Author: Michael Rubin
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Western Tourists Should Leave Istanbul
A vendor’s cart awaits tourists in early morning Istanbul, Turkey. Shutterstock The largest Kurdish city in the world is neither Diyarbakir in the Kurdish region of Turkey nor Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, but rather Istanbul. Decades of Turkish repression, insurgency, underinvestment and Turkey’s bulldozing and burning of Kurdish towns and cities forced many…
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The United States Needs to Prepare to Kill Turks in Syria
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a file photo. Shutterstock The celebrations that ended the more than half-century of Assad family tyranny in Syria are over. In the short term, Russia and Iran are losers; Turkey is the winner. After all, Turkey was the prime backer of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham rebel group that swept…
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The Lesson from Bashar al-Assad’s Collapse
After Assad’s fall in Syria, long-term rulers in Iran, Egypt, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, and Jordan may also be vulnerable to the same dynamics that led to Assad’s ouster. Shutterstock The Lesson Other Countries Must Take from Assad’s Collapse: After more than 13 years of civil war, the final offensive and collapse of the Assad family’s 53-year…
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Could There Be an Arab Uprising in Iran?
A map of Iran from the World Atlas. Shutterstock Just over a century ago, Reza Khan—the Persian military chief charged by Shah Ahmad Qajar (r. 1909-1925) with subduing restive tribes and regional leaders—sent 3,000 troops to Muhammara, today’s Khorramshahr, to crush an uprising led by Sheikh Khazal bin Jabir Khan, a local tribal leader who,…
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Should the West Trust the Syrian Opposition’s Sudden Moderation?
The Syrian opposition group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham takes control of the Aleppo citadel on December 2, 2024. Shutterstock The U.S. intelligence community considers Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkey-backed Syrian opposition group that is today on the verge of taking Damascus, to be a terrorist group. “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a coalition of northern Syria-based…
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Would an Islamist Syria be Worse than a Weak Assad?
A poster depicting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Shutterstock After years of a stalemate in which the Russia- and Iran-backed regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had the upper hand, Turkey-backed and Al Qaeda-linked Sunni groups such as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham swept through Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, and pushed south. The collapse of the Syrian…
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The Fiction of Yemen’s Government Shouldn’t Be a Straitjacket
Yemeni government and military leaders visit the Haradh border front with Saudi Arabia in May 2024. Shutterstock On November 10, 2024, U.S. and British forces reportedly struck at Houthi weapons depots in and around Sana’a. While culling the Houthi arsenal is a strategic interest, the failure of Washington and London to address Yemeni governance realistically…
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With Trump Returning, Saudi Arabia Should Stop Appeasing the Houthis
Iran-backed Houthi rebels have attacked cargo ships in the Red Sea region, leading to rising tensions with the West. Shutterstock It has been more than a decade since Iranian-backed Houthis seized the Yemeni capital Sana’a. Initially, Saudi Arabia sought to counter the Houthi onslaught. Many progressives reflexively took the Houthi side. Ideology motivated some. Too…
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Biden’s Iran Diplomacy Is Killing Iranians
President Joe Biden in August 2024. Shutterstock Between October 2023 and October 2024, the Islamic Republic executed more than 800 people. That most of these deaths occurred under a reformist president should not surprise anyone. Across the broad sweep of the Islamic Republic’s 45-year history, capital punishment spikes during periods of reformist rule. If the…