Category: Middle East
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Representative Rashida Tlaib has called for the arrest of an Israeli soldier linked to the killing of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old girl whose death in Gaza in 2024 became internationally known. What a legislator can and cannot set in motion.
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US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met Benjamin Netanyahu during an unannounced visit to Israel. Unannounced trips are arranged that way for specific reasons, and which reason applies tells you something about what the visit is for.
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Qatar says talks between Iran and the United States are ongoing while warning of a wider regional conflict. Both halves of that statement are doing work, and Doha’s role as intermediary explains why it is the one saying it.
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Saudi Arabia has cancelled the 2026 edition of the investment forum known as “Davos in the Desert” amid Houthi attacks. Cancelling a conference is a small act with a large signal attached, and the signal is about insurance and aviation as much as politics.
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The IOM is asking for 19 million dollars as displacement in Lebanon surges again. Buried in the same reporting is a small figure about date bars handed out at Syrian crossings — and it says more about what agencies expect than the headline numbers do.
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Rome prosecutors have opened an investigation naming Israel Katz and twelve senior officials over the alleged mistreatment of flotilla detainees. What an investigation of this kind can and cannot reach — and why most never get to a courtroom.
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Yemen’s government says the Houthis fired two missiles at Aden airport with 151 passengers present, and claims advances in Marib. The precise passenger figure is doing deliberate work, and Marib is contested for reasons that long predate the regional war.
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Several Israeli opposition figures are positioning to succeed Benjamin Netanyahu. The personalities matter less than the arithmetic: no party has ever won an Israeli election outright, and the job goes to whoever sixty-one seats can be built around.
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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says the Strait of Hormuz is closed and that three tankers have been hit, one of them carrying two million barrels on what it called an unauthorised route. Whether a declared closure becomes a real one is decided by insurers, not announcements.
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Hardline MPs want Iran’s foreign minister impeached for meeting a US envoy without authorisation. The head of the Supreme National Security Council says the talks were approved. Both cannot be right — and that is the story.