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A senior White House foreign policy official has pushed a plan to partition Libya, and once drew a picture of how the country could be divided into three areas on a napkin in a meeting with a senior European diplomat

Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Donald Trump under pressure over his past ties with Hungarian far-right groups, suggested the idea of partition in the weeks leading up to the US president’s inauguration, according to an official with knowledge of the matter. The European diplomat responded that this would be “the worst solution” for Libya

Gorka is vying for the job of presidential special envoy to Libya

the United Arab Emirates played a key behind-the-scenes role in facilitating the deal between Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki. Both men met with Emirati leaders on several occasions before and during the reconciliation, and they have stayed in regular contact ever since.

After decades of disengagement, countries east of the Red Sea are scrambling to gain a greater footprint along the opposite coast. In response, states on the Horn such as Ethiopia are trying to leverage these rapidly changing geopolitical dynamics to enhance their own influence.

Relations between the Horn of Africa and Arab nations east of the Red Sea date back over millennia. They took a turn for the worse following the 1973 “Oil Crisis”, triggered when oil-producing Arab counties cut down production to punish Western countries that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Horn countries became collateral damage as inflation skyrocketed. To overcome economic devastation and soaring debt, they began to court oil-rich Gulf States, offering political loyalty and natural resources in return for aid. Countries such as Somalia, Djibouti, Egypt, and Sudan invoked their cultural and religious connections with the Gulf in a bid to gain help in dealing with their balance of payment crisis and political instability. Arab nations seized the opportunity, using their wealth and newfound geostrategic importance to expand their influence in the Horn and secure key loyalties.

three days of hard driving, carrying a deadly cargo - hundreds of IS fighters, their families and tonnes of weapons and ammunition

The deal to let IS fighters escape from Raqqa – de facto capital of their self-declared caliphate – had been arranged by local officials. It came after four months of fighting that left the city obliterated and almost devoid of people. It would spare lives and bring fighting to an end. The lives of the Arab, Kurdish and other fighters opposing IS would be spared. But it also enabled many hundreds of IS fighters to escape from the city. At the time, neither the US and British-led coalition, nor the SDF, which it backs, wanted to admit their part.

the BBC has spoken to dozens of people who were either on the convoy, or observed it, and to the men who negotiated the deal

For the last 10 years, Western (and even Arab) pundits have repeatedly questioned the place of Palestine in the pan-Arab psyche. They surmised that the Arab Spring had refocused Arab minds on their problems at home. They assumed that battling tyrannical regimes and their security apparatuses, reforming corrupt polities and decrepit health care and education systems, combating terrorism and religious extremism, whittling back the power of the military, and overcoming economic challenges like corruption and unemployment would take precedence over an unsolved and apparently unsolvable cause.

reforming the Arab world’s political systems and the security and patronage networks that keep them in power and allow them to dominate their populations appears to be just as arduous a task as resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The difference now is not that Arab populaces have abandoned Palestine. Western and regional observers say the muted outrage over affronts like American support for the annexation of the Golan Heights or recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, or even the Abraham Accords and the subsequent sycophantic embrace of Israel in the Gulf is an indicator of Arab public opinion, that it signals a loss of interest in the cause.It is not. Arabs are of course not of a single mind on any particular issue, nor is it possible to gauge public opinion under tyrannical regimes. But it is indicative of the fact that these authoritarians no longer see the pan-Arab Palestinian cause and supporting it as vital to their survival. They have discovered that inward-looking, nationalistic pride is the key to enduring in perpetuity. It is the final step in the dismantling of pan-Arabism as a political force, one that will shape the region’s fortunes and its states’ alliances in the years and decades to come.

The Middle East, though energy-rich, no longer has enough electricity. From Beirut to Baghdad, tens of millions of people now suffer daily outages, with a crippling impact on businesses, schools, health care, and other basic services, including running water and sewerage

With the exception of the Gulf states, infrastructure is old or inadequate in many of the twenty-three Arab countries. The region’s disparate wars, past and present, have damaged or destroyed electrical grids. Some governments, even in Iraq, can’t afford the cost of fuelling plants around the clock. Epic corruption has compounded physical challenges. Politicians have delayed or prevented solutions if their cronies don’t get contracts to fuel, maintain, or build power plants

movement of refugees has further strained equipment. Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt, already struggling, have each taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees since 2011. The frazzled governor of Erbil, Nawzad Hadi Mawlood, told me that Iraq’s northern Kurdistan—home to four million Kurds—has taken in almost two million displaced Iraqis who fled the Islamic State since 2014, as well as more than a hundred thousand refugees fleeing the war in neighboring Syria since 2011. Kurdistan no longer has the facilities, fuel, or funds to provide power. It averages between nine and ten hours a day, a senior technician in Kurdistan’s power company told me, although it’s worse in other parts of Iraq.

Citing “security problems, economic challenges and other serious issues confronted by the region,” Bahrain’s Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa recently announced that the transformation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to a union is an “inevitable goal” of this month’s Manama Dialogue (Dec. 9-11).

With absolutely no illusions that Oman — historically the most independent member of the GCC — has changed its position, last month Ghanem al-Buainain, Bahrain’s minister of Parliament Affairs, stated that he sensed “great enthusiasm for the union from the other Gulf members.”

Many non-Saudis in the GCC view Saudi Arabia as an important ally, yet they also see the oil-rich kingdom as an overbearing neighbor who does not always respect the smaller Arab Gulf states’ sovereignty. Due to a host of domestic issues in the GCC and regional developments, which the Arab Gulf families see through different lenses, Riyadh and Manama officials may see their plan for a union falling on deaf ears.

It will seem counterintuitive to many that someone would trade “senior official” status for a job in a “think tank” to exert more influence. But I had concluded in the late summer of 2012 that President Barack Obama’s words of a year earlier about Assad stepping aside were empty, and that my efforts in government to bring dead words to life were futile.  Instead of implementing what had sounded like the commander-in-chief’s directive, the State Department was saddled in August 2012 by the White House with a make-work, labor-intensive project cataloguing the countless things that would have to be in place for a post-Assad Syria to function. But how to get to post-Assad? The White House had shut down the sole interagency group examining options for achieving that end.

My job since April 2009, as a deputy to Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell, was to build a foundation for Syrian-Israeli and eventually Israeli-Lebanese peace. Progress on the former seemed to be happening. Yet by using deadly force on his own citizens, Assad ended, perhaps forever, a process that might have recovered for Syria the territory lost by his Minister of Defense father in 1967.  When the full story of Syria’s betrayal by a family and its entourage is written, the decision of Assad to sink a potentially promising peace mediation will merit a chapter.

President Obama would caricature external alternatives by creating and debating straw men: invented idiots calling for the invasion and occupation of Syria.  He would deal with internal dissent by taking officials through multi-step, worst-case, hypothetical scenarios of what might happen in the wake of any American attempt, no matter how modest, to complicate regime mass murder. The ‘logical’ result would inevitably involve something between World War III and an open-ended, treasury-draining American commitment.  The result of these exercises in self-disarmament would be Vladimir Putin and his ilk concluding that American power was, as a practical matter, equal to Palau’s; Ukraine could be dismembered, NATO allies threatened, and the United States itself harassed with impunity. He did not mean to do it, but Barack Obama’s performance in Syria produced global destabilization.

A series of rocket strikes in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil, on Feb. 15 are the latest in a string of “resistance axis” activity that has undermined Iraq’s security, endangered civilians, rendered the central state weak and incapable, and added the possibility of a larger regional escalation between Iran-aligned groups and their rivals. The attacks sent a warning message to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the federal government of Iraq, and foreign actors including the U.S. and Turkey.

The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) are an umbrella of Iraqi state-sponsored armed groups and militias under the command of Iraq’s prime minister. The PMF have incorporated within their ranks some of the most notorious Shiite militias, namely Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, which have been involved in human rights violations and organized crime. These militias overtly object to U.S. presence in Iraq in all forms and have boasted about attacking U.S. interests, referring to themselves as “the resistance” They answer to Iran despite being part of the Iraqi state’s security apparatus.

The attacks were designed to convey a clear message to both the U.S. and the Iraqi federal government: No corner of Iraq, however populated or secure it may seem, is safe from militia interference. 

The initial impulse behind the uprisings, the very impulse that led Bouazizi to self-immolation, lay in the fact that humiliated peoples, suffering from economic dislocation, political repression, and denial of basic human rights had grown impatient with their status as subjects and had risen, demanding their rights as citizens. Wealth redistribution, social justice, and good governance were as equal for those demonstrating en masse as regaining their lost karama — their dignity

Most of the political and intellectual debates that animated the early stages of the uprisings had their roots in the reformist movements and the intellectual ferments and the drive to modernize Arab societies that began in the first half of the 19th century

a stagnant economy remains the greatest threat to Tunisia’s stability and a major source of Tunisians’ discontent. Tunisia’s robust civil society made it possible, even during periods of political and security tensions, to conduct executive, legislative, and municipal elections democratically, although elected officials still display some of the discredited habits of the ancien régime. Ennahda, the main Islamist movement, proved adept at political transformation when its founder Rachid Ghannouchi declared the moderate Islamist party was abandoning political Islam. Ten years on, Tunisians are openly critical of their government’s failure to address their economic needs, forcing the youth either to immigrate to Europe or to join radical Islamists abroad. Ten years after Mohamed Bouazizi’s fiery end, disillusionment is the national mood.

On Feb. 2, U.S. forces dropped more than 125 precision munitions on 85 targets in Iraq and Syria belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and its affiliated militia groups. The U.S. Air Force even deployed giant B-1 bombers that flew all the way from the continental United States. According to U.S. Central Command: “The facilities that were struck included command and control operations centers, intelligence centers, rockets, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicle storage, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities of militia groups and their IRGC sponsors who facilitated attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces.”Five days later, on Feb. 7, a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad killed a senior commander of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most dangerous Iranian-backed terrorist groups. This demonstrated not only how precise U.S. weapons systems are but also how successful U.S. intelligence was in tracking the movements of senior Iranian operatives.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementThe clear message was that other Iranian commanders would be next if they didn’t knock off their attacks against U.S. troops. And guess what? Iran did stop. Things could change at any moment, but a senior U.S. defense official told me last week that there hasn’t been an Iranian-directed attack against a U.S. military base in either Syria or Iraq since Feb. 4. By contrast, there were at least 170 such attacks between Oct. 7 and Feb. 4.

“We’re not under any illusions,” the defense official told me. “Iran continues to pose a serious threat to the United States and our interests in the region. Under certain circumstances, attacks could restart, but we demonstrated that we’re willing and able to defend our forces.”

there is no way for Washington to overthrow the Iranian regime without risking becoming embroiled in another Iraq- or Afghanistan-style quagmire

Some Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, are increasingly restricting the U.S. from using military facilities on their soil to launch retaliatory airstrikes on Iranian proxies

The U.S. has long deployed thousands of troops at facilities in the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and elsewhere in the Middle East, and the Arab countries’ role in supporting U.S. military activities has come under intensified scrutiny since the Israel-Hamas war that erupted in October.

Certain Arab countries are restricting access to basing and overflight for the assets participating in these retaliatory strikes, the official said. It’s not clear how many countries are taking this action.The reason the UAE in particular is doing this, per one of the Western officials, is “they don’t want to appear like they’re against Iran and they don’t want to appear too close to the West and Israel for public opinion reasons.” The UAE has in recent years also raised concerns about increasing attacks from the Houthis in Yemen. The rebel group has previously launched missiles into the UAE.

a report by the Astana Club that brings together prominent political figures, diplomats, and experts from the Great Game’s various players under the auspices of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Entitled, ‘Toward a Greater Eurasia: How to Build a Common Future?,’ the report warns that the Eurasian supercontinent needs to anticipate the Great Game’s risks that include mounting tensions between the United States and China; global trade wars; arms races; escalating conflict in the greater Middle East; deteriorating relations between Russia and the West; a heating up of contained European conflicts such as former Yugoslavia; rising chances of separatism and ethnic/religious conflict; and environmental degradation as well as technological advances. The report suggested that the risks were enhanced by the fragility of the global system with the weakening of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and NATO.

Erdogan’s vision, according to Eurasia scholar Igor Torbakov, is built on the notion that the world is divided into distinct civilizations. And upon that foundation rise three pillars: 1) a just world order can only be a multipolar one; 2) no civilization has the right to claim a hegemonic position in the international system; and 3) non-Western civilizations (including those in Turkey and Russia) are in the ascendant. In addition, anti-Western sentiment and self-assertiveness are crucial elements of this outlook. Expressing that sentiment, Turkish bestselling author and Erdogan supporter Alev Alati quipped: “We are the ones who have adopted Islam as an identity but have become so competent in playing chess with Westerners that we can beat them. We made this country that lacked oil, gold and gas what it is now. It was not easy, and we won’t give it up so quickly.”

Turkey and Russia still “see themselves as empires, and, as a general rule, an empire’s political philosophy is one of universalism and exceptionalism. In other words, empires don’t have friends – they have either enemies or dependencies,” said Mr. Torbakov, the Eurasia scholar, or exist in what Russian strategists term “imperial or geopolitical solitude.” Mr. Erdogan’s vision of a modern-day Ottoman empire encompasses the Turkic and Muslim world. Different groups of Russian strategists promote concepts of Russia as a state that has to continuously act as an empire or as a unique “state civilization” devoid of expansionist ambition despite its premise of a Russian World that embraces the primacy of Russian culture as well as tolerance for non-Russian cultures. Both notions highlight the pitfalls of their nations’ history and Eurasianism.

a multimillion-dollar battle for influence in Washington between bitter rivals Qatar and the United Arab Emirates

On Qatar's roster: Republican former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose law firm received a $2.5 million retainer, and ex-advisers to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The UAE has an arrangement with The Harbour Group, a public relations and public affairs firm, for up to $5 million annually. The UAE's ambassador to the United States also relies heavily on his former director of legislative affairs, Hagir Elawad. She's now a registered lobbyist who earns $25,000 a month as the embassy's chief liaison to Capitol Hill.

a business associate of Broidy's, George Nader, had wired $2.5 million for an influence campaign Broidy was coordinating in Washington that accused Qatar of being a state sponsor of terrorism. Nader is a political adviser to the UAE and now a witness in the U.S. special counsel investigation into foreign meddling in American politics

White supremacy extremism (WSE) is a transnational challenge, with tentacles stretching from Canada to Australia, and the United States to Ukraine; it has evolved at a different pace in different parts of the world. The rapid expanse of social media facilitates radicalization and recruitment within the white supremacy extremist domain. There are a number of important similarities between jihadist and white supremacists and particular ways these groups feed off each other, including: use of the internet; propaganda; recruitment; financing; the transnational nature of the networks, and utility of violence. To make serious progress, the United States should consider building upon Canadian and British leadership and begin sanctioning transnational WSE groups as foreign terrorist organizations.

white supremacist extremists pose a clear terrorist threat to the United States. Following the August attack by a white supremacist extremist in El Paso, TX, white supremacist terrorism became responsible for more deaths on U.S. soil than jihadist terrorism since 9/11. The Anti-Defamation League reports that over the past decade, white supremacy extremists were responsible for three times as many deaths in the United States as were Islamists. In May 2019, a senior FBI official testified to Congress that the bureau is pursuing about 850 domestic terrorism investigations, a ‘significant majority’ of which are related to white supremacist extremists.

Recruitment and radicalization goals within white supremacy extremism remain consistent over time despite traditional methods of spreading propaganda diverging from more modern ones

Morsi's performance in Tehran disappointed his Iranian hosts as cruelly as it mocked those who warned that his visit would deliver Egypt into Iran's camp and reveal a radical new Egyptian foreign policy.

"Our solidarity with the struggle of the Syrian people against an oppressive regime that has lost legitimacy is an ethical duty as it is a political and strategic necessity," he said, prompting Syrian officials to walk out of the summit in protest. Sitting directly beside Ahmadinejad, Morsi said: "I am here to announce our full and just support for a free, independent Syria that supports a transition into a democratic system and that respects the will of the Syrian people for freedom and equality at the same time, preventing Syria from going into civil war or going into sectarian divisions."

Morsi's decision to take the opportunity offered by Iran to embrace the Syrian uprising against Assad therefore put the Iranian regime in something of a bind. Morsi refused even to say clearly if relations with Iran will be upgraded, but he has said he will pursue a more balanced foreign policy with many states, including Iran. A leaked memo issued by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance on August 26, which issued strict instructions to the media banned them from publishing: "Any potential devilish comments about issues pertaining to Egypt, Bahrain and Syria." The memo (published on various Iranian opposition websites) effectively censored the media from publishing anything negative about the NAM summit.

The United States sanctioned Turkey's defense, energy, and interior ministers over Turkey's incursion into northern Syria, the Treasury Department announced today. 

Trump has touted taking down the territorial caliphate of the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS) in Syria as a signature foreign policy accomplishment, one which current and former officials say the Turkish incursion has put at risk.

the forthcoming order would increase steel tariffs against Turkey to 50% and stop negotiations toward a potential $100 billion trade deal with Ankara. Al-Monitor reported today that Erdogan was one official under consideration for sanctions.

In Syria, these women also fought for equality as much as they fought to end the Islamic State. Women’s rights sat at the center of the ideas they had worked to bring to the area, not at all because of American influence, but because of their own ideology inspired by Abdullah Ocalan, Murray Bookchin, and the ideas of near-utopian grassroots, participatory democracy with women’s equality at its center. While critics often saw these ideas as unique to this group of Kurds, the many young women I met from Arab and Christian communities across the region very much shared at least the women’s piece — the idea that they merited a say in their own future. For the members of the Women’s Protection Units that Nowruz led, beating ISIS meant beating the ideology that said women meant nothing and mattered even less.

“All of us who played a major role in fighting ISIS, we all have a part in this victory.”

The end of Baghdadi offered the only bright spot she and her forces have experienced since Turkey launched its attack.

Jordan has obtained spare American fighter jets for an undisclosed sum and plans to upgrade large transport planes, a State Department official told Al-Monitor, as the Pentagon has moved in recent months to cultivate Middle East interest to keep production going for aging US weapons systems. The agency OK’d the provision of F-16 fighter jets to Jordan in September through the US government’s so-called Excess Defense Articles program, known as EDA. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Arab nation plans to use the planes, which the US Air Force no longer buys, to provide spare parts to its current fleet.

Jordan received more than $30 million in Pentagon military aid for the fiscal year that ended in September, mainly to help reinforce communications networks around the country’s border areas, as the longtime American partner has faced threats from terror groups such as the Islamic State (IS). The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimated that as many as 4,000 Jordanian fighters left to join the militant group on battlefields across the Middle East and North Africa since 2011.

the Pentagon has pushed US partners in the Middle East and elsewhere to invest in older American weapons systems to keep the production lines humming

Asked whether he saw a threat from Iran, whose nuclear programme has sparked fears in the West and Israeli warnings that it could consider a military action, Mursi said: "We see that all the countries in the region need stability and peaceful co-existence with each other. This cannot be achieved with wars but through political work and special relations between the countries of the region."

Mursi will travel in September to the United States

Mursi said tourism would grow under his rule.