President Donald Trump, center, with various Middle East advisers and U.S. officials in the Oval Office at the White House, Washington, Aug. 12, 2020 (AP photo by Andrew Harnik).

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. The usual rush by an outgoing administration in Washington to tie up loose ends at the end of its term is, not surprisingly, taking on a different tone with President Donald Trump. In the Middle East, the Trump administration is racing to seal last-minute diplomatic deals and lock in its so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran, […]

An F-35 arriving back at the British Royal Air Force's Akrotiri base in Cyprus, after flying in operational missions against the Islamic State, June 24, 2019 (Press Association photo by Jacob King via AP).

In a long-anticipated move, the White House recently notified Congress of its intent to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates. The Trump administration was able to overcome Israel’s initial objections to the move, which followed the normalization agreement that the U.S. brokered between the UAE and Israel. If the deal goes through, it will make the UAE only the second Middle Eastern country after Israel to fly the F-35, though Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also expressed interest. Turkey had been a partner in developing the F-35 but was kicked out of the program by the […]

President Donald Trump meets with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, April 9, 2019 (AP photo by Evan Vucci).

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. Plainclothes security agents showed up at a beach resort in the Sinai last week, looking for Karim Ennarah, the director of the criminal justice unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a Cairo-based NGO. Egyptian state security officers had apparently looked for Ennarah at his home in Cairo the day before, only to learn he […]

Polisario Front rebel soldiers in the Western Sahara region of Tifariti, May 20, 2008 (AP photo by Daniel Ochoa de Olza).

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. The decades-long dispute between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front in the region of Western Sahara is threatening to erupt into a full-blown war. Frustrated by the lack of international attention to its cause and angered by a recent Moroccan military operation in a United Nations-monitored buffer zone, the Polisario Front broke a three-decade-long cease-fire agreement last weekend. U.N. officials are scrambling to restore the broken deal, as […]

Russian peacekeepers patrol an area in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Nov. 14, 2020 (AP photo by Dmitry Lovetsky).

Armenia and Azerbaijan signed an agreement last week to end six weeks of bloody fighting over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Russia-brokered deal requires Armenia to give up much of the territory it controlled prior to the recent hostilities, and calls for Moscow to maintain a peacekeeping force of just under 2,000 soldiers. The agreement was widely seen as a win for Russia, which has regained substantial influence in the South Caucasus region, and for Turkey, whose military support for Azerbaijan was critical to the gains it made on the battlefield. Western powers were largely left out in the […]

Russian peacekeepers’ military vehicles at a check point in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Nov. 17, 2020 (AP photo by Sergei Grits).

In late September, the frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh rapidly heated up. The six weeks of full-scale war that followed left thousands dead and tens of thousands more displaced. Unlike previous rounds of fighting that resulted in little exchange of territory, however, Azerbaijan’s well-armed and well-prepared military was able to make substantial gains on the battlefield, with significant support from neighboring Turkey. Just as Azerbaijani forces looked poised to advance deep into Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia brokered a deal between the two sides to bring the fighting to an end last week, under terms that […]

A Syrian boy rides a bicycle through a devastated part of the old city of Homs, Syria, Feb. 26, 2016 (AP photo by Hassan Ammar).

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. Nov. 13 marked a grim milestone in Syria: 50 years since Hafez al-Assad, then a young Alawite air force officer from the coastal hills outside Latakia, seized power in a bloodless coup. At the time, it was just the latest in a string of coups and countercoups in Damascus—starting with the Arab world’s first military putsch […]

Posters of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a protest marking the two-year anniversary of his death, near the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 2, 2020 (AP photo by Emrah Gurel).

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. One of the few countries that waited a conspicuously long time to congratulate Joe Biden on his election win over Donald Trump was Saudi Arabia. King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, finally issued a statement, via the Saudi state news agency, applauding President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, more than 24 […]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses ruling party lawmakers at the parliament, in Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 28, 2020 (AP photo).

As a terrorist attack was unfolding late Monday night in Vienna, where four people were killed and 22 others injured in a shooting rampage on crowded bars, speculation about the culprit, unsurprisingly, was rife on social media. Many of those offering theories were quick to accuse Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of stoking the rage of militant Islamists. There is no indication that the attacker—a young extremist who it turned out had previously been convicted in Austria for trying to join the Islamic State—was motivated by Erdogan, as Austrian authorities have pointed to his ISIS sympathies and the Islamic State’s […]

Then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden with American service members at al-Faw Palace at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq, Jan. 13, 2011 (AP photo by Maya Alleruzzo).

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. I watched Barack Obama win America’s presidency from Damascus. I still remember when the race was called, on whatever international news network was carried on satellite TV in Syria, sometime in the middle of the night. Seven months later, Obama traveled to Cairo, to give a major speech to the Arab world. Although its promise of […]