. “It also confirms the idea to voters that something is fundamentally wrong in this nation, which is an idea that drives support for him.”

Trump in May was found guilty of engaging in a scheme to cover up an affair with a porn star, a conviction that did little to alter the race and suggested supporters of both sides remain entrenched in their positions.

Biden has dealt with a debate within his own party over whether he should step down as the Democratic candidate because of concerns that he is no longer fit for the job. He says his doctors have told him he is in good shape. Trump has benefited in some polls from Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, but others show the race to be even.

Many voters have already been alienated by both Biden and Trump. The chaos that surrounds the candidates may contribute to voters feeling that the nation’s problems are unfixable and the gulf between the parties cannot be bridged.

US Representative Steve Scalise, a Republican who was shot by a gunman in 2017, told Fox News that violent election rhetoric needed to stop.

“All it takes is one person who is just unhinged to hear that and go out and act on it and think that’s their signal to go take somebody out,” he said.

Is Israel-Hamas war strengthening or weakening Lebanon’s Hezbollah?

Al Arabiya- Vanessa Ghanem — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 12:54:45 +0300

After nine months of low-scale conflict, Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese movement Hezbollah are on the brink of a full-scale war.

Despite efforts by the United States and the international community to pursue diplomatic solutions, tensions remain high. If war erupts, Israel will confront a much stronger adversary in Hezbollah than it did with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel and the Lebanese militant group have been engaged in ongoing exchanges of fire since October 8, one day after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, which prompted Israeli retaliation against Gaza.

The recent spike in missile activity between the two and increasingly heated rhetoric have heightened fears of a full-fledged war. Cross-border violence is intensifying, and both parties are preparing for possible large-scale military confrontations.

Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have been displaced. Israeli strikes have killed more than 330 Hezbollah fighters and around 90 civilians in Lebanon, according to Reuters tallies. Israel says attacks from Lebanon have killed 21 soldiers and 10 civilians.

Many of Hezbollah’s casualties occurred during the almost daily clashes, which involved launching rockets and explosive drones into northern Israel.

These developments raise questions about whether the recent escalations have politically and militarily strengthened Hezbollah or otherwise weakened it.

Perceptions of Hezbollah’s regional influence

Hezbollah’s involvement in the Israel-Hamas war sparked varied reactions across the region. Traditionally seen as a powerful force against Israel, Hezbollah’s participation was perceived by some as a demonstration of strength and solidarity with Palestinian resistance. Others feared it could plunge Lebanon, already on its knees, into a deadly war and cause regional escalation.

Hezbollah, founded in 1982 during Lebanon’s civil war, initially aimed to end Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, which it achieved in 2000. The Shia Muslim group is part of the Axis of Resistance, a coalition of Iranian-backed armed groups.

In 2006, an all-out war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah when the latter’s fighters crossed the Israel-Lebanon border, captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others. This led to a month-long conflict marked by intense fighting and widespread destruction. Israel launched a massive military campaign to weaken Hezbollah’s military capabilities, while the Lebanese group fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel.

After the 2006 war and prior to the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, Hezbollah’s military focus remained on Israel. Both sides, wary of another war, maintained a delicate balance akin to mutually assured devastation.

Over time, Hezbollah has evolved into Lebanon’s most powerful political actor and the most well-equipped military force supported by Iran in the Middle East. A 2018 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies called it “the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.”

The group’s military capabilities have surged, and it played a significant role in the Syrian civil war, supporting President Bashar al-Assad. It has also helped train Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, as well as Yemen’s Houthis. Its actions often strained relations with other Arab states.

“Hezbollah has demonstrated advancements in military technology, showcasing precision-guided loitering munitions and anti-tank guided rockets that represent a significant leap forward in tactics and capabilities,” Oubai Shahbandar, American defense analyst and former Middle East policy advisor to the Pentagon, told Al Arabiya English.

“Hezbollah strategically aligns its actions in the conflict with Israel according to directives from Iran’s Quds Force leadership, maintaining a deeply rooted hierarchical structure. The organization’s measured attacks on Israel since October 7 are meticulously orchestrated based on Tehran’s strategic imperatives rather than broader Arab popularity.”

Impact of Israel’s targeted assassinations against Hezbollah

Israel has intensified its strategy of targeting senior Hezbollah commanders, aiming to cripple the organization’s leadership and operational capabilities. These targeted killings might have affected Hezbollah, but the extent to which they have weakened the organization remains a subject of debate. Hezbollah has historically shown resilience, often maintaining its operational tempo.

“In the short term, assassinations have an impact on Hezbollah’s operations and the morale of its fighters. Yet, being a highly adaptable and learning organization with a deep leadership bench, it will overcome these challenges,” Randa Slim, senior fellow and director of Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues Program at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told Al Arabiya English.

Meanwhile, Shahbandar believes that “Israel’s strikes against senior Hezbollah operatives, who have been working hand in hand with Iran’s Quds Force commanders for decades, is taking a toll on the group.”

Several high-ranking Hezbollah commanders were killed in the hostilities, including Abbas Raad, Wissam al-Tawil, Taleb Abdallah and Mohammed Nasser, who were instrumental in directing operations in the south. Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas, was also killed while attending a meeting in Beirut.

Hezbollah began suspecting that Israel was targeting its fighters by tracking their cell phones and monitoring video feeds from security cameras installed on buildings in border communities, Reuters reported citing sources.

In a televised address on February 13, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah cautioned his supporters about the risks posed by their phones, suggesting they dispose of them by breaking, burying, or locking them in an iron box.

Yesterday, an Israeli strike in Syria killed a former personal bodyguard of Nasrallah.

Strategic postures

Hezbollah has repeatedly said that it will not stop its attacks unless a ceasefire is achieved in Gaza. It has labeled its campaign as a “support front” for the Palestinians.

Earlier this week, Gallant vowed that Israel would continue to fight Hezbollah in the north regardless of a ceasefire deal with Hamas in the strip, according to Israeli media. He insisted that the two arenas were “separate.”

Hopes for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage agreement diminished this week as Israel imposed conditions on the deal, and Hamas cautioned that ongoing Israeli actions in Gaza could threaten the negotiations.

Israeli forces pressed their offensive in north and central Gaza on Wednesday, hours after an airstrike on a tent encampment that killed more than two dozen people. The airstrike hit the tents of displaced families outside a school in the town of Abassan east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing at least 29 people, most of them women and children, Palestinian medical officials stated.

In its conflict with Hezbollah, Slim believes that Israel has not achieved escalation dominance.

“Israel’s communication strategy towards Hezbollah comprises two primary components: issuing threats of escalation into full-scale war and demonstrating a preference for diplomatic solutions to manage the hostilities,” she explained. “The objectives of this approach are threefold: to deter Hezbollah, to reassure their domestic constituencies that they are pursuing a resolution through both military and non-military means and to signal to Hezbollah their interest in achieving a political solution.”

Gallant mentioned that Israel prefers a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Hezbollah. Nasrallah similarly reiterated that he does not seek war, though he emphasized that he is prepared for and unafraid of one.

“So far, both Israel and Hezbollah have managed to calibrate their respective military responses just below the threshold of total war,” Shahbandar said. “They remain ensnared in a precarious cycle of low-intensity conflict. Despite neither side desiring full-scale conventional warfare, the prolonged duration of this ‘war between wars’ raises the risk of the worst-case scenario materializing.”

Return of the reformists: How will new leader Pezeshkian mold Iran’s policies?

AA — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 11:38:00 +0300

Pezeshkian is an ‘advocate of development-oriented discourse’ and his victory shows Iranians want ‘change and sanctions relief,’ says political analyst Mahdi Motahharnia
Iran’s foreign policy will remain unchanged and continue to be shaped by Supreme Leader Khamenei, according to Motahharnia
Pezeshkian will push for ‘equilibrium’ in Iran’s ties with both the West and East, says former Iranian ambassador Abolfazl Zohrevand

TEHRAN, Iran

Masoud Pezeshkian, a veteran reformist lawmaker, will soon take office as Iran’s new president.

He defeated his conservative rival and former lead nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili by a significant margin in last Friday’s runoff vote, paving the way for an unexpected return of reformists after three years of conservative rule.

In the coming weeks, Pezeshkian’s presidency will be validated by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, followed by an official inauguration in parliament and the formation of a ministerial Cabinet.

All eyes are now on the incoming administration’s policies, both at home and abroad, and how it plans to navigate a convoluted political landscape to push for the political, economic and social reforms Pezeshkian pledged during his campaign.

Addressing a gathering of his supporters in Tehran on Sunday, the first after his election, Pezeshkian offered to work closely with parliament and the judiciary “to navigate through crises.”

He admitted that the path ahead is rocky and vowed to advance “dialogue, convergence and national unity.”

Cooperation with parliament

One of the first challenges for Pezeshkian is to have the conservative-dominated parliament approve members of his Cabinet, who they view as being too liberal and West-centric.

Among those who actively campaigned for him include former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and ex-Communications Minister Azari Jahromi.

Both served in the government of former President Hassan Rouhani and are unlikely to get the parliament’s nod.

The same is the case for Eshaq Jahangiri, who served as Rouhani’s first deputy.

Although Pezeshkian is open to cooperation with the parliament, experts believe it will be a tricky task for the reformist government, especially when it comes to key policy matters.

“We saw it in the final years of the Rouhani administration, when conservatives won the parliamentary election by a landslide and clearly defined red lines for the reformist government,” Jawad Salimi, an Iranian political analyst, told Anadolu.

He particularly referred to the Strategic Action Law to Counter Sanctions passed by the parliament in December 2020, which called for scaling up nuclear enrichment beyond the limit stipulated under the 2015 nuclear deal.

Rouhani’s government, which invested heavily in the 2015 nuclear deal, much to the chagrin of conservatives, had to implement the law despite its own reservations.

“In its last year, the Rouhani government was not on the same page with the parliament, but that changed when Ebrahim Raisi took over in 2021. Now, we might be back to square one,” said Salimi.

Today, Iran is enriching its uranium at 60% purity, much higher than the 3.67% it agreed to under the 2015 deal, blaming the US for breaching its commitments under the accord.

The issue has, in recent years, created friction between Tehran and the UN nuclear agency, which has often admonished Iran in its reports and adopted resolutions against it.

Engagement with the world

The return of the reformist government in Tehran has rekindled hopes that talks for the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, effectively on the back burner for a while, will resume.

During his campaign, Pezeshkian stressed the importance of reviving the nuclear accord and strongly opposed arguments against it, citing the case of the Raisi administration pursuing its revival.

He said his foreign policy would be based on the principles of “dignity, wisdom, and expediency,” invoking the “general principles” of Ayatollah Khamenei.

He also advocated for Iran’s cooperation with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris-based financial watchdog, in addressing the country’s economic problems, tying it to global trade.

Mahdi Motahharnia, a political analyst and academic, described Pezeshkian as an “advocate of development-oriented discourse” in contrast to Jalili’s “revolution-oriented discourse.”

Speaking to Anadolu, he said the reformist victory in the presidential election signifies the Iranian nation’s “desire for change and sanctions relief,” while adding that the general foreign policy of the country will remain unchanged and continue to be shaped by directives of the supreme leader.

Abolfazl Zohrevand, a lawmaker and former Iranian ambassador, said Pezeshkian advocates for engaging with the US and Europe to have sanctions lifted through dialogue, believing that it is imperative to “revisit” the 2015 nuclear deal and address issues with the UN nuclear agency.

He said Pezeshkian is also in favor of fostering relations with Eastern nations, but emphasizes the “need for equilibrium” in Iran’s foreign relations.

Pezeshkian, according to experts, will also continue the previous administration’s policy of support for Palestine, as well as regional allied groups such as Hezbollah, which was evident in a letter the president-elect sent to the Lebanese group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah on Monday.

Challenges at home

During the presidential debates, Pezeshkian said he would take other branches of government into confidence when implementing his domestic and foreign policies, asserting that no government in history “has been able to achieve growth and prosperity within a cage.”

Among the issues that figured prominently in the debates was inflation, with Pezeshkian arguing that the main cause of the problem was a government that takes money out of people’s pockets.

“Whenever we agreed to negotiate with the world, the inflation rate decreased and the economic growth rate increased, and whenever we did not negotiate, the economic growth rate decreased and inflation rate increased,” he said in one of the debates.

Pezeshkian has shown a preference for discussions aimed at shielding the lower economic strata from the impact of inflation, according to Zohrevand.

“However, he has yet to outline a definitive plan, leaving the nation waiting for concrete proposals,” he said, pointing to a lack of clarity in the new president’s economic blueprint.

Pezeshkian has emphasized the need to build trust between the government and the people, and engaging economic experts to resolve financial problems.

Motahharnia said Pezeshkian’s victory “heralds positive prospects for the domestic financial landscape, as evidenced by the depreciation of foreign currencies against the rial and the bullish trends in the stock market.”

However, he cautioned that if the new president is unable to prove his efficiency, combat corruption, and dismantle economic mafias, the period of optimism will be short-lived.

On the parliamentary bill related to the Islamic dress code, Pezeshkian was categorically opposed to it during his presidential campaign, which irked his conservative rivals.

He even took a stance against the “morality police,” known in Iran as the “Gasht-e-Irshad.”

He has also been fiercely against internet filtering in Iran, arguing that many online businesses have been affected the restrictions, while pledging to lift the curbs.

During the presidential debates, Pezeshkian described protests as “a fundamental right” and said if they were allowed peacefully, people would not resort to unrest.

“Most of what we have seen or heard from Pezeshkian so far are emotionally charged statements and promises. Now is the time to walk the talk, to prove that he is a man of action,” said Salimi.

“He will be tested both at home and abroad.”

The reasons behind the thawing of ties between Ankara and Damascus

Arab News — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 14:47:58 +0300

ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signaled a possible restoration of relations with Syria’s Assad regime in a surprising move that marks a significant departure from years of hostility between the two nations.

Erdogan’s comments, which were made after Friday prayers, suggest a willingness to revive diplomatic ties with Damascus, emphasizing historical precedent and family ties as potential foundations for future engagement.

“There is no reason why it should not happen,” Erdogan said.

“Just as we kept our relations very lively in the past, we even had talks between our families with Assad. It is certainly not possible to say that this will not happen in the future. It can happen; the Syrian people are our brothers.”

The Turkish leader’s comments echo similar sentiments recently expressed by Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has indicated his willingness to pursue steps toward normalization, provided they respect Syria’s sovereignty and contribute to counter-terrorism efforts.

The remarks came during a meeting with Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy to Syria.

The concurrent statements are seen as part of a broader effort to reconcile Ankara and Damascus, but the path to rapprochement remains fraught with uncertainty and complexity.

Erdogan, then prime minister of Turkiye, hosted Assad in 2009 for a family holiday in the Aegean resort of Bodrum, and they enjoyed amicable visits to nurture their friendship.

But since severing all ties with the Assad regime in 2011, Turkiye has been a vocal supporter of his opponents in Syria and called for the ousting of Assad from power.

Ankara’s involvement has escalated with several cross-border military operations and the establishment of a safe zone in northern Syria, in which Turkish troops are stationed.

The Turkish and Syrian foreign ministers met in Moscow last year, marking the highest-level contact between the two countries since the start of the Syrian Civil War.

But the talks, along with an earlier meeting between the two countries’ defense ministers, did not bring about any change in bilateral relations.

Oytun Orhan, coordinator of Levant studies at the Ankara-based think tank ORSAM, says there is a glimmer of hope for a resumption of the dialogue process.

He told Arab News: “There have been some developments in recent weeks. It is said that Turkish and Syrian officials could meet in Baghdad with the mediation of Iraq, and surprising developments in Turkish-Syrian relations are expected in the coming period.”

Efforts were being made to bring the parties together, he added.

Orhan believes that with Russia’s softening position in Ukraine, the Kremlin has begun to pay more attention to Turkish-Syrian relations, and the Gaza conflict also requires new regional dynamics and presents new security challenges for the Assad regime, which necessitates closer Turkish-Syrian relations.

He said: “Discussions about a possible US withdrawal after the upcoming presidential elections are another factor to consider.”

The Assad regime has recently been in talks with the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units and “is trying to corner Turkiye by signaling that it could reach an agreement with the YPG if Turkiye does not accept its conditions, while at the same time opening channels with Turkiye,” he added.

Ankara considers the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a terrorist group closely linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been waging a decades-long insurgency in southeast Turkiye.

Experts say that both parties are trying to consolidate their positions in line with regional changes and consider their red lines for domestic security concerns.

But Orhan does not expect Turkish troops to withdraw in the short term, and added: “First, there may be an agreement between the parties on how to deal with the YPG.

“At that point Turkiye may have to take some steps regarding its relationship with the opposition. However, there will not be a situation where the Syrian opposition is completely abandoned or its support is cut off. A gradual road map can be agreed.”

Orhan expects that a mechanism of guarantees involving Russia or even Iran could be agreed upon for a road map for withdrawal from Syria.

He said: “Gradual steps will be taken based on criteria such as the complete elimination of the PKK/YPG threat and the creation of conditions for the safe return of Syrian refugees to their country.

“A common will against the PKK is not very likely at this stage because the Syrian regime still wants to use the YPG as a trump card against Turkiye. It believes that after a possible US withdrawal, it can reach an agreement with the YPG and solve this problem with minor concessions.”

Experts believe a partnership between Ankara and Damascus, like the one between Iraq and Turkiye, is unlikely at the moment.

But Orhan believes common ground can be found in the fight against the PKK, depending on the gradual steps taken by Turkiye.

He said: “Instead of a joint military operation, Turkiye’s continued military moves against the YPG, followed by an agreement on areas that Syrian regime forces can retake and control, can be agreed upon.”

Turkiye currently hosts 3.1 million Syrian refugees, according to official figures. One of Ankara’s expectations from a possible rapprochement between Turkiye and Syria would be the safe return of these refugees to their homeland.

Orhan said: “The return of Syrian refugees can only be possible after a lasting solution in Syria.

“It is a long-term, difficult problem to solve. From the Assad regime’s point of view, it sees this as a bargaining chip and a burden on Turkiye’s shoulders.”

He added that the return of Syrian refugees was also seen as providing a risk factor for the Assad regime.

The refugees are seen as “people who fled the country, and it is questionable how willing Assad is to repatriate them,” said Orhan.

Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and current chairman of the Istanbul-based think tank EDAM, has spoken of the profound shifts in regional security dynamics in the wake of the war in Gaza and amid uncertainties surrounding US policy in the Middle East, particularly in Syria.

He told Arab News: “For Syria, which now faces an even more unpredictable security environment, this forces the Syrian leadership to reassess its position for negotiations with Turkiye in response to the evolving geopolitical realities.”

Ulgen believes that from Turkiye’s point of view, this represents a potentially favorable opportunity, provided that Syria is willing to reconsider the terms of engagement that have so far prevented meaningful dialogue.

He added: “Until now, these conditions have been a major obstacle to starting a substantive negotiation process.”

Ulgen said that Syria’s willingness to revise these conditions will be crucial in determining whether formal negotiations can begin.

He added: “The critical question now is whether Damascus will stick to its preconditions, some of which may prove untenable, such as the demand for an immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops from border areas.”

Progress in reconciliation efforts would depend on the lifting of such conditions, Ulgen said.

By MENEKSE TOKYAY

Resentment against US grows in Egypt's defence establishment as Rafah heats up

MEE — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 10:35:06 +0300

The Biden administration’s near unconditional support for Israel’s war on Gaza is stoking resentment towards the US among Egypt’s powerful defence establishment, complicating the administration’s bid to revive ties between Cairo and Israel to reach a Gaza ceasefire.

Egypt’s Supreme Military Council, the General Intelligence Service and other defence officials are angry that the US has sided with Israel over its invasion of Rafah and seizure of the Philadelphi Corridor, a former Egyptian official briefed by members of Egypt’s intelligence community, told Middle East Eye.

“Within the defence and intelligence establishment Camp David is dead,” the former official said, referring to the 1978 accords that laid the foundation for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt a year later, underwritten by the US.

Riccardo Fabiani, at the International Crisis Group, described US-Egypt ties at the moment as “triangular”.

“The tensions between Egypt and Israel on the Gaza border are effectively fuelling tensions between the US and Egypt.”

But with war raging at the border of Sinai, the Biden administration needs Egypt’s intelligence and defence officials who have decades of experience dealing with Hamas. The US wants to revive stalled talks on a hostage deal, reopen the Rafah border crossing and find and kill Hamas's Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, analysts and former US officials tell MEE.

The US announced on Friday that Israel has proposed a "comprehensive" ceasefire proposal, but the US will need both Qatar and, significantly, Egypt, to finalise it and bring Hamas on board.

The belief among influential camps in Egypt’s military establishment is that the US is no longer an honest broker.

'Full-fledged cold peace'

The US wants to reopen the Rafah border crossing, which has been closed since Israel invaded the southern Gaza border town. A US National Security Council team is set to hold a trilateral meeting with Israeli and Egyptian officials in Cairo next week on the matter, Axios has reported.

“The tensions are high, but Egypt can definitely turn this into a full-fledged, even colder peace than it is now,” David Witty, a former US Army special forces colonel who served in Egypt, told MEE. “Israel needs Egypt’s cooperation”.

One Israeli accusation that particularly rattled Egypt’s defence establishment is that it has allowed Hamas to smuggle weapons and supplies through its Gaza border. This week Israel said it seized “tactical control” of the Philadelphi Corridor, a strategic strip of land between Gaza and Egypt, blaming Israel for not holding up its end of the job.

In a bid to smooth over tensions between the two, the US deployed technical teams to Egypt’s side of the border earlier this year to address the Israeli allegations, the former Egyptian official told MEE. Israel still seized the crossing and the US has effectively backed Israel’s decision.

White House spokesman John Kirby said in a press call this week that Israel’s movement into the corridor “did not come as a surprise to us, and was in keeping with what we understood their plan to be - to go after Hamas in a targeted, limited way”.

Since their 1979 peace treaty, Egypt and Israel have cooperated on defence and intelligence with US support, even as people-to-people ties remain cold. But Gaza puts those ties under strain and Cairo has publicly signalled its frustration.

Egypt said it intends to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, earlier this month, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi made a rare move to wade directly into the dispute when he called Israel's war aims “delusional”.

Some of Egypt’s key advocates in Washington are pro-Israel officials and lawmakers. They have helped ensure the flow of $1.3 bn in annual military aid to Egypt, despite tensions over Cairo’s human rights record. With Egypt publicly taking sideswipes against Israel, some of that support is eroding.

Senator James Risch, the top Republican official on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has generally backed arms transfers to Egypt, told MEE that Cairo had to acknowledge its “historic shortcomings” in Gaza and “do more to stem the flow of weapons, particularly underground, into Rafah.”

“Egypt should carefully reconsider efforts to blunt Israel’s war against Hamas,” Risch said.

Relations between the US and Egypt have whipsawed for years.

Civilian F-16's

Since Egyptian army officer Gamal Abel Nasser’s coup against Egypt’s royal family, Egypt has been run in one way or another by the country’s opaque military establishment. The brief exception to the rule was after Hosni Mubarak, a former military officer, resigned during the Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohammad Morsi was democratically elected president in 2012, until he was ousted in a military-backed coup.

Egypt’s defence and military establishment believed the US abandoned them to the whims of protestors. Criticism of Egypt’s human rights record among mainly democratic US lawmakers since Sisi came to power has also ruffled ties. Days before the Hamas-led 7 October attacks, Congress blocked $235mn in aid to Egypt over human rights concerns.

But there is another side to the ties. Witty, who is the author of The US-Egypt Military Relationship, told MEE that for decades Egyptian military officers have resented being treated as second-tier allies of the US, compared to Israel.

The US ensures Israel has a “Qualitative military edge” over its Arab neighbours, which has prevented Egypt from obtaining more sophisticated US weaponry. In 2015, the US also stopped providing Egypt with “cash flow financing”, which allowed Cairo to acquire future weapons systems on credit.

“The weapons the US sells to Egypt are always a downgraded version of what Israel gets. For example, if you look at Egypt’s F-16s, they are basically a civilian aircraft,” Witty said.

The US’s move not to push back on Israel’s seizure of Gaza’s border area, which Egyptian officials view as a violation of the 1979 peace treaty, that limits the number of troops and armaments the countries can deploy in the area, further erodes ties, analysts say.

“There is a lack of trust between Egypt and the US right now,” Mirette Mabrouk, founding director of the Egypt programme at The Middle East Institute, told MEE.

A former senior US official familiar with Egypt told MEE that sifting through the views of Egypt’s defence establishment is a difficult task. But he doesn't believe there is serious frustration with the US among President Sisi, or his closest advisors, including his son Mahmoud al-Sisi, and Abbas Kamel the Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate

Despite Egypt’s tough rhetoric, Sisi himself has been accommodating to the US.

'Bailed out with billions'

In a call with Biden last week, Sisi refused to reopen Rafah but agreed to allow aid stuck in Sinai to transit to Israel where it could cross into Gaza through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing. The move, analysts say, helped the Biden administration avert a full-fledged famine in Gaza and saved it from the difficult task of establishing new aid logistics hubs. Most aid entering Gaza arrives at Egypt’s al-Arish port.

“By agreeing to allow aid stuck in Gaza into Israel, Sisi effectively undermined Egypt’s strategy of pressuring Israel and the US by keeping Rafah closed,” Fabiani said.

The Egyptian source, who spoke to MEE on condition of anonymity, told MEE, “There are people who want Sisi to take a more forceful approach”. For example, Sisi has had differences with Defence Minister Mohamed Ahmed Zaki, the source said.
But analysts say that the US has effectively backed Cairo enough that the complaints of rank-and-file defence officials with Israel have been ignored.
Egypt’s already weak economy has taken a hit from the war, with Suez Canal revenue plunging as a result of Houthi Red Sea attacks. Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing could also dent lucrative smuggling routes controlled by regime insiders.
In March, Egypt was awarded an $8bn loan from the IMF. The EU also announced an $8.1 bn funding package for Egypt designed to help it stem the flow of migrants to Europe and shore up its crippled economy. Even the UAE has stepped up with a $35bn investment in Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
“Sisi is not in a weak position,” Mohannad Sabry, an Egyptian expert at King’s College London’s defence studies department and author of the book Sinai: Egypt's Linchpin,Gaza's Lifeline, Israel's Nightmare, says.
“He has been bailed out with billions. The reality is that the regime is in its most powerful position with the West in years.”
The concern for the US, the Egyptian source told MEE, will be if events spiral out of control at Egypt’s border with Gaza.
On Monday, two Egyptian soldiers died as a result of an exchange of fire with Israeli troops near the Rafah crossing. A live stream of one soldier's funeral showed mourners condemning “Zionist traitors”.
Israel’s movement into Rafah crystallises the wider challenge the US has been unable to solve 45 years after brokering the historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
“If you put Egyptian and Israeli soldiers in front of each other, they will shoot at each other,” Sabry said.

Analysis: Iran's nuclear policy of pressure and talks likely to go on even after president's death

AP — Wed, 22 May 2024 00:15:00 +0300

While Iran's nuclear program stands at the precipice of tipping over into enriching uranium at weapons-grade levels, Tehran has held quiet, indirect talks with the United States and invited the head of the United Nations' atomic watchdog into the country for negotiations.

While seemingly contradictory, the move follows Iran's strategy since the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018. Tehran is attempting to exert its own version of Trump's “maximum pressure” on the international community to see the economic sanctions that have crippled the country's economy and currency lifted in exchange for slowing down its program.

The Islamic Republic also appears to be trying to contain the risk it faces from the U.S. after launching an unprecedented attack on Israel amid its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The assault — a response to a suspected Israeli strike on April 1 which killed two Guard generals and others in Damascus, Syria — has pushed a yearslong shadow war between Israel and Tehran out into the open.

All this is unlikely to change for the time being, even with the helicopter crash Sunday that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other officials on a foggy mountain. That's largely due to the fact that all matters of state rest with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei, 85, has led Iran since 1989 as only its second supreme leader since the country's Islamic Revolution. Under Khamenei, Iran has seesawed between subtle outreach to outright hostility with the U.S. and other Western powers.

Those cycles include reformist President Mohammad Khatami's “ Dialogue Among Civilizations ” efforts that hit a wall as the U.S. suffered the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 and soon began its decadeslong wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who came to power in 2005 — cheered the country's nuclear program and defied the West. Relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani ultimately got the 2015 nuclear deal across the line, ending sanctions for greatly limiting its atomic program.

Then came the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Iran in the waning days of the Rouhani administration began a series of attacks targeting shipping in the Middle East while dialing down its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s watchdog. It ultimately began enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Then Raisi, a protégé of Khamenei, won the 2021 presidential election in a vote that saw his main rivals barred from running and a record-low turnout for the race. Those policies continued — as did Iran's support for regional militias like Yemen's Houthi rebels, now attacking ships moving through the Red Sea over the Israel-Hamas war. Those groups have long provided Iran with a means to challenge its regional archenemy Israel, as well as the U.S., without a direct military confrontation.

Through all of this turmoil, the one constant has been Khamenei. As the supreme leader, he's further empowered the country's Revolutionary Guard, whose all-volunteer Basij forces have been crucial in putting down widespread protests that have struck the nation in recent years. And by ensuring Raisi's election, he narrowed the country's political field to only hard-liners who have embraced that policy of pressure.

The Israel-Hamas war, as well as the risk of it expanding into a regional confrontation, has changed some of this calculus, however. The survival of the “nezam,” or “system” as Iran's Shiite theocracy is known, remains the paramount concern. The risk of open warfare, as well as the economic pressure squeezing Iran and its people, have made efforts to try to restart the diplomacy — or at least alleviate the risk of things getting even worse — that much more important.

The late Amirabdollahian, as well as the country's now-acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, had been fierce critics of the negotiations as run under the Rouhani administration. But in the time since, they moved to reach a détente with Saudi Arabia last year. Then they've continued indirect talks with the U.S. in Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula that's been a key interlocutor between Tehran and the West.

The full extent of the talks remains unclear, as does what will come from them. However, Iran even reached out to the U.S. government after the helicopter crash for assistance, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists Monday.

“We did make clear to them that we would offer assistance, as we would do in response to any request by a foreign government in this sort of situation," he said. "Ultimately, largely for logistical reasons, we weren’t able to provide that assistance.”

That help was finding the crash site, The Washington Post reported. And such an ask wouldn't have come without Khamenei's approval.

War on Gaza: Is Egypt building a militia force to handle Rafah influx?

MEE — Thu, 09 May 2024 17:30:43 +0300

In a grand procession last week, Sinai militia leader Ibrahim al-Organi arrived at a ceremony to inaugurate the Arab Tribes Union, a new paramilitary entity that brings together five tribal groups from across Egypt.

The celebration named President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the union’s “honorary president”, while also announcing plans to build Sisi City on the site of al-Arjaa, a village in Rafah near the Egypt-Israel border.

The formation of this alliance comes at a critical time and place, as Israel this week launched a long-threatened ground offensive against the Palestinian city of Rafah, just a short distance from where the Egyptian ceremony was held. Around 1.4 million displaced Palestinians have been sheltering in Rafah since Israel launched its war on Gaza last October.

Israel’s assault on Rafah is likely to cause further mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, potentially pushing them towards Egyptian territory. At least 80,000 have already fled Rafah, according to Unrwa, the UN Palestinian refugee agency.

It was thus no coincidence that the union’s founding statement noted its aim to “adopt national issues and connect with all Arab tribes to find common ground within the framework of the state, to serve its objectives, and to support the Egyptian president who seeks to protect Egypt’s national security and its Arab nation against the displacement plans aimed at resolving the Palestinian issue at Egypt’s expense.”

Since the outbreak of the Gaza war on 7 October, Egyptian officials have repeatedly expressed concerns over the potential displacement of Palestinians to the Sinai. They have even threatened to freeze the country’s peace treaty with Israel.

The historical experiences of Palestinian displacement, along with Israel’s goal to empty historic Palestine of its people, prevent their return and seize their lands, are well known to the Egyptian state.

Resisting the occupation

At the same time, the Palestinian people’s attachment to their land and insistence on their right of return, no matter how long it takes, has made each area of Palestinian displacement - whether in Lebanon, Syria or Jordan - a focal point for resisting the occupation, something Egypt does not want.

All options for dealing with this matter, it seems, are bitter, from the emergence of pockets of Palestinian resistance in the Sinai akin to what happened in Lebanon in the 1970s, to a confrontation of the kind that occurred in Jordan during Black September.

Yet Egypt cannot stop the Israeli military operation, nor halt its tanks from invading the tents of displaced Palestinians in Rafah. The Egyptian regime will not deviate from the US perspective in dealing with the recklessness of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which means it will have to deal directly with the massive crowds of displaced people likely headed towards Egyptian territory.

Early on, Egypt started taking precautions for this scenario, overlooking many humanitarian details. It reinforced the fences and barriers along its border with the Gaza Strip, tightened border security, and mobilised support and funding for alternative camps within Gaza itself.

In the event of a mass displacement into its territory, Egypt appears to be planning to confine displaced Palestinians in a high-security, isolated area along the border, allowing the state to maintain tight control and apply pressure to hasten their return to Gaza.

But there are a couple of issues with this plan. For one, many displaced Palestinians have family and tribal ties in the northern Sinai. The Egyptian and Palestinian cities of Rafah were once united as a single city, until Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai and the demarcation of borders in 1982. Many tribes are still divided, with some members in Palestinian Rafah and others in Egyptian Rafah.

Tribal customs compel hospitality and reception, which will weaken the ability of the Egyptian state to contain all displaced people in a single area. This could also open the door to fresh confrontations and disputes between state agencies and Sinai tribes.

Simmering public anger

In addition, a wave of displacement would raise significant challenges for Egypt from a military and security perspective. The last thing the Egyptian regime wants is an image of an Egyptian soldier firing at displaced Palestinians, or in any way treating them improperly, amid the unprecedented tragedy in Gaza - especially considering the simmering public anger over the Sisi regime’s handling of the Gaza genocide so far.

Through the newly minted Arab Tribes Union, the regime might have found its only option for handling this situation, while avoiding the direct involvement of state soldiers.

This hypothesis is supported by the union’s founding statement, which notes that its inception “comes in response to the current stage requirements, by creating a national popular framework that includes the sons of the Arab tribes, aimed at unifying the ranks and integrating all tribal entities into a single framework in support of the national state priorities, and facing the challenges that threaten its security and stability”.

Organi is a prime choice to lead this task after his previous successes in organising the Union of Sinai Tribes, which worked alongside the Egyptian army to fight an Islamic State affiliate, and in running companies that manage the movement of people and goods between Gaza and Egypt.

But Organi’s companies have also faced allegations of exploitative behaviour, including charging millions of dollars from Palestinian refugees fleeing war.

And there are significant risks that under difficult humanitarian conditions, his forces could become involved in smuggling operations, financial extortion, or other types of corruption - not to mention the inherent dangers of forming armed militias, which can prove disastrous to the security and stability of states, sometimes even playing a role in their disintegration.

By Ahmed Abdeen

The shadow war between Iran and Israel has been exposed. What happens next?

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 11:59:11 +0300

BEIRUT (AP) — Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel early Sunday marked a change in approach for Tehran, which had relied on proxies across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October. All eyes are now on whether Israel chooses to take further military action, while Washington seeks diplomatic measures instead to ease regional tensions.

Iran says the attack was in response to an airstrike widely blamed on Israel that destroyed what Iran says were consular offices in Syria and killed two generals with its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard earlier this month.

Israel said almost all the over 300 drones and missiles launched overnight by Iran were shot down by its anti-missile defense system, backed by the U.S. and Britain. The sole reported casualty was a wounded girl in southern Israel, and a missile struck an Israeli airbase, causing light damage.

Still, the chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard called the operation successful.

Iran has managed to strike a balance between retaliating publicly for the strike in Damascus and avoiding provoking further Israeli military action at least initially, which could lead to a much wider conflict, said Mona Yacoubian, vice president of the Middle East and North Africa center at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

“Both (Iran and Israel) are able at this point to claim victory and step down off the precipice, particularly since there were no Israeli civilians killed,” Yacoubian said.

The world was still waiting, however, for the result of an Israeli War Cabinet meeting on Sunday. Israeli hard-liners have pushed for a response, but others have suggested restraint, saying Israel should focus on strengthening budding ties with Arab partners.

“We will build a regional coalition and collect the price from Iran, in the way and at the time that suits us,” said Benny Gantz, a member of the War Cabinet.

Analysts say Iran sent a message that it would be willing to escalate and change its rules of engagement in its shadow war with Israel.

“It’s a warning shot, saying that if Israel breaks the rules, there are consequences,” said Magnus Ranstorp, strategic adviser at the Swedish Defense University.

Iran’s attack has further stoked fears of the war in Gaza causing regional havoc.

But Iran maintains that it does not seek all-out war across the region. Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Iran has “no intention of continuing defensive operations” at this point unless it is attacked.

Iran stressed that it targeted Israeli facilities involved in the Damascus attack, not civilians or “economic areas.”

After Israel began its offensive in Gaza against Hamas, Iran-backed groups were involved militarily while Tehran sat on the sidelines. Lebanon’s Hezbollah group fired rockets into northern Israel. Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked Western ships on the Red Sea. An umbrella group of Iran-backed Iraqi militias attacked U.S. military positions in Iraq and Syria.

Now, Tehran is “willing to up the ante” without relying on proxies, said the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, Maha Yahya.

Still, Iran only went so far.

“They gave enough warning that this was coming, and I think they knew that they (the drones and missiles) would be brought down before they reached Israeli territory,” Yahya said.

She also noted that the recent mounting pressure on Israel over its conduct in Gaza has now shifted to deescalating regional tensions instead.

Yacoubian says Washington has a critical role to play in avoiding further escalations.

Israel taking further military action does not seem popular among its allies including the United States, said Eldad Shavit, who heads the Israel-U.S. Research Program at Israeli think tank the Institute for National Security Studies.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told NBC that President Joe Biden does not want an escalation in the regional conflict or a “wider war” with Iran, and is “working on the diplomatic side of this personally.”

Urgent meetings of the G7 — the informal gathering of industrialized countries that includes the United States, United Kingdom, and France — and the U.N. Security Council were being held Sunday.

G7 meeting participants in a statement unanimously condemned Iran's attack, saying “we stand ready to take further measures now and in response to further destabilizing initiatives.”

Moscow terror attack showed growing reach of ISIS-K – could the US be next?

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 16:01:20 +0300

(THE CONVERSATION) A deadly attack in Moscow on March 22, 2024, exposed the vulnerability of the Russian capital to the threat of the Islamic State group and its affiliate ISIS-K. But it also displayed the reach of the network, leading some terror experts to ponder: Could a U.S. city be next?

There has not been a mass casualty assault in the U.S. carried out in the name of the Islamic State group since 2017, when a truck mowed down cyclists and pedestrians on a New York City bikeway, leaving eight dead.

Yet five years after the Islamic State group’s territorial defeat in Baghuz, Syria, had prompted hopes that the terrorist network was in terminal decline, a recent spate of attacks has thrust the group back into the spotlight. On the same day as the Moscow atrocity, an ISIS-K suicide bombing in Kandahar, Afghanistan, resulted in the deaths of at least 21 people.

As a terrorism expert and a scholar specializing in radical Islamist militant groups and the geographical scope of their attacks, I believe these incidents underscore the growing threat of ISIS-K both within the region it draws support from and on an international scale.

Amplifying influence

A successful terror attack on a Western capital is certainly something ISIS-K, or Islamic State Khorasan Province, aspires to. The intent behind the group’s activities is to bolster its position among jihadist factions by means of audacious and sophisticated attacks.

It is a strategy that showcases ISIS-K’s capabilities for spectacular operations, distinguishing it from potential rival groups. But it also enhances ISIS-K’s appeal, attracting both supporters and resources in the shape of funding and fighters.

By establishing a unique identity in a crowded extremist landscape, ISIS-K aims to undercut its competitors’ influence and assert its dominance in the jihadist sphere of the Khorasan region it targets, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and other Central Asian countries.

ISIS-K’s ambition extends beyond territorial control, engaging in a broader contest for ideological supremacy and resource acquisition globally.

An expanding threat

This global reach and ambition are evident in ISIS-K’s recent planned operations.

These include a suicide bombing in Iran in January 2024 and thwarted attacks across Europe, notably the foiled plots in Germany and the Netherlands in July 2023.

And without a doubt, a successful attack in the United States is seen within ISIS-K’s hierarchy as a major goal.

Since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, officials in the Biden administration have repeatedly warned of ISIS-K’s escalating danger to American interests, both at home and abroad.

ISIS-K’s propaganda has persistently framed the U.S. as its principal enemy – a narrative that is fueled by America’s extensive military and economic efforts to dismantle Islamic State operations since 2014.

The United States’ involvement, especially in collaboration with the Taliban — ISIS-K’s primary regional adversary — has placed America firmly in the group’s crosshairs.

Employing tactics refined during the period that the Islamic State group was most active, ISIS-K seeks to inspire lone-wolf attacks and radicalize individuals in the U.S.

The 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, which left 14 dead, and the 2016 shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that resulted in at least 49 deaths, were both attacks inspired by the Islamic State group.

Targeting major powers

Taking its lead from the Islamic State group, ISIS-K in 2022 publicly condemned America, calling it an enemy of Islam.

Of course, ISIS-K had by then already demonstrated its intention to harm U.S. interests, notably in a 2021 Kabul airport attack in which 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans were killed.

ISIS-K views the U.S. in much the same way as it does Russia: both as a military and an ideological foe.

Russia became a prime target due in part to its partnering with the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria in operations against Islamic State group affiliates. Similarly, Washington has worked with the Taliban in Afghanistan in countering ISIS-K operations.

While it is easier for ISIS-K to penetrate Russian territory, given the country’s geographical proximity to major Islamist recruitment centers, such as Tajikistan, the potential for strikes in the United States remains significant.

In 2023, U.S. authorities investigated a group of Uzbek nationals suspected of entering the country from Mexico with the assistance of traffickers linked to the Islamic State group, underscoring the group’s threat.

Targeting American interests serve multiple purposes for ISIS-K. By striking against the U.S., ISIS-K not only retaliates against Washington’s counterterrorism efforts but also aims to deter U.S. involvement in regions of interest to ISIS-K.

It also taps into historical grievances against the U.S. and Western interventions in Muslim countries – from the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to the stationing of U.S. troops in significant Islamic centers in the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia.

Countering a persistent threat

In response to the growing threat of Islamic State group affiliates, the United States has adopted a comprehensive strategy combining military, intelligence and law enforcement efforts.

Military operations have targeted ISIS-K leaders and infrastructure in Afghanistan, while security cooperation with regional and international partners such as Uzbekistan continues to monitor and counter the group’s activities.

On the home front, law enforcement and homeland security agencies remain vigilant, working to identify and thwart potential ISIS-K plots.

But as many experts had warned, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 has posed new challenges, inadvertently transforming that country once again into a safe haven and operational base for terrorist groups.

This retreat has also resulted in a significant loss of on-the-ground intelligence amid doubts over the efficacy of relying on the Taliban for counterterrorism operations.

Meanwhile, the Taliban are struggling to prevent or counteract ISIS-K attacks within their own borders.

The successful ISIS-K plots against Iran and Russia also reveal another vulnerability: When a country is distracted or preoccupied with other security concerns or conflicts, it can potentially compromise the effectiveness of its counterterrorism efforts.

Recent years have witnessed a decrease in high-profile attacks by groups like the Islamic State, leading many to conclude that the threat was waning. As a result, global attention — and with it, intelligence and security resources — has shifted toward escalating power rivalries and conflicts across the Pacific, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Yet, this shift risks underestimating the enduring threat terrorist groups pose, laying bare the dangers of complacency.

The Moscow attack emphasizes ISIS-K’s resolve to expand its influence, raising concerns about the potential threat to Western nations, including the United States. Considering ISIS-K’s track record and clear aspirations, it would be naive to dismiss the possibility of an attack on American soil.