The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

A week into a rebel offensive, Syria is the potential fulcrum of a tectonic reordering of Middle Eastern geopolitics with President Bashar al-Assad as a key player. That is if Mr. Al-Assad is willing to play ball this time around.

Syrian rebels know what they want. Having captured two of Syria’s four largest cities, Aleppo and Hama, the insurgents are gunning for Homs, the country’s third largest urban center, and then the capital Damascus. That is what Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would want if it doesn’t significantly accept Turkish apple carts In Washington, Moscow, and Tehran.

Gulf leaders told Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati what they said to Palestinians when he asked the region’s wealthy energy exporters to fund the reconstruction of areas devastated by Israel’s war machine: “We will not pour money into a black hole. Call us when you have put your house in order.."

Israeli commander’s West Bank woes spotlight a military tied up in knots by James M. Dorsey

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s world just shrunk considerably.

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, elevated to new heights the symbiotic relationship between hardliners on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Their actions helped one another sabotage compromise resolutions of their perennial dispute.

Appalled by Israel’s carpet bombing of Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon war, US President Ronald Reagan didn’t mince his words with then-Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin. “I was angry. I told him it had to stop, or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately & said the symbol of his war was becoming a picture of a 7-month-old baby with its arms blown off,” Mr. Reagan noted in his diary. The August 1982 phone call between Messrs. Reagan and Begin provides a template for the United States’ ability to twist Israel’s arm and the limits of America’s influence.

Gaza is gearing up to be a war on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s watch that he doesn’t want but may be unable to end.

Predicting President Donald J. Trump’s Middle East policy and his attitude toward Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu amounts to reading tea leaves. The leaves are the cast of characters included in Mr. Trump’s administration when he takes office and who he excluded. Yet even that could prove to be misleading.

Israel may soon return tens of thousands of evacuees to their homes along the border with Lebanon, with or without a ceasefire with Hezbollah. The return of the evacuees would allow Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to tout a significant success in his 13-month-long war in Gaza and Lebanon, even if it may be short-lived without a ceasefire, if not in an equitable negotiated resolution of Israel’s disputes with Lebanon and the Palestinians.

The Middle East may not preoccupy Donald J. Trump. Still, the president-elect preoccupies the Middle East as it attempts to figure out how he will handle the wars ravaging Gaza and Lebanon and threatening to spark an all-out conflagration between Israel and Iran.

Donald J. Trump’s electoral victory promises to give Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu a free hand, at least temporarily, to deal with Iran and its non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed is manoeuvring to replace Qatar as the main Gulf player in post-war Gaza with the backing of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Messrs. Bin Zayed and Netanyahu see humanitarian aid provided by the Emirates and the prospect of UAE-funded post-war reconstruction as a way to marginalise Hamas and drive a wedge between the group’s leadership and Hamas-appointed civil administrators.

The recent spike in Middle East hostilities has underscored the urgency of a ceasefire. The death toll from Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon has topped 2,800 since the beginning of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. More than 12,000 have been hurt, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported Wednesday. With the Middle East situation getting more serious, James M. Dorsey and Wang Jin discuss on CGTN what can be done to keep the already dire humanitarian crisis from worsening,

Next week’s US election rather than a US-led push for ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, is likely to determine the course of Israel’s wars, no more so than with Iran.

Two incidents in the past week shine a spotlight on Israel’s loss of a moral compass.

James M. Dorsey tells Radio Islam's Middle East report that next week’s US election could determine what happens next in the Middle East

James M. Dorsey discusses Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon on CNA 938

An Israeli airstrike on Iran has sparked fears of an all-out regional war. BFM 89.9 asks James M. Dorsey, adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies whether de-escalation is possible and what impact the U.S. Presidential election will have on the ongoing

This weekend’s carefully calibrated Israeli retaliatory strikes at Iranian military targets could lower the risk of an all-out Middle East war, particularly if Iran decides not to respond. The Iranian military said as much by suggesting in a statement that Iran reserved the right to defend itself but may not respond to the attack if Israel agreed to ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared to back the military by declaring the armed forces would decide how the Islamic Republic should respond. By avoiding escalatory tit-for-tat attacks, Iran would ensure that the international community remains focused on the wars in Gaza and Lebanon at a time when Israel’s support network is fracturing. With Israeli-Iranian tensions constrained, the fractures in Israel’s US and European diplomatic and military defence shield and the Jewish state’s existing and potential regional partnerships would likely return to the forefront, potentially with a vengeance.