When Secretary of State Marco Rubio touched down in Abu Dhabi on June 23 for his first visit to the Gulf since the Iran war began, he offered a telling description of his purpose. “We want to make sure their views are…

When Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa officially assumed power after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in January 2025, he pledged to preserve “civil peace,” rebuild Syria’s military and security institutions, and restore state authority after years of fragmentation and civil war. It was an appealing proposition. Under Assad, weak…

The Israel-Lebanon agreement at the very least works against the equation established by the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Iran and the U.S. As Hussein Aboubakr Mansour observes, this equation is as disturbing to Gulf governments as it is to Jerusalem: If…

U.S. President Donald Trump launched the war against Iran in part to remove the ballistic-missile threat he long railed against. On June 17, he announced that Iran can keep them. At the G7 summit in France, Trump said Iran’s missiles only “hurt a…