Terrorism

Washington Institute experts assess the immediate fallout of the Syrian government’s advance into SDF-held parts of the northeast, including mutual disinformation campaigns, implications for the Islamic State threat, the terms of new agreements with the Kurds, and the calculus of outside actors like the United States, Israel, and Turkey.

Israel’s agreement with Somaliland will boost its security in the Red Sea Basin and may encourage the United States and other countries to follow suit, though political obstacles and complications abound.

A veteran American diplomat offers a compelling, first-hand account of U.S. foreign policy and crisis management in the Middle East from 2004 to 2020.

Although some Christians have been targeted post-Assad, these incidents are hardly an attempted "genocide," but rather part of the broader internal security challenge affecting all communities in Syria, including the majority population.

Instead of pinning a terrorist designation on the entire group, the Trump administration should focus more narrowly on the national security threats presented by individual Brotherhood branches and organizations, especially those funding Hamas.

Damascus has registered clear gains on arresting and deporting Palestinian militants and cooperating against the Islamic State, though its progress on addressing foreign fighters is mixed, and it has stalled on the more politically complex tracks of normalizing with Israel and controlling IS detention facilities.

As the Trump administration considers delisting Syria, it must maximize the chances of success while preparing for the possibility of failure.

There will be no peace, sovereignty, or reconstruction for postwar Lebanon until more of the group’s weapons are confiscated, but Beirut appears increasingly unwilling to tackle that task outside the southern frontier zone.

The director of the Institute’s counterterrorism program testifies on how the group’s postwar funding crunch will likely spur it to double down on raising money via its extensive criminal networks in the West.