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UNESCO has suspended the voting rights of the United States, two years after it stopped paying dues to the UN's cultural arm in protest over its granting full membership to the Palestinians, according to a UNESCO source. The US has not paid its dues to UNESCO due to the decision by world governments to make Palestine a UNESCO member in 2011. Israel suspended its dues at the same time and also lost voting rights on Friday.

The US decision of not paying UNESCO was blamed on US laws that prohibit funding to any United Nations agency that implies recognition of Palestinian demands for their own state.

The withdrawal of US funding, which to date amounts to about $240m or some 22 percent of UNESCO's budget, has plunged the organisation into a financial crisis, forcing it to cut programmes and slash spending.

In a meeting with current and former U.S officials in Washington during his last visit in the Spring, crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman said that he was interested in spending up to a hundred million dollars to arm the “Lebanese Forces”, the civil war Christian militia turned political party to transform it from a political adversary of Hezbollah into a lethal enemy. According to a participant in the meeting, the crown prince found no interest in this scheme either in Washington or in Beirut. Contrary to its name, this political party does not have an armed wing and its leadership has disavowed publicly the use of force.

The man who condemned civilians in Yemen to a slow death, blockaded neighboring Qatar, cracked down harshly on peaceful activists at home, ordered the brutal killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi abroad, and engaged in a brazen shakedown of other Saudi royals, was in the process of trying to add to his list of depredations, the resumption of armed conflict in Lebanon.

No Arab country could match Iran’s Shi’a foreign legions, with sectarian legions of their own. Mohammed Bin Salman is very aware of this predicament, and of the embarrassing limits of Saudi military power.

A federal court has held Syria’s government liable for the targeting and killing of an American journalist as she reported on the shelling of a rebellious area of Homs in 2012. The decision could help ease the way for war-crimes prosecutions arising from the Syria conflict.

awarded $302.5 million to relatives of the journalist, Marie Colvin. Of that sum, $300 million is punitive damages for what Judge Amy Berman Jackson, in her ruling, called “Syria’s longstanding policy of violence” that aimed “to intimidate journalists” and “suppress dissent.”

The large size of the award sends a message, he said, that “the rule of law is still a force to be reckoned with,” even amid a global trend toward authoritarianism and the killing of journalists like Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian slain in his country’s consulate in Istanbul.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has rejected the shock resignation of his vocal Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who led negotiations for the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. Initially withholding reasons for the resignation in a cryptic Instagram post Monday night, Zarif later attributed his decision to political infighting and being sidelined in foreign policy decisions. On Wednesday morning, Rouhani officially rejected the resignation, writing in a letter: "I think your resignation is against the country's interests and I do not accept it." If Zarif stays in his position, it will likely serve to bolster support for him and the Rouhani administration, some analysts say, blunting initial arguments that the resignation meant a win for Iran's hard-line factions.

Iranian media reported that a majority of parliament members penned a letter to Rouhani on Tuesday asking him to reject the resignation.

Most foreign policy and security decision-making lies in the hands of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, which are far more conservative.

The U.S. Army released on Thursday its history of the Iraq War in an exhaustive two volumes that seeks to draw lessons from the military’s many missteps during the eight-year campaign that left 4,000 U.S. troops dead.

The study, dubbed “The U.S. Army in the Iraq War,” highlights numerous failures during the conflict, including a lack of awareness among military leaders about the sectarian, social and political dynamics in the country that would fuel much of the violence

efforts to train Iraq’s military were insufficient and led to a force that was over-reliant on the U.S

optimism is raging about the potential energy bounty lying underneath the eastern Mediterranean Sea. But energy development could as easily become a casualty as the cure for the region’s tortured geopolitics

Lebanon and Israel are at daggers drawn over new plans for exploration in offshore gas fields in disputed waters, and Hezbollah is using the energy dispute to ratchet up rhetoric against Israel. And this month, a Turkish naval ship intercepted an exploration vessel working in waters off Cyrus, threatening to escalate tensions between the Greek and Turkish halves of the divided island.

Israel’s first two gas fields are running at full speed, and two more could see investment decisions this year, notes Nikos Tsafos, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Meanwhile, Egypt brought the Zohr field, its own mammoth gas discovery, online in record time, which promises to ease a cash crunch in Cairo aggravated by importing pricey gas.

Greece was caught by surprise when Turkey announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Libyan government in Tripoli. The deal demarcated new maritime boundaries between the two countries—boundaries that now run very close to Crete, Greece’s biggest island. Turkey’s aim is to start drilling operations for natural gas in the area, in humiliating disregard of Greece’s territorial claims. The country’s traditional allies, in Washington and across Europe, have done essentially nothing to intervene.

problems were compounded by the conference on Libya organized by Germany in January, where Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met to discuss a possible cease-fire with the two warring Libyan sides, as well as a possible resolution to the conflict. Greece was not invited at all, despite the fact its interests are now directly involved in Libya. To add insult to injury, reports in the German tabloid Bild suggest the decisive factor may have been Turkey’s insistence that Greece not be involved in the negotiations.

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias has suggested that Greece might soon send active personnel to Libya as part of the European Union’s Sofia mission, which enforces an arms embargo on the country’s warring sides (and their patrons), and an array of Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia “to protect critical infrastructure,” presumably against attacks like the ones Iran is believed to have organized against the Abqaiq and Khurais oil fields last year. This marks a break with traditional Greek foreign policy, in which it seeks to remain neutral in active conflicts and maintain friendly relations with larger nearby countries like Iran and Russia.

As pressure builds on Egyptian livelihoods following the devaluation of the pound and the slashing of fuel subsidies in November, some analysts are wondering if another uprising is looming on the horizon for Egypt. They warn that a new wave of unrest would be bloodier than the 2011 uprising and could spell disaster for the country, still reeling from the turbulent post-revolution transition.

Prices of basic food items, medicine, transport and housing have soared, prompting Egyptians to cut spending to make ends meet. The prices of some basic food items have shot up by up to 40%, according to CAPMAS, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics

protests broke out in at least four Egyptian provinces March 7. The demonstrations were triggered by bread shortages in some bakeries after Supply Minister Aly Moselhy announced a new bread subsidies system that he defended as “necessary to curb waste and corruption.” Hundreds of demonstrators blocked roads and cut railways in Alexandria, Giza, Kafr El Sheikh and Minya in protest at the minister’s abrupt decision to reduce the share of bread allotted to holders of paper ration cards to 500 loaves per bakery a day from the original 1,000 and 4,000 loaves (depending on the number of consumers in the bakery’s vicinity.)

Decisions about U.S. aid are often no longer being governed by career professionals applying a rigorous review of applicants and their capabilities. Over the last two years, political pressure, particularly from the office of Vice President Mike Pence, had seeped into aid deliberations and convinced key decision-makers that unless they fell in line, their jobs could be at stake

ProPublica viewed internal emails and conducted interviews with nearly 40 current and former U.S. officials and aid professionals that shed new light on the success of Pence and his allies in influencing the government’s long-standing process for awarding foreign aid.

“There are very deliberate procurement guidelines that have developed over a number of years to guard precisely against this kind of behavior,”

in Somaliland, there is never any question that you are in a real country. After all, the place has all the trappings of countryhood. When I arrived at the airport, a customs officer in a Somaliland uniform checked my Somaliland visa, issued by the Somaliland consulate in Washington DC. At the airport, there was a Somaliland flag. During my visit, I paid Somaliland shillings to drivers of cabs with Somaliland plates who took me to the offices of ministers of the Somaliland government

according to the US Department of State, the United Nations, the African Union and every other government on Earth, I was not in Somaliland, a poor but stable and mostly functional country on the Horn of Africa. I was in Somalia

Unlike South Sudan before its independence, Somaliland’s claim for statehood is based not on a redrawing of colonial borders, but an attempt to re-establish them. Unlike Taiwan, it is shackled not to a richer, more powerful country, but a poorer, weaker one. Unlike Palestine, its quest for independence is not a popular cause for activists around the world

If the New York Times’s story about the Justice Department’s handling of the case of  Turkish bank—and President Trump’s interference in that case—had broken any other week, it would be a very big deal. A week before the election, the country inured to the president’s propensity to abuse law enforcement power, it has barely merited a yawn.  The case is worth your time.

Berman’s bizarre firing may have been related to a pressure campaign by Barr and the White House to frustrate a high-profile investigation by Berman’s office. The story of Trump and Barr’s efforts to hamstring the investigation into the Turkish bank, Halkbank, says a great deal about Trump’s abuses of law enforcement, his financial entanglements abroad and his susceptibility to foreign influence.

an alleged scheme on the part of the state-owned Turkish bank to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran

Turkey’s foreign minister announced on Sunday a ban on all Syrian aircraft entering his country’s airspace, days after the authorities discovered what they said were Russian military munitions on board a passenger plane bound for Damascus.

followed Syria’s ban on Turkish aircraft a day earlier and became the latest volley in an increasingly aggressive dispute between the two neighbors over Syria’s devastating civil war.

Mr. Davutoglu said Turkey would not be open for talks with Mr. Assad’s government unless violence against civilians ceased.

Vanishingly few modern Arab leaders have ever voluntarily stepped down, even when terminally ill, incapacitated, or deeply unpopular (none of which apply to the outgoing emir)

the emir's decision is as shocking in its own way as were the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings

Those crafting the official version of the handover have therefore been exceedingly keen to present it as a historic but normal move, one that might even be emulated by other Arab monarchs -- were they as bold and farsighted as the departing Sheikh Hamad.

The most critical assumption that Israeli officials have presented publicly for the past 18 years -- long before the firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stepped on the scene -- is that the Iranian government is irrational and that Iran constitutes an existential threat to Israel. These departing points in the Israeli analysis eliminate all options on Iran with the exception of preventive military action. An adversary who isn’t rational cannot be deterred nor contained, because such an actor -- by definition -- does not make decisions based on a cost-benefit analysis. In addition, if the foe is presented as an existential threat, then preventive action is the sole rational response. These Israeli assumptions short-cut the entire policy process and skip all the steps that normally are taken before a state determines that force is necessary. Judging by Israel’s rhetoric, it is easy to conclude that these beliefs are genuinely held as undisputable truths by the Israeli security apparatus. But if judged by its actions rather than its rhetoric, a very different image emerges -- one that shows an astute Israeli appreciation for the complexity of Iran’s security calculations and decision-making processes, and a recognition that conventional arguments are insufficient to convince Washington to view Iran from an Israeli lens.

Goldberg’s lengthy essay fails to recognize that throughout the 1980s, in spite of the Iranian government’s venomous rhetoric against Israel and its anti-Israeli ideology, the Jewish state sought to retain relations with Iran and actively aided Iran in the Iraq-Iran war. Only three days after Iraqi troops entered Iranian territory, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan interrupted a private visit to Vienna to hold a press conference to urge the United States -- in the middle of the hostage crisis -- to forget the past and help Iran keep up its defenses.

it wasn’t new Iranian capabilities or a sudden discovery of Iran’s anti-Israeli rhetoric that prompted the depiction of Iran as an existential threat. Rather, it was the fear that in the new post-Cold War environment in which Israel had lost much of its strategic significance to Washington, improved relations between the US and Iran could come at the expense of Israeli security interests. Iran would become emboldened and the U.S. would no longer seek to contain its growth. The balance of power would shift from Israel towards Iran and the Jewish state would no longer be able rely on Washington to control Tehran. "The Great Satan will make up with Iran and forget about Israel," Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University in Israel told me during a visit to Jerusalem.

The White House said prior to Tuesday's meeting that Obama considered it "tremendously important" to listen to congress about the war, but would not base his decision on the mood on Capitol Hill or waning public support for the war.

Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States has said that more US troops are needed in his country to help promote stability and train the domestic security forces.

"We are very grateful for what the United States has done for Afghanistan; we respect the decision of the [US] president," he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

For Russia, the military and political engagement in Syria is an opportunity not only to showcase the operational capabilities of their weapons but also the political “muscle” behind them. 

A quick look on arms transfers databases reveals a growing demand for Russian arms in the Middle East. In 2012, Russia delivered weapons to four countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE – in addition to Syria and Iran). Five years later, in 2017, it delivered weapons to eight countries (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE and Turkey – in addition to Syria and Iran), and sales grew in variety, size and value. Compared to 2012, the sales, according to announced figures and estimates, at least doubled in size, both because of the expansion to new markets and increased sales to traditional partners

The Russian military industrial complex showcased the best it has to offer in Syria, deploying a vast array of naval, air and ground weapon systems. Furthermore, the conflict has served as a major testing ground