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Israel's Undersea Gas Find May Spur Strife - Meghan O'Sullivan, Bloomberg

Because nothing is simple in the Middle East, there is also a real threat that these gas discoveries could serve as a spur for conflict rather than economic growth. The Tamar and L...

Syria's War Comes to Beirut - Mitchell Prothero, Foreign Policy

The streets of Beirut's working-class Sunni neighborhoods started filling up with all the signs of trouble by about 9 p.m. on Sunday night. Young men on scooters clustered together...

The Risks of a Syria Spillover - Andrew Exum, World Politics Review

Over the past week, we have seen the first real case of sectarian violence spilling over from Syria into neighboring Lebanon. In clashes in and around the northern Lebanese city of...

Israeli Attack on Iran May Enrage Muslim World - Ahmed Rashid, Haaretz

Iran is far more likely to mobilize on the basis of the much wider support it can muster in the Muslim world, which is already seething with anti-American and anti-Israeli feelin...

Prepare for the Long Haul in Syria - Michael Young, Daily Star

One thing that the Lebanese can usually do with some precision is predict stalemate. Their own conflict between 1975 and 1990 was one long, debilitating lesson in destructive dea...

Israel's Unity Deal and Lebanon - Tony Badran, NOW Lebanon

The surprise unity deal struck between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz has spurred a flurry of speculation, including in the Arab media,...

Lebanon Walks the Syria Tightrope - Roula Khalaf, Financial Times

A year ago, Lebanon was bracing for trouble. With Syria’s uprising raging next door – and politics in Beirut divided along pro and anti-Syrian lines – many assumed it wou...

Muzzled Media in the Arab World - The Daily Star

In marking the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, there is little to celebrate in Lebanon and the Arab world, where the same old problems continue to stymie progress....

Assad's Logic Turns Syria into Lebanon - Faisal al Yafai, The National

The younger Assad has tried to do in Homs what his father did in Hama. In many cases, the tactics - surrounding and besieging the city, using devastating force in civilian areas ...

Shadow of War Hangs over Lebanon - Michael Young, The National

The negotiations in Turkey over Iran's nuclear programme last weekend were not particularly high in the attentions of the Lebanese living along their country's southern frontier wi...

Syria's Border Blackmail May Backfire - Michael Young, Daily Star

Pity Ali Shaaban for the hypocrisy that surrounded the reactions to his death. From Hezbollah we heard that the cameraman’s killers had to be punished, even though the party has ...

Obama Must Stop Spread of Syria Crisis - Simon Tisdall, The Guardian

Syria's crisis is spreading to Turkey and Lebanon, and regional powers are increasingly entangled - it's time for decisive action....

Will Assad Return to Killing Lebanese Leaders? - Elliott Abrams, CFR

Throughout the past decade there have been a series of assassinations and attempted murders of political leaders in Lebanon. Almost all of these plots have one common element: th...

Loyalty to Assad Could Isolate Hezbollah - Anne Barnard, New York Times

Mr. Nasrallah's decision to maintain his critical alliance with Syria has risked Hezbollah's standing and its attempts to build pan-Islamic ties in Lebanon and the wider Arab world...

U.S. Weighs Threat of Iran-backed Hezbollah - Mark Hosenball, Reuters

The warning last month from Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, was blunt: An investigation by his staff had ...

Arab States Redraw the Map of Alliances - Jamal Khashoggi, The National

While Syria's army cruelly and stupidly shells its own people and storms its cities, the so-called "axis of resistance" stretching from Tehran to Damascus is falling apart. Said ...

On the Edge of Syria's Bloody War - Robert Fisk, The Independent

Syria's bloodbath is carving further divisions in Lebanon as President Bashar al-Assad's Lebanese allies and enemies shout more and more insults at each other. The Christians have ...

Iran Is the World's Biggest Terror State - Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post

By training, arming, financing and instigating groups like Hezbollah, the Iranian regime gives violent expression to the genocidal narrative of its leadership....

Lebanon Still Cannot Address Its Past - Daily Star

Twenty years after the end of the Civil War and Lebanon’s failure, yet again, to create a unified history book reveals the dangers which pervasive sectarian mindsets can pose....

The Coming Mediterranean Gas Conflict - Nizar Abdel-Kader, Bitter Lemons

The discoveries of gas fields by Israel and Cyprus are stirring the pot of regional turmoil and provoking various reactions from the other players in the Eastern Mediterranean....

America's Neurotic Denial on Syria - Hussein Ibish, NOW Lebanon

The brutality that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has employed in crushing rebel forces and attacking civilians in Homs is yet another crucial indicator of the exte...

Syria's Civil War Could Explode the Region - Brahimi & Joffe, Al Jazeera

The growing chorus of international condemnation against Assad is counteracted by anxieties, in western and Arab capitals alike, over what a post-Assad Syria would look like. Addit...

When America Attacked Syria - Micah Zenko, Council on Foreign Relations

In response to the worsening civil war in Syria and the Bashar al-Assad regime’s continuous use of rockets, artillery, and sniper fire against civilian population centers, some...

Lebanon Must Embrace Syria's Democrats - Michael Young, NOW Lebanon

At some stage, perhaps even before the Assad regime falls, Lebanese and Syrian democrats must sit together and clarify what the future holds for their two countries....

A Hezbollah Crack-Up? - Lee Smith, Weekly Standard

If Hezbollah's regional partners are in trouble, the domestic arena presents even more daunting challenges for the party of God. Hezbollah's control over Lebanon's Shiite communi...

Arab Spring Deals Losing Hand to Iran - Samuel Segev, Winnipeg Free Press

It's obvious that Iran underestimated the depth of resentment the masses have of Shiite dominance in the Arab world....

2012: No Peace, No Prosperity, No Progress - Simon Tisdall, The Guardian

Worse is likely to come in conflict zones from the Middle East to Africa and for Europe's troubled economies....

Will Hezbollah Get Syria's WMD? - Dan Ephron, The Daily Beast

When - or even if - the spiraling protests will push the Syrian leader out of power is unclear. But Israel fears that Assad's chemical weapons could end up with Hizbullah - or th...

Assad's Lebanese Invasion - Mitchell Prothero, Foreign Policy

The Syrian regime wants to crush any expression of dissent in its fragile neighbor. President Bashar al-Assad's allies in Beirut are only too happy to oblige....

Hezbollah's Hypocritical Stance on Syria - Larbi Sadiki, New York Times

When a so-called resistance movement fails to support a bottom-up popular revolt against a tyrant, its leaders expose themselves as hypocrites....

Lebanon Intifada Model for Arab Spring - Michael Young, The National

There has been a tendency to regard the emancipatory impulses in the Arab world this year as unique. It's as if there was 2011, and before that, lethargy. That's not quite accurate...

Arab Spring Really About Sunni Revenge - Edward Luttwak, Foreign Policy

It is obvious that the Gulf monarchies of absolute rulers are not in the fight for the sake of a future Syrian democracy. For Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, the purpose of overt...

Will Hezbollah's Support for Assad Be Its Downfall? - Aryn Baker, Time

World leaders are often obliged to walk a thin line between national interest and the projection of a state’s moral values. The Arab Spring effectively put an end to the We...

Hezbollah Jumps in the Fire - Tony Badran, NOW Lebanon

Anyone monitoring Hezbollah’s rhetoric over the last several days could not but notice a spike in its apocalyptic pitch. Perhaps it was the religious occasion of Ashura, but ...

Obama and the Hezbollah Terrorist - Rivkin & Stimson, Wall Street Journal

In Jan. 2007, Ali Musa Daqduq helped kill five Americans in Iraq. He may soon be released into Iranian custody....

Lebanon Funds Justice Its Own Way - Nicholas Noe & Walid Raad, Bloomberg

Lebanese politicians are famous for their ability to construct temporary fixes for the deep problems that have dogged their country. So, relatively speaking, it wasn't entirely out...

Hezbollah Takes a Hit - Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine

In June, Hezbollah announced that it had captured two, perhaps three, CIA spies who had infiltrated its organization. Last week, the story finally made headlines in the U...

Iran Losing Coerced Allies in Lebanon - Michael Totten, Contentions

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati says he will resign his post if the parliament doesn’t agree to fund the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon tasked with investiga...

In Arab World, It's Past vs. Present - Thomas Friedman, New York Times

This is the grand drama now being played out in the Arab world - the deeply sincere youth-led quest for liberty and the deeply rooted quests for sectarian, factional, class and t...

How Did the CIA Get Outsmarted by Hezbollah? - Max Fisher, The Atlantic

Since 2001, the U.S. spy agency has been retooled to fight terror, but what has it lost?...

Hezbollah Waits and Prepares - Nicholas Blanford, Wall Street Journal

With new tensions over Iran's nuclear program, the militant group stands ready to retaliate against Israel....

Israel Beware: China Arms Hezbollah - Decker & Triplett, Wash Times

No one doubts that the Chinese have been and still are deeply engaged in illicit nuclear-weapons assistance to numerous countries....

Lebanon at Risk as Syrian Conflict Widens - Nizar Abdel-Kader, Daily Star

The dilemma Syria’s regime faces is to choose between the Arab League initiative creating favorable conditions for dialogue with its opponents and internationalization of the cri...

Happy New Jumblatt! - Barry Rubin, PJ Media

Happy New Jumblatt! What’s a Jumblatt? Well, it’s a joke that tells us a lot about Middle East politics. A friend of mine created the “Jumblatt” as a unit o...

Arab Spring Creates Crisis for Hezbollah - Bilal Saab, National Interest

Hezbollah is facing a crisis that is unprecedented in its 30-year history, and it’s a crisis that the party’s strategic backers, Syria and Iran, are powerless to solve....

Lebanon

Syrian Rebels Up Against Much More than Assad

Lebanon Paying for Hezbollah Brinkmanship

Syria's Neighbors Are Growing Restless

Obama's Failure to Admit Failure on Syria

Lebanon Powerless to Keep Out Syria's War

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