The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

Ahmed al Shara, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, would like you to think he is a changed man.

“If Assad doesn’t have a force that’s willing to stand up for him, what are the Russians and Iranians going to do?” Dr. James Dorsey explains on the John Fredericks Show how the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria is a significant blow to Russia and Iran’s presence in the region.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Bashar al-Assad has fled Syria as the country's rebels have taken over the capital, Damascus. Assad has been President of Syria since 2000. His toppling at the hands of Syrian rebels, most notably Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani, represents a historic moment both for Syria, which has been ravaged by a civil war since March 2011, and the wider...

A week into a rebel offensive, Syria is the potential fulcrum of a tectonic reordering of Middle Eastern geopolitics with President Bashar al-Assad as a key player. That is if Mr. Al-Assad is willing to play ball this time around.

Syrian rebels know what they want. Having captured two of Syria’s four largest cities, Aleppo and Hama, the insurgents are gunning for Homs, the country’s third largest urban center, and then the capital Damascus. That is what Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would want if it doesn’t significantly accept Turkish apple carts In Washington, Moscow, and Tehran.

Gulf leaders told Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati what they said to Palestinians when he asked the region’s wealthy energy exporters to fund the reconstruction of areas devastated by Israel’s war machine: “We will not pour money into a black hole. Call us when you have put your house in order.."

Israeli commander’s West Bank woes spotlight a military tied up in knots by James M. Dorsey

Major General Avi Bluth, the head of Israel’s Central Command, switched roles this weekend. Suddenly, Mr. Bluth, in occupied Hebron to protect Israeli worshippers and settlers during a controversial annual pilgrimage, was not the guardian of vigilante youth but their target.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s world just shrunk considerably.

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, elevated to new heights the symbiotic relationship between hardliners on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Their actions helped one another sabotage compromise resolutions of their perennial dispute.

Appalled by Israel’s carpet bombing of Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon war, US President Ronald Reagan didn’t mince his words with then-Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin. “I was angry. I told him it had to stop, or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately & said the symbol of his war was becoming a picture of a 7-month-old baby with its arms blown off...

Gaza is gearing up to be a war on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s watch that he doesn’t want but may be unable to end.

Predicting President Donald J. Trump’s Middle East policy and his attitude toward Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu amounts to reading tea leaves. The leaves are the cast of characters included in Mr. Trump’s administration when he takes office and who he excluded. Yet even that could prove to be misleading.

Israel may soon return tens of thousands of evacuees to their homes along the border with Lebanon, with or without a ceasefire with Hezbollah. The return of the evacuees would allow Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to tout a significant success in his 13-month-long war in Gaza and Lebanon, even if it may be short-lived without a ceasefire, if not in an equitable negotiated resolution of Israel’s...

The Middle East may not preoccupy Donald J. Trump. Still, the president-elect preoccupies the Middle East as it attempts to figure out how he will handle the wars ravaging Gaza and Lebanon and threatening to spark an all-out conflagration between Israel and Iran.

Donald J. Trump’s electoral victory promises to give Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu a free hand, at least temporarily, to deal with Iran and its non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Donald J. Trump’s electoral victory promises to give Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu a free hand, at least temporarily, to deal with Iran and its non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed is manoeuvring to replace Qatar as the main Gulf player in post-war Gaza with the backing of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Messrs. Bin Zayed and Netanyahu see humanitarian aid provided by the Emirates and the prospect of UAE-funded post-war reconstruction as a way to marginalise Hamas and drive a wedge between the group’s leadership an...

The recent spike in Middle East hostilities has underscored the urgency of a ceasefire. The death toll from Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon has topped 2,800 since the beginning of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. More than 12,000 have been hurt, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported Wednesday. With the Middle East situation getting more serious, James M. Dorsey and Wang Jin discuss on CGTN what can b...

Next week’s US election rather than a US-led push for ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, is likely to determine the course of Israel’s wars, no more so than with Iran.

Two incidents in the past week shine a spotlight on Israel’s loss of a moral compass.

James M. Dorsey tells Radio Islam's Middle East report that next week’s US election could determine what happens next in the Middle East

James M. Dorsey discusses Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon on CNA 938

An Israeli airstrike on Iran has sparked fears of an all-out regional war. BFM 89.9 asks James M. Dorsey, adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies whether de-escalation is possible and what impact the U.S. Presidential election will have on the ongoing

This weekend’s carefully calibrated Israeli retaliatory strikes at Iranian military targets could lower the risk of an all-out Middle East war, particularly if Iran decides not to respond. The Iranian military said as much by suggesting in a statement that Iran reserved the right to defend itself but may not respond to the attack if Israel agreed to ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. Iran’s Supreme L...