The Israeli Ultra-Hawks Who Feel Betrayed by Trump’s Iran Deal | The New Yorker This Isaac Chotiner interview of Israeli TV personality Shimon Riklin is hilarious – here he is on Trump’s 180 on Iran: I don’t know what motivated him. You know he is a Gemini? Geminis are not really ones to say the same things a lot. They change their minds. You know Geminis?
Why China Hasn’t Helped the U.S. with Iran | International Crisis Group Because it sees the war as a strategic liability for the US from which it stands to benefit.
Ian’s Is Still The Best Site For Tying Your Shoelaces | Aftermath This is what tears me apart about AI - with here Chris Person writing about a fantastic example, Ian’s Shoelace Site , which is both a wonderful relic of an earlier type of website (with late 1990s vibes) and an actually super-useful compendium of very specific, very nerdy information. Ian, more than many writers and…
Israel Set to Rapidly Expand West Bank Settlement Before elections later this year. Plus ça change….
China and the Mediterranean | China Books Review Liuyu Ivy Chen reviews two books, one historical and another contemporary.
En Tunisie, les autorités coupent Internet pour éviter la triche au baccalauréat | Le Monde The Tunisian government has widely jammed or crippled the internet in the country to prevent cheating in high school exams. More staggering incompetence from Kaïs Saïd.
A New Tone and Better Cards in Kyiv | International Crisis Group How Ukraine is emerging a winner out of the Iran war, at least in terms of establishing itself as an exporter of security to the Gulf: When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine relied at first on Türkiye for drones – just as it depended on other foreign partners to deliver other armaments, from artillery…
Saudi Economic Contraction: How MBS Debt-Led Growth Is Creating a Strategic Financial and Geopolitical Trap for Saudi | MENA Unleashed The International Monetary Fund concluded its 2026 Article IV mission to Riyadh this week with a verdict dressed in the careful language of approval. The Saudi economy, it said, is proving resilient in the face of the war, supported by strong fundamentals and…
Congress Is Trying to Permanently Integrate U.S. and Israeli Defense Tech | The Intercept Critical reporting by Austin Campbell: Lawmakers and military experts told The Intercept that Section 224, named “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is highly irregular — and closely resembles a bipartisan bill backed by the pro-Israel lobby that died in Congress earlier this…
Le Maroc élimine un haut responsable du Front Polisario | Le Monde Morocco carries out drone killing of Polisario leader near Western Sahara berm.
Brussels Institute for Geopolitics – The ideological roots of MAGA’s anti-European offensive On three luminaries behind the national-conservatives' view of Europe. Interesting to see the Israeli link and the whiffs of “Eurabia”.
The State of the Strait: The Role of Hormuz in the Middle East War So Far | International Crisis Group Comprehensive explainer with quite useful graphics.
Trump’s Defense Department Sees Growing Espionage Threat From Israel - The New York Times Tel Aviv upping spying on Witkoff and other top officials negotiating Iran talks.
The Birds of Palestine (Arabic) – Shop Palestine Lovely poster available for sale to raise funds for the Middle East Children’s Alliance (via Kottke )
The Last Traces of a Family the Assad Regime Marked for Destruction - New Lines Magazine Morgan Laffer, reporting on the long struggle to discover the fate of six children kidnapped by Assad’s security force.
Iran’s Care for Orphans Has Been Transformed by War - New Lines Magazine Fateme Karimkhan, writing on how the war has changed fostering and other practices for Iranian orphans.
Unmaking the Middle East | Andrew Arsan | The New York Review of Books Review of Fawaz Gerges' two most recent books, What Really Went Wron g and The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East .
The World Misunderstands the India–UAE Relationship - Gulf International Forum
The U.S. Needs Its Mideast Bases - WSJ It’s astonishing to see this kind of piece, by pro-war longtime neocons Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, as if the US disbanding its Gulf bases is now in question: Whatever credibility Washington still has in the Middle East depends on its willingness to maintain bases in the Gulf and in Iraq—and that places U.S. forces in harm’s way. Given our…
If I Were Chuck Schumer | The New York Review of Books Joseph O’Neill, interviewed by Daniel Drake: If I were Senator Schumer, I would take stock of the polls, which reveal an amazingly unpopular Democratic Party that is despised by its own base. I would take stock of the collapse of DNC and DSCC fundraising. I would ask myself if I was responsible for this disastrous state of affairs. I…
What Visual Evidence Tells Us About Israel’s Use of White Phosphorus in Lebanon - The New York Times
Lessons from RightsCon Cancellation for Democracy Promotion Andrew Friedman and Tara L. Thwing, write here for Just Security on the recent cancellation of RightsCon, a major civil society and human rights gathering, by the government of Zambia. The cancellation, most likely due to Chinese pressure on Zambia because of the presence of Taiwanese civil society activists at the event, was a major…
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu replay 1982 Beirut stand-off | FT Mehul Srivastava and Abigail Hauslohner on the parallels with Reagan and Begin: As it battled the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel had laid siege to Beirut for weeks and had been intensively shelling the city’s suburbs for nearly half a day, killing more civilians than PLO fighters. In Reagan’s own words, “I was angry.”…
L’artiste franco-iranienne Marjane Satrapi, autrice de la bande dessinée « Persepolis », est morte à l’âge de 56 ans | Le Monde Satrapi, author of the blockbuster graphic novel Persepolis, about growing up in the early years of the Islamic Republic, has passed. Her family said that she “died of sadness a little over a year after the death of her husband, Mattias Ripa.”
Iran’s New Grand Strategy | Foreign Affairs A fascinating essay by Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr argues that the last year of Iran-Israel-US war has fundamentally changed the way Iran is governed, putting nationalist technocrats in charge instead of Islamist ideologues: Before the U.S.-Israeli attack in June 2025, Iran’s rulers had assumed they could indefinitely sustain a no-war, no-peace…