English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For  February 07/2026
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 05/38-48/:"‘You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. ‘You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 06-07/2026
Hezbollah the Iranin Armed Proxy is nothing but terror and terrorism/Elias Bejjani/February 06/2026
The important thing is to get rid of the mullahs' regime and all their criminal arms./Elias Bejjani/February 06/ 2026
The Signing Anniversary of the Infamous "Memorandum of Understanding" Between Hezbollah and Michel Aoun is a Cursed One of Collaboration, Treason, and a Iscariotism/Elias Bejjani/February 06/ 2026
Inside Every Human Being There Is a Beast ...The true struggle within every human being is between the image of God within them and the distortion of that image/Elias Bejjani/February 02/2026
Hezbollah accepts resignation of senior security official Wafiq Safa, sources say
Graham ends meeting with Lebanese army chief over Hezbollah stance
Israel targets south and east Lebanon with series of strikes
Aoun and Issa discuss developments and Haykal's visit to US
Aoun: Political contacts part of arms monopolization plan
Berri stresses that elections will be held in May
Lebanese escaping Syria now rely on Hezbollah for safety
Lebanon and Syria sign prisoners transfer deal
Lebanese army must be given 'means' to disarm Hezbollah, French FM says
Fayyad says Hezbollah has no 'armed appearances' north of Litani
Jumblat: National unity more important than US-Israeli dictations
The south-north Litani ambiguity: Bassil discusses thorny Hezbollah disarmament
Cash-strapped Lebanon finds itself sitting on gold mine, as prices surge
No Justice, NO Peace: Lokman Slim’s Laugh in the Face of His Killers/Makram Rabah/Now Lebanon/February 06/2026
Is HIZBOLLAH a terrorist Organization? Let us find out/Z Ghost/@ZGhostbook/Februarry 06/2026
Israeli operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah: January 26–February 1, 2026/David Daoud/FDD's Long War Journal/published on February 03/2026

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 06-07/2026
Iran FM says talks atmosphere 'very positive', more talks to be held with US
Iran rules out US demand to end uranium enrichment during Oman talks, diplomat says
Iran says talks with US in Oman were 'good start', will continue
What is Trump's 'Board of Peace'?
US urges new three-way nuclear deal with Russia and China
A man detonates explosive belt during arrest attempt in Iraq, injuring 2 security members
In a Nigerian village, extremists issued a call to prayer and then slaughtered those who turned up
Suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque on Islamabad's outskirts kills at least 31 and wounds scores

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 06-07/2026
Syria's Genocidal 'Peace': Trump's 'Friends' Have Been Setting Him Up with Jihadists Faking Tolerance/Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/February 06/2026
Why is the United Nations Chief Calling for Israel's Destruction?....The United Nations Does Not Stop War, It Conserves War/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/February 06/2026
Shared vision behind Saudi-Turkish economic momentum/Dr. Sinem Cengiz/Arab News/February 06, 2026
US should build a lasting relationship with Central Asia/Luke Coffey/Arab News/February 06, 2026
Rafah is not a favor — and the Board of Peace must ensure it is only the beginning/Hani Hazaimeh/Arab News/February 06, 2026
Financialization will not improve global health/Walter O. Ochieng and Tom Achoki/Arab News/February 06, 2026
Selected X tweets for February 06/2026

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 06-07/2026
Hezbollah the Iranin Armed Proxy is nothing but terror and terrorism
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/02/151872/
Elias Bejjani/February 06/2026
Hezbollah is a terrorist, a million terrorists, a criminal, a drug dealer, a money launderer, a fundamentalist, a gang of villains, and an enemy of Lebanon, the Lebanese people, and all the foundations of global peace.

The Signing Anniversary of the Infamous "Memorandum of Understanding" Between Hezbollah and Michel Aoun is a Cursed One of Collaboration, Treason, and a Iscariotism
Elias Bejjani/February 06/ 2026
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/02/151833/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXCTz9QXVVU&t=396s
"Woe to you, destroyer, you who have not been destroyed! Woe to you, betrayer, you who have not been betrayed! When you stop destroying, you will be destroyed; when you stop betraying, you will be betrayed. Lord, be gracious to us; we long for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress."Prophet Isaiah (33:01-02):
The Lebanese people were told on the day the Memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) on February 6, 2006, that the primary goal was to bring Hezbollah back into the fold of the Lebanese state and to "Lebanonize" it. Today, 20 years later, the exact opposite has happened. Hezbollah has nullified the state and all its components, turned it into a compliant tool in its hands, and placed it in confrontation with the majority of the Lebanese people, Arab countries, and most of the world countries—all to serve the Iranian sectarian, terrorist, and expansionist military imperial project.
This "100%  Iranian "Mullah" jihadist armed proxy has practically and realistically transformed Lebanon into a war base, a military camp, and an Iranian weapons depot. In a quick review of the "MoU’s" clauses, we see that the most dangerous is the tenth clause, which addresses Hezbollah’s weapons. This clause describes Hezbollah's arms as a "sacred means."
What is striking about this heretical description is that it is the first time in Lebanon's history that a group other than Hezbollah (the FPM) considers weapons to be a sacred means. Consequently, dealing with Hezbollah’s weapons according to this concept is akin to dealing with deities. Here lies the dilemma and the difficulty—even the impossibility—of discussing this "sacred" matter with Hezbollah's leadership and its patron, Iran.
When the means are sacred, the end becomes divine. What is astonishing about this "sanctity" is the acceptance of this blasphemous heresy by the other signatory, the FPM, which is supposed to be a sovereignist, pro-independence, secular organization resistant to occupation forces. Furthermore, it was and remains deeply deplorable to sign a document with a religious, sectarian, Iranian armed proxy whose project is Iranian, stating that its weapons are sacred, while they are, first and last, sectarian, Iranian, militia-controlled weapons—neither legitimate nor subject to the Lebanese state or its command.
Indeed, this "divine" concept of weapons and the "holy" objectives for their use facilitated the Hezbollah's "mini-state" and its Iranian reference to seize the state and gain full control over it. This strange, bizarre, anti-sovereign, anti-independence, and unconstitutional reality has manifested strongly on many abnormal occasions, including Hezbollah's external wars and terrorist operations, its militia incursions inside Lebanon, and the series of assassinations it committed.
"If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!" (Mark 09:42-48; Luke 17:01-02)
Twenty years after the signing of this infamous "MoU," Lebanon and its people have reaped nothing but national disasters in all forms—sovereign, national, constitutional, security, and economic—in addition to the disruption, and even destruction, of Lebanon’s international, Arab, regional, and global relations. In practice, the document was and remains a tool for destroying, marginalizing, and confiscating the state in favor of the "mini-state," and for dominating all state decisions, (decision making process) large and small, especially the decision of peace and war.
Some Local Harvest of the "MoU" Direct and Indirect:
*Preventing the establishment of the state and obstructing the restoration of sovereignty and independence.
*Hegemony of the "mini-state" over the state.
*Disabling the constitution, marginalizing the legislative and executive branches, and Hezbollah's dominance over all state institutions.
*Imposing Hezbollah’s will on presidential and parliamentary elections, and the appointment of the cabinet.
*An economic collapse unprecedented in Lebanon’s modern history.
*Unprecedentedly high levels of unemployment and poverty.
*Mass migration affecting all segments and sects.
*Absence of the middle class and the spread of corrupt deals, brokerage, smuggling, and defiance of law and security.
*Dangerous security chaos and the total absence of accountability.
*Opening the borders and Hezbollah’s involvement in regional wars for the benefit of the Iranian project.
*Imposing a hybrid electoral law that serves the Iranian project.
*Imposing the heresy of the so-called "Army, People, and Resistance" trilogy.
*Invasions of Beirut and the Lebanon Mountain region, toppling governments, and a series of assassinations.
*The "prostitution" of the constitution in the shameful "Doha Agreement".
*Stagnation of agricultural crops and the destruction of the Lebanese industrial sector due to Hezbollah's participation in the Syrian war and the closure of export routes.
*Disruption of the service sector (electricity, water, waste management, transport, health, etc.) as the state is paralyzed and its decisions are hijacked.
*Severe international, Arab, regional and global restrictions and sanctions on the banking sector following accusations against Hezbollah of money laundering and drug trafficking.
*Hezbollah causing the 2006 war with Israel.
*Hezbollah waging the recent war on Israel in support of Gaza which is still going on.
Some Arab Harvest of the "MoU" Direct and Indirect:
*Damaging Lebanon's relations with most Arab countries, especially the Gulf states, due to Hezbollah's attacks on their regimes and targeting their lands with terrorist operations for the benefit of Iran’s rulers, threatening the fate of about half a million Lebanese working there.
*Destroying Arab and all kinds of tourism to Lebanon and several Arab countries banning their citizens from traveling to Lebanon.
Some International Harvest of the MoU (Direct and Indirect):
*Obstructing the implementation of international resolutions related to Lebanon, 1559, 1680, 1701, the Armistice Agreement, the Taif Agreement and the recent "cessation of hostilities" agreement between Lebanon and Israel..
*Branding Lebanon with terrorism as Hezbollah is listed on terror lists in most countries, including many Arab nations.
*Harassing Lebanese citizens regarding travel to many countries due to Hezbollah's designation as a terrorist organization.
In short, the document contributed significantly to Lebanon remaining a state without its own decision-making power, unable to control its borders, with its institutions nearly paralyzed, hindering the rise of institutions and handing the state over to the "mini-state"... and the list goes on.

Inside Every Human Being There Is a Beast ...The true struggle within every human being is between the image of God within them and the distortion of that image
Elias Bejjani/February 02/2026
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/02/151757/
Christian faith teaches us a fundamental truth: the human being was created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26) and was called to live in communion with Him, in love and holiness. Yet, because of the Fall, every person carries within himself a wounded nature. In this wounded nature lies what can be described, in spiritual terms, as an inner “beast”—a force of uncontrolled instincts and desires that emerges when the human person separates himself from God’s grace.
This beast is not an independent power. It is not stronger than the human person by nature. It remains dormant as long as the person lives in humility, generosity, and love, and remains faithful to the gifts and responsibilities entrusted to him by his Heavenly Father.
The beast sleeps when the human being lives according to love, because love is not merely a moral value; love is God Himself:
“God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).
As long as a person is conscious of his holiness, of his identity as a child of God by grace, and remains faithful to God’s commandments, the inner beast remains restrained. The awareness of standing one day before God’s judgment is essential to Christian life, for Scripture tells us:
“For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Romans 14:10).
On the last day, when God reclaims from the human being the gift of life, the soul will stand alone before Him. At that moment, wealth, power, and earthly achievements lose all value. They remain behind, because:
“For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7).
The only thing a person carries with him is his spiritual provision—his faith expressed through works of love. As Christ says:
“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work” (Revelation 22:12).
According to what this spiritual provision contains, the Lord will either say:
“Well done, good and faithful servant… enter into the joy of your Lord” (Matthew 25:21),
or the soul will face separation from God if it is empty of love, mercy, and good works, and filled only with greed, pride, and unrepented sin, where:
“Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48).
The inner beast awakens when faith weakens, hope fades, and the human being falls into temptation. At that point, the person returns to the “old self” and abandons the new life given through baptism by water and the Holy Spirit, forgetting the words of Scripture:
“Put off the old man… and put on the new man, which was created according to God” (Ephesians 4:22–24).
When a person distances himself from God, disobeys His commandments, and lives as if God does not exist, the beast within rises and dominates. Sin then becomes not an isolated act, but a way of life, because:
“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
In this light, Jesus presents to us the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16–21). This man was not condemned for being rich, but for believing that his life depended on his possessions. He spoke only to himself and not to God. He trusted his barns, not his Creator. Therefore God said to him:
“Fool! This night your soul will be required of you.”
This parable reveals a deep spiritual truth: the true beast within the human person is the illusion of self-sufficiency and independence from God. When God is removed from the center of life, the human being becomes a slave to money, power, and pleasure. As Jesus teaches:
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).
This truth applies not only to individuals, but also to societies and political systems. The crisis of our world—and of Lebanon in particular—is not only political or economic, but spiritual. It is the crisis of humanity that has forgotten God. Therefore Christ’s warning remains timeless:
“What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).
In conclusion, the true struggle within every human being is between the image of God and its distortion. Salvation does not come by suppressing the beast through human effort alone, but by returning to God through repentance, grace, and a life rooted in faith and love. For in God alone there is true life:
“But now having been set free from sin… you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life” (Romans 6:22).

Hezbollah accepts resignation of senior security official Wafiq Safa, sources say
Reuters/February 06/2026
BEIRUT, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hezbollah accepted the resignation of senior security official Wafiq Safa on Friday, the first time ​an official of his rank has stepped down, sources ‌familiar with the group's thinking told Reuters. Safa, who heads Hezbollah's liaison and coordination unit ‌responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies, survived an Israeli assassination attempt in October 2024. The sources said Safa had submitted his resignation some time ago, but the group's leadership accepted it on Friday after he ⁠insisted on his decision. ‌They did not give a reason for his resignation. Israel and Lebanon agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in 2024 ‍to end more than a year of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah, which had culminated in Israeli strikes that severely weakened the Iran-backed militant group. ​Since then, the sides have traded accusations of ceasefire violations. Lebanon ‌has faced growing pressure from the U.S. and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, and its leaders fear that Israel could dramatically escalate strikes across the battered country to push Lebanon's leaders to confiscate Hezbollah's arsenal more quickly. Hezbollah has fought numerous conflicts with Israel since it was ⁠founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982. ​It kept its arms after the end ​of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, using them against Israeli troops who occupied the south until 2000. Safa, whom Middle ‍East media reports said ⁠was born in 1960, oversaw negotiations that led to a 2008 deal in which Hezbollah exchanged the bodies of Israeli ⁠soldiers captured in 2006 for Lebanese prisoners in Israel. The 2006 incident triggered a ‌34-day war with Israel.

Graham ends meeting with Lebanese army chief over Hezbollah stance
JNS Staff/(Februay 06/2026
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham terminated talks with Gen. Rodolphe Haykal after he refused to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Thursday he had abruptly ended a meeting with Lebanon’s military chief in Beirut after the latter declined to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization, raising fresh doubts about the Lebanese army’s reliability as a security partner.
“I asked him point blank if he believes Hezbollah is a terrorist organization,” Graham wrote on X, referring to a meeting with Lebanese Armed Forces commander Gen. Rodolphe Haykal. “He said, ‘No, not in the context of Lebanon.’ With that, I ended the meeting.”
Graham said Hezbollah is “clearly a terrorist organization,” noting that it has “American blood on its hands,” including the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. He emphasized that Hezbollah has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by both Republican and Democratic administrations since 1997. “As long as this attitude exists from the Lebanese Armed Forces, I don’t think we have a reliable partner in them,” Graham wrote. “I am tired of the double speak in the Middle East. Too much is at stake.”The Lebanese Armed Forces announced on Jan. 8 that it had completed the first phase of its national disarmament plan, expanding its operational control in Southern Lebanon as part of efforts to “extend the state’s authority exclusively through its own forces over the entirety of Lebanese territory.”According to the Lebanese Armed Forces, the first phase focused on increasing troop presence, securing key areas and extending operational control in the South Litani sector, excluding areas it said remain under Israeli occupation. Israel continues to hold five strategic hilltop positions inside Southern Lebanon along the border, citing the need to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding attack capabilities near Israeli communities. The Lebanese army’s five-phase “Shield of the Homeland” plan is intended to disarm all non-state militias in Lebanon, with a focus on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization. Hezbollah opened a second front against Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel, launching sustained rocket and missile attacks on northern Israeli communities. The fighting ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire on Nov. 27, 2024, which required Hezbollah’s disarmament and the deployment of the Lebanese army to ensure a monopoly over arms in the country.
Israel has repeatedly said it expects the Lebanese government and military to fulfill those commitments in full. In a statement on Jan. 8, the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem said the ceasefire agreement “states clearly that Hezbollah must be fully disarmed,” calling this “imperative for Israel’s security and Lebanon’s future.”The Prime Minister’s Office said that while steps taken by the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Armed Forces toward disarmament are “an encouraging beginning,” they remain “far from sufficient,” citing Hezbollah’s continued efforts to rearm and rebuild its terrorist infrastructure with Iranian support. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said, “The facts remain that extensive Hezbollah military infrastructure still exists south of the Litani River.”“The goal of disarming Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon remains far from being achieved,” the ministry said, releasing footage it said shows Hezbollah sites that have yet to be dismantled. The statement added that Hezbollah continues to rearm with Iranian support, saying it was “regrettable” that there have been instances of cooperation between elements within the Lebanese Armed Forces and Hezbollah.“It should be emphasized that the IDF’s strikes against Hezbollah do not delay the goal of disarming the organization—on the contrary, they advance it,” the Foreign Ministry said. The IDF said it launched a wave of strikes on Thursday night targeting Hezbollah terror infrastructure in “several areas in Lebanon.”

Israel targets south and east Lebanon with series of strikes
Associated Press/February 06/2026
An Israeli drone dropped Friday a stun grenade on the outskirts of Yaroun after overnight artillery shelling on the southern border town. On Thursday, Israeli airstrikes targeted several regions in south and east Lebanon, with the Israeli army saying it targeted "Hezbollah" sites. The strikes targeted several areas in and near the Jezzine district in south Lebanon, including al-Mahmoudiyeh, Wadi Burghoz, Jabal al-Rihan and the outskirts of As-Srira. Strikes also targeted the outskirts of Hermel and Baalbek, including the outskirts of Bouday in West Baalbek. Also on Thursday, the Israeli army carried out a violent detonation in a region between the southern border towns of Markaba and Rob Tlatin. Despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that nominally ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in November 2024, Israel continues to strike Lebanon near daily and occupies five strategic hilltop points along the border. Lebanon’s military announced last month that it had concluded the first phase of a plan to disarm non-state groups, including Hezbollah, in the border area south of the Litani River. Future phases are to progressively cover areas north of the river. The army is expected to present its plan for the second phase after its commander, Gen. Rodolphe Haykal, returns from a trip to the U.S. Hezbollah insists that the ceasefire only requires it to end its military presence south of the Litani and has said it will not discuss disarming in the rest of the country until Israel stops its strikes.

Aoun and Issa discuss developments and Haykal's visit to US
Naharnet/February 06/2026
President Joseph Aoun met Friday with U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa to discuss the recent developments and the results of Army Commander General Rodolphe Haykal’s visit to Washington. “They further discussed preparations for the conference to support the Lebanese Army and Internal Security Forces, scheduled for March 5 in Paris, in which the United States will participate. A preparatory meeting will precede the conference to coordinate positions, particularly as President Aoun's attendance alongside (French) President (Emmanuel) Macron lends it significant importance,” the Presidency said. The meeting also addressed regional developments and the meeting between Iran and the United States in Muscat. Al-Arabiya meanwhile reported that the meeting had been previously scheduled and was not arranged hastily or in light of Haykal’s stormy meeting with U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham in Washington.The army commander will for his part visit Baabda within the next 48 hours to brief Aoun on the results of his meetings with American officials. He will arrive in Beirut in the coming hours, coming from Washington.

Aoun: Political contacts part of arms monopolization plan
Naharnet/February 06/2026 
President Joseph Aoun announced Friday that “the arms monopolization decision is taken and is being gradually implemented, while taking into consideration protecting civil peace and preserving stability and security in the country.”“Political contacts are part of the adopted plan, in parallel with the military plan devised by the Army Command,” Aoun added. He had met Wednesday with MP Mohammad Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to Resistance bloc.

Berri stresses that elections will be held in May
Naharnet/February 06/2026 
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has emphasized that the upcoming parliamentary elections will be held on time in May.“Between May and July the electoral law will not change and will stay the same as it is now,” Berri added, in an interview with the Asas Media news portal. “I had previously made an offer to those who have now become against it -- despite having supported it before -- which calls for the cancellation of the six seats abroad in exchange for allowing expats to vote within the country. I also agreed to a limited technical postponement to allow for the facilitation of voting here, but they did not accept,” Berri said. He added: “I have now withdrawn this offer, and we are going to the elections on schedule and according to the existing law.”“I will not call for any session to amend the law. All we have to do is implement it. This is the only solution I have. The elections will be in May. It is unfortunate that we will hold them according to the current law,” Berri went on to say.As for what is required of the government before that date, he pointed out that “according to the law, it has no role. There are a few procedures that are taken by only two ministers, not the government, namely the Ministers of Interior and Foreign Affairs.”
“When the nominations are made public, we can say that we have seriously entered the election process. Unfortunately, no one is talking about anything but the elections these days, forgetting the daily Israeli attacks in the south,” Berri added. “Once the parliamentary elections are held, they immediately acquire legitimacy because they express the popular will. Do we remember the 1992 elections and the skepticism that accompanied them until they were held? As soon as they ended, all of that disappeared, and the elected parliament acquired its full legitimacy,” the Speaker said.

Lebanese escaping Syria now rely on Hezbollah for safety
Agence France Presse/February 06/2026
"They drove us out at gunpoint," says Lebanese citizen Zeinab Qataya, who fled her adopted home in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and returned to her country to live in a camp built by Hezbollah. The construction of the Imam Ali Housing Compound has proved controversial, but Lebanese and Syrian families pushed out of villages just over the border in Syria say they now rely on the Iran-backed movement for safety. Hezbollah has acknowledged intervening in Syria's civil war on Assad's behalf starting in 2013 from their foothold in the Qusayr area, home to border villages like Zeita where thousands of Lebanese Shiites have lived for decades. The militant group was driven out of Syria during the campaign that toppled Assad, but it still holds sway in this pocket of northeast Lebanon, whose government has since vowed to disarm them. "They burned our homes," says Qataya, a 56-year-old who fled Zeita for the Hezbollah-run compound. "What matters to us is... being able to return home safely."
Images of martyrs
More than half a million Syrian refugees returned to their country from Lebanon after an Islamist coalition's victory over Assad in 2024. The residents of the Imam Ali Housing Compound, meanwhile, were coming the other way. "The compound houses between 700 and 1,000 people," said a Hezbollah official accompanying an AFP team in a guided tour of the camp in the Hermel area. "They are mostly Lebanese, with some Syrians," all coming from border villages the group controlled before Assad's fall, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Lebanese nationals living in Syria had retained their citizenship, but made the area around Qusayr their home, living and working alongside local Sunni residents. In the dry mountain winds, children returned from a Shiite religious celebration in Hermel and ran past the camp's store and barber shop to their ad hoc school. The walls of the local mosque had images of slain Iranian generals, including renowned covert operations commander Qassem Suleimani, glued on them. Portraits of killed Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and current leader Sheikh Naim Qassem hung from housing units. Hezbollah played a key role in Syria's 13-year civil war, fighting alongside Assad's forces. When it first established itself in Qusayr, thousands of Syrians were forced to flee, but it hastily retreated from the country after Assad's ouster. The border in the area is porous and poorly demarcated, which contributed to Lebanese nationals settling in Syria and facilitated the smuggling for which the region is known.
Iranian donations
In the compound, few residents were willing to speak to journalists, viewing them with suspicion. Under Assad, Syria was part of Iran's "axis of resistance" against Israel and enabled the transfer of weapons and money from Iran to Hezbollah. The new authorities in Damascus have rejected Iranian influence and attempted to cut off the pipeline to the Lebanese movement. Much of the Hermel compound's funding comes from private donations from Iran, the Hezbollah member said. According to the group's al-Nour radio, the complex comprises 228 housing units. When it was built last year, some media outlets critical of Hezbollah accused it of using the compound to harbor officials from the Assad government. "We are not harboring regime remnants here," said Ali al-Masri, an official in the Hermel municipality, calling the allegations "utter nonsense" and insisting that most in the camp were civilians.
In January, Lebanon's military said that it carried out a raid after "some media outlets and news websites circulated information about the harboring of wanted individuals and the presence of weapons inside a compound" in Hermel.The raid, it said, "did not result in any arrests or seizures".
'Living happily' -
According to the U.N., around 115,000 people have entered Lebanon from Syria since the fall of Assad, many of them since the sectarian massacres that targeted the Alawite minority on the Syrian coast in March. Around a million Syrian refugees who previously fled the civil war remain in Lebanon. Khodr Ghurab, a 62-year-old van driver, said he was displaced from Zeita on December 8, the day Islamist-led rebels reached Damascus and Assad fled to Russia. Ghurab, a father of four, accused the Lebanese state of not helping them, "as if we were not Lebanese"."In Syria, education and transport were free... we were living happily."

Lebanon and Syria sign prisoners transfer deal
Associated Press/February 06/2026
Lebanon and Syria signed an agreement Friday to transfer more than 300 Syrians from Lebanese prisons to continue serving their sentences in their home country, a step that will likely help improve strained relations between the two neighbors. The signing came a week after Lebanon's Cabinet approved a treaty with Syria for the transfer of prisoners. The deal was signed at the government headquarters in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, by Lebanon's Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Mitri and Syria's Justice Minister Mazhar al-Wais. "This is a very important first step on the road of a comprehensive treaty regarding Syrian prisoners in Lebanese prisons," Mitri told reporters, adding that the implementation of the agreement would start on Saturday. "Both countries want to move forward but there are some pending matters," al-Wais said. "This step will boost existing confidence, and we hope that relations will progress more."Mitri said that next, officials from the two neighboring countries, will discuss the transfer of Syrian detainees who are still waiting trial in Lebanon. Lebanon and Syria have a complicated history, with grievances on both sides. Many Lebanese resent nearly three decades of domination and military presence in their country by Syrian forces that ended in 2005. Many Syrians resent the role played by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah when it entered Syria's civil war that broke out in 2011 in defense of then-President Bashar Assad and his government. Assad was overthrown in December 2024 and fled to Russia where he is now in exile. After Assad's fall, relations with Syria's new Islamist-led authorities remained tense and skirmishes occurred along the unmarked border between the two nations. Mitri also said Saturday's signing was "an expression of a joint political will that states that the Lebanese-Syrian relations are based on confidence and mutual respect."Asked whether the deal will include Lebanese citizens such as Sunni Muslim cleric Ahmad al-Assir, Mitri said that it only covers Syrian prisoners. There are about 2,500 Syrian prisoners in Lebanese prisons and jails, some of whom are held on charges related to their involvement with armed opposition groups that sought to overthrow Assad — in some cases, the same groups that are now ruling Syria. Earlier this week, Mitri told The Associated Press that most of the detainees who will be transferred to Syria were not convicted of violent crimes. Some of those convicted of violent crimes may be transferred if they have already served seven and a half years of their sentence in Lebanon, he said.

Lebanese army must be given 'means' to disarm Hezbollah, French FM says
Agence France Presse/February 06/2026
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Friday that Lebanon's army must be given the means to disarm militant group Hezbollah and replace a United Nations peacekeeping force after its mandate ends this year.
On the final stop of a regional tour that has taken him to Syria and Iraq, Barrot was meeting senior officials in Beirut on Friday, with discussions expected to address preparations for a March conference in Paris in support of the Lebanese army. "France's vision for Lebanon is that of a strong, sovereign state holding a monopoly on arms," Barrot told AFP. "The first step to fulfil this mission is to give the Lebanese Armed Forces the means to continue the work of disarming Hezbollah," he said.The Iran-backed group emerged weakened from its latest war with Israel, which ended in a November 2024 ceasefire agreement. A French diplomatic source said "the regional context makes the issue of Hezbollah's disarmament particularly sensitive", adding that "there is a window for progress on this matter" given the "weakening of the Iranian regime". Iran and the United States held talks in Oman on Friday that were seen as a critical chance to avert any new escalation between the foes. Iran had insisted the talks would be centered solely on its nuclear program, although the United States wanted to discuss issues including Tehran's backing for militant groups in the region. Barrot said Lebanon's army should "replace" the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) "when the time comes for the withdrawal" of the peacekeepers. "We must now prepare for the post-UNIFIL" stage, he said. Last year the U.N. Security Council decided to conclude the mandate of the force -- which has acted as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon for decades -- at the end of this year, after the US and Israel sought its departure.Army plan In line with the 2024 truce, the Lebanese army announced in January that it had completed the first phase of a government plan to disarm Hezbollah, covering the area between the Litani River and the Israeli border about 30 kilometers further south. "The Lebanese government has shouldered its responsibilities by launching and carrying through to completion the first phase of this disarmament plan," Barrot said. "The second phase must now begin, and the plan associated with this phase is to be presented in the coming days, and in any case before the conference is held," he continued, referring to the March 5 meeting in Paris. The second phase concerns the area between the Litani and the Awali rivers, around 40 kilometers south of Beirut. Hezbollah has so far refused to hand over its weapons north of the Litani. Barrot is also set to meet Lebanese army chief Rodolphe Haykal, who this week held meetings with officials in Washington. The United States is applying intense pressure on Lebanon to speedily disarm Hezbollah. On Thursday, influential Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he cut his meeting with Haykal short after asking him whether the Lebanese military considered Hezbollah to be a "terrorist" organization. Graham said that Haykal replied, "No, not in the context of Lebanon."

Fayyad says Hezbollah has no 'armed appearances' north of Litani
Naharnet/February 06/2026
MP Ali Fayyad of Hezbollah noted Friday that "the country is at a sensitive and critical crossroads requiring everyone to act with the utmost responsibility to save it and guide it to safety.”“This will enable us all to confront these numerous pressures and challenges, which necessitates consultation, dialogue and understanding regarding the critical issues it faces," Fayyad said. He pointed out that "there are clear pressures, especially at this stage, pushing towards transforming the area north of the Litani River into a space for escalating tensions between the Lebanese Army, the Resistance and its support base."He added: "We believe and trust that the Lebanese Army command possesses the wisdom, national responsibility and awareness to handle this phase with the highest degree of maturity, prudence, and responsibility. The Lebanese Army is our national army, its officers and soldiers are our sons, and we are its people. We will certainly deal with this phase in a way that prevents our enemies from achieving their goals."Fayyad added that Hezbollah “has no armed appearances, neither in the north of the Litani River nor elsewhere, and it has no military movements that contradict with the sovereignty of the state or the movements of the Lebanese Army and its role.”“Therefore, we call on everyone to be aware of the magnitude of the existing dangers, and to emphasize the importance of dialogue, communication and consultation, so that we prevent the enemy from turning the problem from being a problem between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy, into a problem between the Lebanese themselves," the lawmaker warned.

Jumblat: National unity more important than US-Israeli dictations
Naharnet/February 06/2026
Druze leader Walid Jumblat stressed Friday in an X post that “preserving national unity and the unity of institutions is more important than the arbitrary U.S.-Israeli dictations.” Jumblat’s stance comes in the wake of Lebanese Army chief General Rodolphe Haykal’s visit to the United States.
Hardline U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham criticized Haykal following a meeting on Thursday for refusing to label Hezbollah a “terrorist organization.”“I asked him point blank if he believes Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. He said, ‘No, not in the context of Lebanon.’ With that, I ended the meeting. They are clearly a terrorist organization. Hezbollah has American blood on its hands. Just ask the U.S. Marines,” Graham said in a post on X. “As long as this attitude exists from the Lebanese Armed Forces, I don’t think we have a reliable partner in them,” Graham added. In addition to the U.S. army chief and senior U.S. military and political officials Haykal met in Washington with U.S. President Donald Trump's senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, Massad Boulos, who described their meeting as "excellent".

The south-north Litani ambiguity: Bassil discusses thorny Hezbollah disarmament
Naharnet/February 06/2026
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil discussed Hezbollah's disarmament in a televised interview, in which he said that for Hezbollah to hand over its arms Lebanon must work on a comprehensive strategy to protect the country. Lebanon "must simultaneously secure an Israeli withdrawal and defense agreements with countries, such as the United States, in order to convince Hezbollah to hand over its weapons. A comprehensive policy to protect Lebanon must be established," he told talk show host Marcel Ghanem on Thursday evening. Bassil said he opposes Hezbollah's "offensive" in support of Gaza, and supports instead a "defense strategy" that protects Lebanon, adding that even though the alliance with Hezbollah "collapsed" in 2022, it does not mean that Hezbollah is an enemy. "They are an important component of the country, and we must deal with them."He said he wants a solution to Hezbollah's weapons as long as it does not cause a civil war, but blamed Lebanese political parties for failing to discuss a defense strategy that would protect Lebanon and the Lebanese. Bassil said Hezbollah agreed to the ceasefire deal with Israel but that there are ambiguities over its disarmament north of the Litani river. He said there are claims that President Joseph Aoun told Hezbollah before his election that there will be a separation between the north and the south of the Litani river. Bassil said the FPM relation with President Aoun is good and he hopes it gets better. "The President cannot be held alone responsible for the situation in the country," he went on to say.The Lebanese army announced last month the completion of the disarmament plan south of the Litani, and will now move to the north of the river. Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad said there are no armed presence neither south nor north of the Litani, but Hezbollah argues that the ceasefire agreement stipulates Hezbollah only disarm south of the Litani while opponents such as the Lebanese Forces say the ceasefire agreement doesn't say Hezbollah must only disarm south of the Litani, but that the disarmament would start from there. Bassil criticized LF Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji for "granting Israel legitimacy" to attack Lebanon. Rajji had said last month that "Israel unfortunately has the right" to continue its attacks as long as Hezbollah has not fully disarmed. "As a sovereigntist, I do not accept the granting of legitimacy to those who attack Lebanon," Bassil said.

Cash-strapped Lebanon finds itself sitting on gold mine, as prices surge
Associated Press/February 06/2026
Tiny Lebanon sits on one of the largest gold reserves in the Middle East and its government is weighing whether it can use that stockpile to restore a crippled economy while its citizens are looking at gold as a way to protect their battered assets. Lebanon's economy hobbled into 2026 with ongoing inflation and state decay and no reforms to combat corruption in sight. Its banks collapsed in late 2019 in a crippling fiscal crisis that evaporated depositors' savings and plunged about half its population of 6.5 million into poverty, after decades of rampant corruption, waste, and mismanagement. The country suffered some $70 billion in losses in its financial sector, further compounded by about $11 billion in the 2024 Israeli war. The price of gold recently soared to an all-time high of $5,354, before dropping back below $5,000, sparked by geopolitical instability and questions surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump's desire to lower interest rates that would ultimately devalue the dollar. Global central banks have been among the most avid buyers. Silver prices meanwhile have also surged due to industrial demand and the attractiveness of a much cheaper price than gold.
The central bank in Beirut has maintained a reserve of 286 tons of gold - some nine million ounces - since the 1960s. Only Saudi Arabia's central bank holds more in the region. The government is considering using some of its gold reserves to bail out the banks and pay back depositors who got wiped out. But doing so would not only go against historical precedent, but also violate a 1980s-era law. Meanwhile, those depositors would like to make up some of their losses by buying gold and silver, hoping that prices will bounce back from the downturn of recent days and hit new highs.
Lebanon's untouchable asset -
At one point the value of Lebanon's gold reserves reached $50 billion — over double Lebanon's own GDP. After years of economic crisis, and pushback against meaningful reforms to make the country viable again, some are again raising a sensitive question: Is it finally time to dig into this goldmine?
A senior banking official told The Associated Press that some banks are proposing to dig into the gold reserves to help pay back depositors whose money was lost during the country's currency crisis, essentially partially bailing out the banks with the country's only viable public asset. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Lebanon banned the sale of its gold in 1986 in the middle of the country's civil war to protect state assets during a time of extreme instability. The gold reserves have never been touched -- not after 15-year civil war in 1990, and not after multiple wars with Israel. Some economists have proposed using a small percentage of the gold, in tandem with wholesale reforms, to fix Lebanon's ailing electricity sector or to breathe life back into the country's devastated education and healthcare system for the public good. Parliament would have to vote to allow the use of the gold reserves in any capacity. It's a largely unpopular move that is not expected to be made anytime soon, especially months before general elections. When gold was brought up in a session last week, Speaker Nabih Berri quickly interjected to shut down the conversation. "Not feasible," he said sternly. A draft fiscal gap law that offers a framework of returning some depositors' losses is languishing in parliament amid a debate over who would absorb the losses: Lebanon's battered banks, largely reluctant to hold themselves accountable, or an indebted and wasteful state. Most Lebanese distrust the authorities, who for years have dodged implementing meaningful reforms to fight corruption, reduce waste, and improve public services. Given that track record, many say the gold should remain untouched for future generations.
Softening the financial blow
While authorities debate the future of the country's gold, many Lebanese depositors who lost most of their savings in the banks are now turning to gold and silver to own something more tangible while hoping it might even make up for some of their losses. Crowds of people were lined up outside of Lebanon's key metals trader on the northern outskirts of Beirut on a recent day, desperate to get inside and buy gold and silver coins, medallions, and bars. They no longer trust the banks and are trying to get by in the middle of a messy cash economy beset with uncontrollable inflation and no meaningful reforms on the horizon. "For those making up for losses, gold is not a safe haven — it's the only haven," said Chris Boghos, the managing director of Boghos SAL Precious Metals. Business is booming, as customers are now paying in advance to get their metal months later due to high demand.
Lebanon has had a troubled history in a volatile region, with numerous conflicts and economic shocks, and little trust that the structural issues will change. "There has always been this propensity for the Lebanese people to go buy up gold in order to hedge against possible inflation, because this is a country that has seen multiple episodes of hyperinflation during its history," said Sami Zoughaib, an economist at Beirut-based think tank The Policy Initiative. Zoughaib says it's an easy shift as well, given the long-tradition in the region of a groom or his family giving gold jewelry to the bride ahead of marriage as her own wealth, even among lower-income families. That tradition still largely continues even as many women have entered the workforce. Outside one of Beirut's gold markets Alia Shehade strolls along some of the storefronts. She says as a woman, her gold jewelry collection has made her feel safe in the middle of the financial crisis, referring to an Arabic saying that translates to "an adornment and treasure.""If a woman is in a tough situation ... she can sell her gold. And when gold prices go up, then she's the winner," she said. But she refuses to sell any of hers. When looking at the reluctancy to sell gold among both the citizens and the authorities, Zoughaib said, "I think this just tells us just how important that gold is in the psychology of people.""They are not even able to imagine a use case for it beyond being a hedge," he said.

No Justice, NO Peace: Lokman Slim’s Laugh in the Face of His Killers
Makram Rabah/Now Lebanon/February 06/2026
On February 3, 2021, my friend Lokman Slim was assassinated.
This was not a murder shrouded in mystery. It was not an unsolved crime, a security enigma, or a tragic accident buried under procedural fog. Lokman Slim was gunned -down deep in southern Lebanon—an area under Hezbollah’s full control, under the mandate of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, and within the zone of UNIFIL deployment. Five years later, the Lebanese state has done precisely nothing of consequence.
No arrests. No indictments. No serious judicial process. Not even the pretense of accountability.
This is not institutional paralysis. It is institutional submission.
The same state that claims impotence in the face of Lokman’s murder had no difficulty identifying protesters, arresting dissidents, or policing speech. Its silence here is not accidental. It is selective. And it mirrors, almost perfectly, the state’s behavior after the Beirut port explosion: overwhelming evidence, absolute knowledge—and a total refusal to act.
I write this not as a distant observer, but as someone who knew Lokman Slim intimately. He was a friend, a relentless interlocutor, and one of the few Lebanese intellectuals who refused to lie—either to himself or to others. Lokman did not bargain with fear. He did not dilute his language for safety. He insisted on naming reality as it was, not as power demanded it be described.
He was not “inflammatory,” despite the lazy accusations of his detractors. He was courageous. And in Lebanon, courage—especially when it confronts weapons outside the state—is treated as an offense punishable by death.
Lokman was not killed because he bore arms. He was killed because he bore ideas. He was not assassinated for conspiring, but for speaking clearly and publicly. He dismantled the mythology that Hezbollah had carefully cultivated: that it was a resistance rather than a regime; that it protected its community rather than holding it hostage; that it strengthened the state rather than hollowing it out.
Lokman said what many whispered but feared to declare—that weapons had ceased to be a tool of resistance and had become the backbone of a parallel order, ruling through intimidation and sustained by impunity. He said this openly, under his own name, without anonymity or camouflage. And he knew, fully, that such honesty carried a price.
Five years later, the killers roam freely. Worse still, it is an open secret that the Lebanese state possesses recordings, surveillance, and data identifying the perpetrators and tracking their movements. The refusal to act on this information is not a failure of capacity—it is a political decision. A decision to protect the armed order. A decision to normalize assassination. A decision that declares, unmistakably, that some Lebanese lives are expendable.
We are not merely demanding the prosecution of the men who pulled the trigger. We are demanding accountability for those who ordered the killing, those who provided cover, and those who institutionalized murder as a governing practice. This is not a narrow criminal case. It is a systemic indictment.
And let us dispense with the charade of ignorance. We know who killed Lokman Slim—just as we know who killed Rafik Hariri, Samir Kassir, Gebran Tueni, Pierre Gemayel, Mohammad Chatah, Elias al-Hasrouni, and dozens of others since 2005. The problem in Lebanon has never been the lack of knowledge. It has always been the deliberate suspension of justice.
The cruel irony is that Lokman is no longer here to witness how thoroughly his warnings have been vindicated. The so-called “Axis of Resistance,” once sold as an eternal destiny, is unraveling in real time.
The Iranian regime—its ideological anchor—kills its own citizens in the streets, crushes dissent to preserve itself, and simultaneously begs for deals to escape collapse. What once claimed moral superiority now survives through repression, fear, and transactional politics.
Lokman understood early on that a project built on coercion cannot produce legitimacy, and that a system sustained by weapons cannot generate a future. He saw that fear is not governance—and violence is not politics.
I remember vividly how Hezbollah’s late secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah would appear on television, wagging his finger, threatening opponents with death as if Lebanon were his private theater of intimidation. I would glance at Lokman. He would calmly take a drag from his cigarette and smile.
That smile was not bravado. It was contempt.
Lokman did not deny the danger. He refused to revere it. He understood that those who rely on public threats betray their own fragility. That smile—quiet, unflinching—was a declaration of independence. And regimes that rule through fear cannot tolerate such defiance.
Some will argue that history has since delivered its own verdict, that certain figures associated with this order have been eliminated, and that this amount to “divine justice.” But justice in functioning societies is not metaphysical. It is legal, political, and human. It does not descend from the heavens. It is enforced on earth. Without accountability, murder becomes a language. Silence becomes policy. Fear becomes structure.
Lokman Slim did not seek vengeance. He did not incite sectarian hatred. He did not traffic in demagoguery. He wanted a state—one that protects its citizens instead of rationalizing their execution; one that does not cower before a militia; one that refuses to equate the assassin with the victim.
There is no peace in Lebanon without justice. And there is no justice without confrontation—with facts, with power, and with the machinery of impunity. Justice for Lokman Slim is not a personal grievance. It is a political necessity.
If Lebanon is ever to escape its cycle of violence, it will not be through cowardly compromises or sanctified silence. It will be through breaking the rule that says those who kill for power will never be held to account.
Justice for Lokman Slim is not revenge.
It is the minimum condition for peace.
And peace in Lebanon will begin only when it becomes impossible to kill someone for saying “no.”
This article originally appeared in Elaf
Makram Rabah is the managing editor at Now Lebanon and an Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, Department of History. His book Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites and Collective Memory (Edinburgh University Press) covers collective identities and the Lebanese Civil War. He tweets at @makramrabah

Is HIZBOLLAH a terrorist Organization? Let us find out.
Z Ghost/@ZGhostbook/Februarry 06/2026
1982: Founded amid Israeli invasion of Lebanon; early guerrilla attacks on Israeli forces (e.g., ambush in Khalde) — limited specific casualties reported in founding phase.
1983: Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut (April) — 63 deaths.
Bombing of U.S. Marine barracks and French barracks in Beirut (October) — 241 U.S. Marines, 58 French troops, and others killed (total ~299–300 deaths).
1984: Bombing of U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut (September) — 23 deaths.
Kidnapping and execution of CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley (January) — 1 death.
1985: Hijacking of TWA Flight 847 (June) — 1 death (U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem).
Kidnapping of AP correspondent Terry Anderson (March) — held for years (no immediate death).
Guerrilla warfare in South Lebanon (1985–2000) against Israeli forces and South Lebanon Army — hundreds of Israeli soldiers and Lebanese killed over period (cumulative ~900+ Israeli deaths by 2000 withdrawal).
1985–1988: War of the Camps against Amal Movement and Syrian forces — thousands killed in factional fighting (exact Hezbollah-specific toll unclear; part of broader Lebanese civil strife).
1980s–present: Began global criminal networks, including money laundering for Latin American drug cartels through Lebanese diaspora in South America (e.g., Tri-Border Area of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay) and West Africa; involved in cocaine and heroin trafficking, cigarette smuggling, document forgery, counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, blood diamonds, illicit timber, gun running, and human trafficking — generates tens to hundreds of millions annually (e.g., $10–12 million/year from Tri-Border; up to $200 million/month in some laundering schemes).
1992: Bombing of Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires (March) — 29 deaths, 242 wounded.
1994: Bombing of AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires (July) — 85 deaths, over 300 wounded.
1995–present: Drug trafficking and money laundering in Tri-Border Area (South America); cocaine smuggling with cartels like Medellin, La Oficina de Envigado, FARC, PCC; counterfeiting consumer goods, extortion; linked to Lebanese diaspora networks — $10–12 million annually.
1996: Rocket attacks into Israel triggering Operation Grapes of Wrath (April) — over 200 Lebanese deaths (including ~100 at Qana UN base).
2000: Cross-border raid kidnapping and killing three Israeli soldiers (October) — 3 deaths.
2000s–present: Expanded to West Africa (e.g., Gambia, Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo); used car exports from US/Canada (including stolen vehicles) shipped to Africa for resale, proceeds laundered to Lebanon; integrated with narcotics from Latin America; blood diamonds and illicit timber smuggling — hundreds of millions laundered (e.g., $329 million wired 2007–2011 for US car purchases shipped to Africa).
2004: Cigarette smuggling ring in US funding terrorism — millions in proceeds.
2005: Assassination of Lebanese PM Rafic Hariri (February bombing) — 22 deaths (Hezbollah members implicated by UN tribunal).
2006: Kidnapping of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev (July), triggering 2006 Lebanon War (July–August) — ~1,200 Lebanese deaths (mostly civilians), ~165 Israeli deaths (including ~120 soldiers); thousands of rockets fired.
Began training Iraqi Shia insurgents against U.S. forces — contributed to broader conflict casualties.
2007–2011: Operation Titan exposed cocaine smuggling and money laundering led by Hezbollah financier Chekry Harb ("Taliban"); laundered $200–300 million/month for Colombian cartels; linked to Ayman Joumaa network; involved used cars from US shipped to West Africa.
2008: Seizure of West Beirut in clashes with pro-government forces (May) — 37 deaths.
2011: Istanbul bombing attempt on Israeli consul (May); U.S. designated Ayman Joumaa and Saleh clan for narcotics trafficking and money laundering — hundreds of millions laundered via US used cars to Africa/Lebanon.
2011–present: Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB) and subsidiaries (e.g., Gambia-based Prime Bank) used for primary money laundering; tied to global narcotics from South America to Europe/Middle East via West Africa; Hizballah links confirmed — hundreds of millions monthly (e.g., $329 million seized in 2012 related to scheme).
2012: Burgas bus bombing in Bulgaria (July) — 6–7 deaths (5 Israelis and 1 Bulgarian).
Began Syrian Civil War involvement supporting Assad regime (2012–2017; up to 7,000 troops) — ~1,700–2,500 Hezbollah fighters killed (part of broader war with hundreds of thousands total deaths).
2016: Operation Cedar uncovered EU-wide money laundering and drug trafficking (cocaine with Colombian cartels; Black Market Peso Exchange) — arrested financier Mohamad Noureddine; hundreds of millions laundered.
2018: Operations in Colombia under External Security Organization; narcotics proceeds estimated at $400 million annually.
2020s–present: Stolen car rings in Canada (e.g., luxury vehicles via Port of Montreal) and US (e.g., Michigan-based networks); shipped to Lebanon/Africa for resale; integrated with drug trafficking (cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, captagon) — proceeds in tens of millions (e.g., $34.5 million disrupted in 2024 Operation Vector in Canada; $150 million seized in 2012 US action).
2023–2024: Border attacks on Israel starting October 8 (in support of Hamas), escalating to full Israel–Hezbollah conflict — 4,000+ deaths in Lebanon (including civilians and ~4,000–5,000 Hezbollah fighters), ~130–133 deaths in Israel (46–47 civilians, ~80–87 security forces); over 1 million displaced in Lebanon.
2024: Canada disrupted car smuggling ring worth $34.5 million via Montreal port (Operation Vector); involved in Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping (no direct casualties attributed); drug trafficking commander Naser Faisal al-Saadi arrested in Damascus.
2024–2026: Post-ceasefire (November 2024 onward) incidents — limited additional deaths (e.g., dozens in ongoing strikes/violations; no major new large-scale conflict reported as of early 2026).
Ongoing U.S. sanctions on financial networks; continued exploitation of Canadian vehicular theft and money-laundering (per 2025 Canadian report) — billions in global illicit proceeds linked to drugs, auto theft, and other crimes.

Israeli operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah: January 26–February 1, 2026
David Daoud/FDD's Long War Journal/published on February 03/2026
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted numerous operations throughout Lebanon against Hezbollah between January 26 and February 1, 2026. Israeli operations last week maintained an intensified tempo, concentrating on targeting Hezbollah assets and personnel involved in the group’s regeneration efforts in south Lebanon, both north and south of the Litani River. These strikes continued despite the claim by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to have taken operational control of the South Litani Area earlier this month.
The IDF conducted operations in Lebanese locales, some more than once. These activities included:
Airstrikes: Eight (+)
Artillery missions: Four
Detonations: Four
Drone strikes: Seven
Ground activities: Four
Leaflet drops: One
Mortar missions: One
Quadcopter activities: 11
Tank fire: One
Map instructions: Click the top-left icon or an icon on the map to open the Map Key and adjust the map’s zoom as desired. Click the top-right icon to open a larger version of the map.
Nabatieh Governorate
Bint Jbeil District: Aitaroun, Ayta Ash Shaab, Bint Jbeil, Ramia, Rmeish, and Yaroun
Marjayoun District: Adaisseh-Markaba, Blida, Houla, Khiam, and Rabb al Thalatheen
Nabatieh District: Azza-Kafrawa, Duweir, and Numeiriyeh-Zefta
South Lebanon Governorate
Jezzine District: Aqmata-Luwayza
Sidon District: Dawudiyeh, Msayleh-Najjariyeh-Tuffahta, Qennarit, and the Zahrani region
Tyre District: Barish-Maaroub, Batoulay, Dhayra, Kfar Reman-Kfar Tebnit, Naqoura, Siddiqine, and Tyre
Casualties
Between January 26 and February 1, Israeli operations in Lebanon killed seven people, at least five of them Hezbollah operatives, and wounded 18 people.
January 26, 2026: One Hezbollah operative was killed, two possible Hezbollah operatives were killed, and two unidentified individuals were wounded.
January 27, 2026: One Hezbollah operative was killed.
January 28, 2026: No casualties were reported.
January 29, 2026: No casualties were reported.
January 30, 2026: One Hezbollah operative was killed, and two unidentified individuals were wounded.
January 31, 2026: One dead Hezbollah operative was identified, one Hezbollah operative was killed, and one unidentified individual was wounded.
February 1, 2026: One Hezbollah operative was killed, and 13 people were wounded.
Chronology of Israeli operations against Hezbollah, January 26–February 1, 2026
January 26
NNA Lebanon reported that at 3:00 am, Israeli airstrikes targeted the heights of Aqmata-Luwayza in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Jezzine District.
At 6:49 am, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli forces positioned in the IDF’s Tel Aoueidah post directed gunfire toward the outskirts of Blida in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.
At 1:53 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli forces directed gunfire toward a group of young men allegedly engaged in reclamation of agricultural land east of Yaroun in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District, damaging a piece of equipment.
At 3:14 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle in the suburbs of Tyre in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Tyre District. The strike killed one person and wounded two unidentified individuals. The IDF released a statement claiming it had “targeted a Hezbollah operative near Tyre in south Lebanon.” Hezbollah-affiliated social media later announced the death of Hezbollah operative Sheikh Ali Abdelhassan Noureddine, whose nom de guerre was Sheikh Amine, from Jwaya. The IDF claimed Noureddine commanded a Hezbollah artillery team in the village of Al Horsh in south Lebanon, and since November 27, 2024, was involved in “advancing terror initiatives against the State of Israel and IDF troops, and most recently was involved in restoring Hezbollah’s artillery capabilities in south Lebanon … in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.” According to Hezbollah, Noureddine also served as a journalist in its Al Manar Television station. Hezbollah gave Noureddine a military funeral in Tyre.
Death announcement for Ali Abdelhassan Noureddine. (Balagh Media on Telegram)
At 3:52 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive on an alleged marble factory on the Adaisseh-Markaba road in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.
At 4:54 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli forces fired several mortars at the area of Al Hariqa on the outskirts of Aitaroun in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
At 5:46 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli tank fired two shells at a home in Al Selm on the outskirts of Aitaroun.
At 10:07 pm, NNA Lebanon reported an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle near Kfar Tebnit-Kfar Reman in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Tyre District. The strike killed two people. NNA Lebanon reported the two fatalities as Samir Alaa Hoteit, a 22-year-old from Duweir, and Ahmad Abdelnabi Ramadan, a 22-year-old Egyptian national born and residing in Duweir. The IDF released a statement claiming it had targeted two Hezbollah operatives near Nabatieh, and later claimed the two were targeted and killed while they were operating inside an underground Hezbollah installation in south Lebanon to restore the structure “in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
January 27
NNA Lebanon reported that overnight, two Israeli quadcopters dropped fragmentation explosives on a house in Yaroun in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
At 9:41 am, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli artillery intermittently targeted the forested area of Yaroun.
At 11:05 am, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive in Dhayra in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Tyre District.
At 11:31 am, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli drone targeted a motorbike in Batoulay in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Tyre District. The strike killed one person. Hezbollah later announced the death of Hezbollah operative Hussain Ahmad al Mardineh, whose nom de guerre was Thaer, from Shaatiyeh. The IDF released a statement saying it had targeted and killed a “Hezbollah operative involved in attempts to restore Hezbollah’s military installations near Deir Qanoun in south Lebanon … in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.” Hezbollah gave Mardineh a military funeral in his hometown.
Death announcement for Hussain Ahmad al Mardineh. (Balagh Media on Telegram)
At 11:59 am, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive near alleged shepherds on the outskirts of Rmeish in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
At 12:22 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive in the Kasayer neighborhood of Meiss al Jabal in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.
At 6:30 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive in Ayta Ash Shaab in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
January 28
NNA Lebanon reported that at 12:01 am, two Israeli quadcopters dropped several fragmentation explosives toward Yaroun in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
NNA Lebanon reported that, in the morning, Israeli forces conducted a detonation in the Sabih neighborhood east of Houla in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.
At 3:38 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli artillery fired two shells that fell into the sea opposite Naqoura in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Tyre District.
January 29
At 12:44 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli artillery fired several shells at the Salhani area on the outskirts of Ramia in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
At 8:37 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli forces directed machine-gun fire toward the outskirts of Aitaroun in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
At 10:45 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that a mechanized IDF infantry patrol comprised of a Merkava tank and two military vehicles headed toward the eastern section of Yaroun in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District and positioned itself near an inhabited house. The house’s owners reportedly fled before the arrival of the Israeli force, which then rigged the house for detonation after intermittent artillery had targeted the area between Bint Jbeil and Yaroun.
January 30
At 8:09 am, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive in the “Chalets” area of Khiam in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.
At 8:40 am, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive on the outskirts of Ayta Ash Shaab in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
At 10:36 am, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped two stun explosives in the “Chalets” area of Khiam in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.
At 12:07 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive between Markaba and Adaisseh in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.
At 2:20 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle on the outskirts of Siddiqin in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Tyre District. The strike killed one person. The IDF released a statement saying it had “targeted a Hezbollah operative operating near Siddiqine in south Lebanon.” Hezbollah-affiliated media announced the death of Hezbollah operative Mohammad Ahmad Yusef, whose nom de guerre was Fatras, from Riyaq in the Beqaa. The IDF released a subsequent statement claiming Fatras was “involved in attempts to restore Hezbollah’s military infrastructure near Siddiqine … in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.” Hezbollah gave Yusef a military funeral, burying him in its Zahraa Cemetery in the Kafaat area of Dahiyeh.
Death announcement for Mohammad Ahmad Yusef. (Lebanon Debate)
At 7:27 pm, the IDF released a statement saying that it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
At 7:31 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that several Israeli airstrikes targeted the outskirts of locales in the Zahrani region in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Sidon District.
At 7:37 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that several Israeli airstrikes targeted the wadi between Msayleh, Najjariyeh, and Tuffahta in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Sidon District. The strikes caused local power outages.
7:37 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli airstrike targeted a bulldozer and excavator parking lot in Dawudiyeh in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Sidon District. The lot belonged to Abbas Diab, whose brother Jaafar’s machinery lot in Msayleh was also targeted by Israeli airstrikes on October 7, 2025. The latest strikes lightly wounded two people. The IDF released a statement saying it had targeted engineering equipment belonging to Hezbollah that the organization had been using to restore its infrastructure near Dawudiyeh “in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
At 7:46 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that several Israeli airstrikes targeted the wadi between Numeiriyeh and Zefta in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Nabatieh District.
At 7:46 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that several Israeli airstrikes targeted the wadis between Azza and Kafrawa in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Nabatieh District.
January 31
NNA Lebanon reported that at 3:00 am, Israeli forces detonated a chalet in Khiam in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.
At 1:30 pm, Hezbollah-affiliated social media announced that the group had located and identified the remains of Hezbollah operative Hassan Abdallah Awada, whose nom de guerre was Abbas, from Khiam. Awada was killed at an unspecified time in late 2024 during the war with Israel.
At 2:25 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli drone strike targeted a vehicle on the outskirts of Rabb al Thalatheen in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District. The strike killed one person. The IDF released a statement saying it had “targeted a Hezbollah operative near Markaba in south Lebanon.” Hezbollah-affiliated social media later announced the death of Hezbollah operative Ahmad Hassan Faqih, whose nom de guerre was Sadeq, from Rabb al Thalatheen. The IDF released a subsequent statement claiming Faqih was “involved in restoring Hezbollah’s military infrastructure near Markaba … in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
Death announcements for Hassan Adballah Awada (Left) and Ahmad Hassan Faqih. (Balagh Media on Telegram)
At 11:36 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli airstrike targeted a vehicle between Barish and Maaroub in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Tyre District. The strike wounded one person.
February 1
At 9:42 am, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli patrol entered Rabb al Thalatheen in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District and detonated two homes, damaging neighboring residences.
At 10:18 am, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli quadcopter dropped a stun explosive on an excavator that had been previously targeted in Ayta Ash Shaab in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil.
At 12:10 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli drone targeted an excavator with five missiles in Qennarit in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Sidon District. The excavator was reportedly clearing debris from Israel’s January 21 airstrikes in the town. The strike wounded one person. The IDF released a statement saying it targeted engineering equipment being “used by Hezbollah to restore its terror infrastructure in the area … in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
At 12:57 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli forces dropped “inciteful and threatening leaflets” in Bint Jbeil in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District. The leaflets were addressed to “the locals and residents of Bint Jbeil,” warning them that a “hospital is being used by the terrorist members of Hezbollah, steer clear of them!” Then the leaflet addressed “Hezbollah’s operatives – we are monitoring you. Stop your efforts to restore terrorist infrastructure.” Another leaflet mimicked Hezbollah’s death announcements, with “You” in the usual place of the fatality’s name and stating, “If you are involved in illegal activities in the south’s villages.”
Leaflets dropped by Israel in Bint Jbeil. (NNA Lebanon)
NNA Lebanon reported that at 2:20 pm, an Israeli airstrike targeted a vehicle with two missiles at the southern entrance of Duweir in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Nabatieh District. The strike killed one person and wounded sixpeople, including a nine-year-old boy identified as “Ali M.F.” who was in a vehicle with his parents that happened to pass by the area as the airstrike occurred, a four-year-old girl identified as “Mila A.H.” who was playing in her house’s courtyard near the road, an unidentified six-year-old girl, and an unidentified 16-year-old boy. The strike also significantly damaged nearby homes and a nearby Mercedes belonging to an individual identified as “Ali H.” The IDF released a statement saying it had targeted a Hezbollah operative near Duweir. Pro-Hezbollah social media later announced the death of Hezbollah operative Ali Dawoud Amees, whose nom de guerre was Mohammad Ali, from Aba. Hezbollah gave Amees a military funeral in his hometown. The IDF released a statement saying it had targeted and killed Amees, whom it described as the “head of the branch in Hezbollah’s engineering division” and claimed was “involved in attempts to restore Hezbollah’s military infrastructure near Duweir … in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
Death announcement for Ali Dawoud Amees. (Jibchit on Facebook)
At 7:38 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle in Harouf in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Nabatieh District. The strike wounded six people. The IDF released a statement saying it had targeted a Hezbollah operative near Harouf.
At 11:29 pm, NNA Lebanon reported that Israeli forces directed machine-gun fire toward the outskirts of Aitaroun in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Bint Jbeil District.
**David Daoud is Senior Fellow at at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon affairs.
https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2026/02/israeli-operations-in-lebanon-against-hezbollah-january-26-february-1-2026.php
Read in FDD's Long War Journal

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 06-07/2026
Iran FM says talks atmosphere 'very positive', more talks to be held with US
Agence France Presse/February 06/2026
Iran on Friday said it expected to hold more negotiations with the United States after a day of indirect talks in Oman seen as a critical chance for diplomacy after President Donald Trump threatened new military action against Tehran. With an American naval group led by an aircraft carrier in Middle Eastern waters, U.S. and Iranian delegations held talks in Muscat mediated by the Gulf sultanate without publicly meeting face-to-face. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led Iran's delegation in Muscat, said talks solely focused on the nuclear issue, after the U.S. had indicated Tehran's backing for militant groups and its ballistic missile program also needed to be on the agenda. The talks were the first between the two foes since the United States joined Israel's war with Iran in June with strikes on nuclear sites. They also come just under a month after Iranian authorities launched a crackdown on protests that left thousands dead according to rights groups. U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, accompanied by Trump's influential son-in-law Jared Kushner, led Washington's delegation at the talks."In a very positive atmosphere, our arguments were exchanged and the views of the other side were shared with us," Araghchi told Iranian state TV, adding that the two sides had "agreed to continue negotiations, but we will decide on the modalities and timing at a later date". "The way forward will depend on our consultations with capitals," he added after the talks concluded."Our discussions are focused exclusively on the nuclear issue and we are not addressing any other subject with the Americans," Araghchi told the official IRNA news agency. In a symbol of the potential for U.S. military action, Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, whose area of responsibility includes the Middle East, was also present at the talks, according to images published by the Oman news agency. A source with knowledge of the talks told AFP that the meetings took place at the residence of Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi.
'Don't want us to hit them' -
Multiple sessions of talks in the morning and afternoon saw both sides shuttling to and from the residence of Albusaidi who appeared to be acting as mediator and passing on messages. Writing on X, Albusaidi described the talks as "very serious". "It was useful to clarify both Iranian and American thinking and identify areas for possible progress. We aim to reconvene in due course, with the results to be considered carefully in Tehran and Washington."The White House has made clear it wants the talks to rein in Tehran's ability to make a nuclear bomb, an ambition the Islamic republic has always denied. The U.S. delegation intended to explore "zero nuclear capacity" for Iran, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, warning that Trump had "many options at his disposal aside from diplomacy"."They're negotiating," Trump said of Iran on Thursday. "They don't want us to hit them, we have a big fleet going there," he added, referring to the aircraft carrier group he has repeatedly called an "armada".There was no immediate comment from the American delegation in Muscat.
'Compromise or war'
The meeting comes just under a month after the peak of a wave of nationwide protests in Iran against the clerical leadership, which rights groups say were repressed with an unprecedented crackdown that has left thousands dead. Trump initially threatened military action against Tehran over its crackdown on protesters and even told demonstrators "help is on its way". The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said that according to its latest toll 6,495 protesters were confirmed to have been killed as well as 214 members of the security forces and 61 bystanders. But it and other rights groups warn that the final toll risks being far higher, with the magnitude of the crackdown masked by the blanket internet shutdown imposed by the authorities for a fortnight. Almost 51,000 people are also confirmed to have been arrested, according to HRANA. But Trump's rhetoric in recent days has focused on reining in the Iranian nuclear program and the U.S. has maneuvered a naval group led by aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln into the region.Iran has repeatedly vowed it will hit back at U.S. bases if attacked. "We are ready to defend and it is the U.S. president who must choose between compromise or war," state television on Thursday quoted army spokesman General Mohammad Akraminia as saying, warning that Iran has "easy" access to U.S. regional bases. The U.S. initially wanted to hold the talks in Turkey, include regional countries and explicitly expand the agenda beyond nuclear but then had to change course due to Iranian demands, a regional source close to the talks told AFP.

Iran rules out US demand to end uranium enrichment during Oman talks, diplomat says
Al Arabiya English/06 February/2026
Iran has rejected US calls to halt uranium enrichment on its territory during talks in Oman on Friday, a regional diplomat briefed by Tehran told Reuters, but said it was willing to discuss the “level and purity” of enrichment or a regional consortium. The diplomat added that Tehran believed the US negotiators “seemed to understand Iran’s stance on the enrichment ... and they showed flexibility about Tehran’s demands.”He added that Iran’s missile capabilities were not discussed during the talks in Muscat. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that nuclear talks with the US mediated by Oman were off to a “good start” and set to continue, in remarks that could help allay concern that failure to reach a deal might nudge the Middle East closer to war. But he said after the talks in the Omani capital Muscat that “any dialogue requires refraining from threats and pressure. (Tehran) only discusses its nuclear issue ... We do not discuss any other issue with the US.”Trump says Iran’s supreme leader ‘should be very worried’
While both sides have indicated readiness to revive diplomacy over Tehran’s long-running nuclear dispute with the West, Washington wanted to expand the talks to cover Iran’s ballistic missiles, support for armed groups around the region and “treatment of their own people,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday. Iranian officials have repeatedly ruled out putting Iran’s missiles – one of the largest such arsenals in the Middle East – up for discussion, and have said Tehran wants recognition of its right to enrich uranium. For Washington, carrying out enrichment – a possible pathway to nuclear bombs – inside Iran is a red line. Tehran has long denied any intent to weaponize nuclear fuel production. “It was a good start to the negotiations. And there is an understanding on continuing the talks. Coordination on how to proceed will be decided in the capitals,” Araghchi told Iranian state TV. “If this process continues, I think we will reach a good framework for an understanding.” The Islamic Republic’s clerical leadership remains deeply worried that Trump may still carry out his threats to strike Iran after a US naval buildup in seas in the region. Last June the US struck Iranian nuclear targets, joining in the final stages of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. Tehran has since said it has halted uranium enrichment activity. The naval buildup, which Trump has called a massive “armada,” has followed a bloody government crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran last month, heightening tensions between Washington and Tehran. Trump has warned that “bad things” will probably happen if a deal cannot be reached, ratcheting up pressure on the Islamic Republic in a standoff that has led to mutual threats of airstrikes.With Reuters

Iran says talks with US in Oman were 'good start', will continue
Reuters/February 06/2026
MUSCAT/DUBAI, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Iran’s top diplomat said on Friday that nuclear talks with the U.S. mediated by Oman were off to a “good start” and set to continue, in remarks that could help allay concern that failure to reach a deal might nudge ​the Middle East closer to war. But Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said after the talks in the Omani capital Muscat that "any dialogue requires refraining from threats and pressure. (Tehran) only ‌discusses its nuclear issue ... We do not discuss any other issue with the U.S."While both sides have indicated readiness to revive diplomacy over Tehran's long-running nuclear dispute with the West, Washington wanted to expand the talks to ‌cover Iran's ballistic missiles, support for armed groups around the region and "treatment of their own people", U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday. Iranian officials have repeatedly ruled out putting Iran's missiles - one of the largest such arsenals in the Middle East - up for discussion, and have said Tehran wants recognition of its right to enrich uranium. For Washington, carrying out enrichment - a possible pathway to nuclear bombs - inside Iran is a red line. Tehran has long denied any intent to weaponise nuclear fuel production. "It was a good start to the negotiations. And there is ⁠an understanding on continuing the talks. Coordination on how to proceed ‌will be decided in the capitals," Araqchi told Iranian state TV. "If this process continues, I think we will reach a good framework for an understanding."
TALKS WERE 'VERY SERIOUS', SAYS OMAN
Mediator Badr al-Busaidi, Oman's foreign minister, said the talks had been "very serious", with results to be considered carefully in ‍Tehran and Washington. The goal was to reconvene in due course. The Islamic Republic's clerical leadership remains deeply worried that Trump may still carry out his threats to strike Iran after a U.S. naval buildup in seas in the region."The lack of trust is a huge challenge during the talks and it should be overcome," Araqchi said. Last June the U.S. struck Iranian nuclear targets, joining in the final ​stages of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. Tehran has since said it has halted uranium enrichment activity. The naval buildup, which Trump has called a massive “armada”, has followed a bloody ‌government crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran last month, heightening tensions between Washington and Tehran. Trump has warned that "bad things" will probably happen if a deal cannot be reached, ratcheting up pressure on the Islamic Republic in a standoff that has led to mutual threats of air strikes.World powers and regional states fear a breakdown in the negotiations would ignite another conflict between the U.S. and Iran that could spill over to the rest of the oil-rich region. Iran has vowed a harsh response to any strike and has cautioned neighbouring Gulf Arab countries that host U.S. bases that they could be in the firing line if they were involved in an attack. Negotiators in Oman will have to navigate Iran's red line on discussing its ⁠missile programme to reach a deal and avert future military action. Tehran has flatly ruled out talks ​on its "defence capabilities, including missiles and their range".In a show of defiance, Iranian state TV said hours before ​the talks that “one of the country’s most advanced long-range ballistic missiles, the Khorramshahr-4,” had been deployed at one of the Revolutionary Guards’ vast underground “missile cities”. However, Tehran is willing to show "flexibility" on uranium enrichment, including by handing over 400 kg of highly enriched uranium - refined closer to bomb-grade - and accepting ‍zero enrichment under a consortium arrangement as a ⁠solution, Iranian officials told Reuters last week. Iran also demands the lifting of U.S. sanctions, reimposed since 2018 when Trump, during his first term in the White House, ditched Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers. The United States, its European allies and Israel accuse Tehran of using its nuclear energy programme as a veil for ⁠efforts to develop the capability to produce atomic bombs. Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only. Israel has likened the danger of Iran's missiles to its nuclear programme. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in ‌January that Iran's "attempt to build atomic weapons" and "20,000 ballistic missiles" were like "two lumps of cancer

What is Trump's 'Board of Peace'?
Agence France Presse/February 06/2026
U.S. President Donald Trump's government has asked countries to pay up to $1 billion for a permanent spot on his "Board of Peace" aimed at resolving conflicts, according to its charter seen by AFP.The board was originally conceived to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza, but the charter does not appear to limit its role to the Palestinian territory.
What will it do?
The Board of Peace will be chaired by Trump, according to its founding charter.It is "an international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict", reads the preamble of the charter sent to countries invited to participate. It will "undertake such peace-building functions in accordance with international law", it adds.
Who will run it?
Trump will be chairman but also "separately serve" as representative of the United States. "The chairman shall have exclusive authority to create, modify or dissolve subsidiary entities as necessary or appropriate to fulfil the Board of Peace's mission," the document states. He will pick members of an executive board to be "leaders of global stature" to "serve two-year terms, subject to removal by the chairman". The charter says the chairman can be replaced only in case of "voluntary resignation or as a result of incapacity". A U.S. official confirmed that Trump can keep the chairmanship, even after leaving the White House, "until he resigns it", although a future U.S. president can appoint a different U.S. representative.
Who can be a member?
Member states must be invited by the U.S. president and will be represented by their head of state or government. Each member "shall serve a term of no more than three years", the charter says. But "the three-year membership term shall not apply to member states that contribute more than USD $1,000,000,000 in cash funds to the Board of Peace within the first year of the charter's entry into force", it adds. The U.S. official said that membership itself "does not carry any mandatory funding obligation beyond whatever a state or partner chooses to contribute voluntarily".The board will convene annual meetings with decisions by a majority vote, with the chairman breaking any tie.
Who's on the executive board? -
The executive board will be chaired by Trump and include seven members:
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Steve Witkoff, Trump's special negotiator
Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law
Tony Blair, former UK prime minister
Marc Rowan, billionaire U.S. financier
Ajay Banga, World Bank president
Robert Gabriel, loyal Trump aide on the National Security Council
Which countries are invited? -
Dozens of countries and leaders have said they have received an invitation, including close U.S. allies but also adversaries. China has been invited but a foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday Beijing would defend the international system with the United Nations "at its core".Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been invited, despite Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
A number of governments immediately said they would join.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a nationalist who is Trump's most ardent supporter in the European Union, is in, as is another close ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Azerbaijan's autocratic President Ilham Aliyev.
The United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. partner, also said it would join. And Canada said it would take part but explicitly ruled out paying the $1-billion fee for permanent membership.
Who won't be involved? -
Longtime U.S. ally France has indicated it will not join. The response sparked an immediate threat from Trump to slap sky-high tariffs on French wine.
Zelensky said it would be "very hard" to be a member of a council alongside Russia, and diplomats were "working on it".Britain echoed the sentiment, saying it was "concerned" that Putin had been invited. "Putin is the aggressor in an illegal war against Ukraine, and he has shown time and time again he is not serious about peace," said a Downing Street spokesperson.
The charter says the board enters into force "upon expression of consent to be bound by three States". Norway's government said it would not join the "Board of Peace" initiated by Trump, who has vented his frustration at the Nordic country after being snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"The American proposal raises a number of questions" requiring "further dialogue with the United States", State Secretary Kristoffer Thoner said in a statement. "Norway will therefore not join the proposed arrangements for the Board of Peace, and will therefore not attend a signing ceremony in Davos," Thoner said, adding that Norway would still continue its close cooperation with the United States.

US urges new three-way nuclear deal with Russia and China
Agence France Presse/February 6, 2026
The United States on Friday urged three-way talks with Russia and China to set new limits on nuclear weapons, after the last treaty between top nuclear powers Washington and Moscow expired. Thomas DiNanno, the under secretary of state for arms control, told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that "serial Russian violations, growth of more worldwide stockpiles and flaws in New Start's design and implementation gives the United States a clear imperative to call for a new architecture that addresses the threats of today, not those of a bygone era". "As we sit here today, China's entire nuclear arsenal has no limits, no transparency, no declarations, had no controls," he said, adding that "the next era of arms control can and should continue with clear focus, but it will require the participation of more than just Russia at the negotiating table". The Kremlin had said Friday that Russia and the United States agreed during talks in Abu Dhabi that it was necessary to renew nuclear talks. "There is an understanding, and this was also discussed in Abu Dhabi, that both sides will act responsibly and will recognize the need to start negotiations on this issue as soon as possible," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, after the New START agreement lapsed earlier this week. Russian ambassador Gennady Gatilov said that other nuclear-armed states such as France and Britain should be included in any new nuclear talks with the United States. Russia "would be involved in such a process if the United Kingdom and France are also involved, who are military allies of the United States in NATO, which has declared itself a nuclear alliance," Gatilov told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. China had said Thursday that it would not join nuclear talks "at this stage". "China's nuclear capabilities are of a totally different scale as those of the United States and Russia (and) will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage," Beijing's foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a news conference.

A man detonates explosive belt during arrest attempt in Iraq, injuring 2 security members
AP/February 6, 2026
BAGHDAD (AP) — A man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up Friday while a security force was trying to arrest him in western Iraq near the Syrian border, killing himself and wounding two security members, an Iraqi security official said. The raid was being conducted in the al-Khaseem area in Qaim district that borders Syria, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The official added that “preliminary information” confirms that no members of the security forces were killed, while two personnel were injured and transferred for medical treatment. Iraq’s National Security Agency said in a statement that its members besieged a hideout of an Islamic State group security official and two of his bodyguards. One bodyguard ignited his explosives belt, killing him. It gave no further details. IS once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014. The extremist group was defeated on the battlefield in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019 but its sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. In December, two U.S. service members and an American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blamed on IS. The U.S. carried out strikes on Syria days later in retaliation. U.S. and Iraqi authorities in January began transferring hundreds of the nearly 9,000 IS members held in jails run by the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria to Iraq, where Iraqi authorities plan to prosecute them.

In a Nigerian village, extremists issued a call to prayer and then slaughtered those who turned up
Pelumi Salako And Ope Adetayo/AP/February 6, 2026
WORO, Nigeria (AP) — Weeks after residents of two Nigerian villages ignored a letter from militants announcing they would come to spread their extreme form of Islam, gunmen arrived on motorbikes and embarked on a 10-hour frenzy of killing. The attackers went from door to door, shooting and setting homes and shops ablaze in the mostly Muslim villages of Woro and Nuku. Later, residents told The Associated Press, they went into a mosque, announced the call to prayer and shot everyone who turned up. In the deadliest attack in Nigeria in several months, the extremists rounded up villagers, tied their arms behind their backs, lined them up and shot them in the head. Authorities say they slaughtered at least 162 people, while villagers say the toll is higher and that the men kidnapped many others. The attack is the latest in a surge in violence in the state of Kwara, as well as other conflict hot spots, as armed groups in Nigeria challenge the state's authority and compete with one another.
The attack came out of the blue
Immediately before the attack, life had been quite normal in the quiet neighboring villages, where most residents are farmers, roughly 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the state capital. Umar Bio Kabir, a 26-year-old schoolteacher, was playing football with his friends when they saw the attackers. They ran for their lives, but not everyone who was playing made it. “God said I would survive or else I would have been among the dead,” he said. According to several residents interviewed by the AP, the killing went on for the next 10 hours. Residents said they had no help throughout the operation, and no security operatives showed up. “We did not see anybody from when it started in the evening till the morning when it ended,” said Iliyaus Ibrahim, a farmer in the village whose brother died and whose pregnant sister-in-law was kidnapped along with her two children. Reached by phone, Kwara state police spokesperson Adetoun Ejire-Adeyemi said: “That is not possible. Security operatives were on ground.” She would not say anything further. ‘Everyone who lived here has been killed’ Only about 20 men remained in the villages by Thursday, left with the arduous task of burying scores of dead people. Though the official toll is 162, residents told the AP they have buried nearly 200 people and have more to bury, including completely charred remains. Kabir joined in burying several of his close friends in Woro. “Even as I am speaking to you, we have not finished packing the bodies. There are not enough people left in the village. Yesterday, we loaded bodies into two Hilux (pickup) trucks. Today, we are doing it again,” he said. Two days after the killings, a body still lay in blood on Thursday. The remaining men said they were too tired to return to the site. Residents struggled to breathe as the harmattan wind blew the ashes of burned houses and shops, with a lingering stench of blood. Zinc roofs clattered lightly against each other in the wind, the only sound in the dead-quiet village.  Survivors were gathering their essentials onto bikes, taxis and trucks and heading away from the village to restart life elsewhere. Zakari Munir had come into Woro to help his brother pack to move to Kaiama, where the local government office is located. He pointed to a section of burning buildings and told the AP: “Everyone who lived here has been killed.”
Nigeria's security crisis is spreading southward
The attack in Kwara, which borders Benin, has sparked concerns about the spread of Nigeria’s security crisis. The armed groups were previously confined to regions farther north, but analysts say they have moved their operations south as military pressure and territorial competition among groups ramp up. Nigeria now plays host to multiple armed groups, both homegrown and cross-border. The West African nation has been fighting an insurgency for more than a decade, with Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State of West Africa Province, in addition to several amorphous groups commonly referred to as bandits. In 2024, the Nigerian military announced the presence of the Lakurawa group, which had come from Niger, and in 2025 Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin claimed its first attack on Nigeria, in Kwara. The wider area of West Africa and the Sahel is also facing multiple threats from various Islamic extremist groups. Several thousand people have been killed in Nigeria's protracted conflict, according to data from the United Nations. Analysts say not enough is being done by the government to protect its citizens. On Wednesday, the Nigerian government announced a new military operation in Kwara to stem the spread of the crisis there. Last year, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu announced a state of emergency, aiming to add thousands more police officers. A complicated crisis that goes beyond faith. Nigeria has been a focus of the U.S. government recently after President Donald Trump accused the West African nation of not protecting Christians from an alleged genocide. The Nigerian government rejected the claim, and analysts say the claim simplifies a very complicated crisis that targets people regardless of their faiths. In Woro and Nuku, for instance, the Muslim victims appear to have been killed for resisting the preachings of the extremists. Nigeria has entered a partnership with the U.S. on military cooperation. The U.S. launched airstrikes against militants affiliated with the Islamic State group on Dec. 25 and has provided Nigeria with weapons. On Friday in Kaiama, Maryam Muhammed and other survivors gathered for Islamic prayers for her husband, one of the victims. The 57-year-old also lost her house. Muhammed was taken by the attackers before being let go in the pandemonium. In the morning, she looked for her husband, who had been responsible for performing the call to prayer at the local mosque. She searched through still-smoldering bodies until she found him. “When I did not hear his voice (at the mosque) when the day broke,” she said, “I knew there was trouble.”

Suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque on Islamabad's outskirts kills at least 31 and wounds scores
Munir Ahmed/AP/February 06/2026
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A suicide bomber targeted a Shiite mosque on the outskirts of Islamabad during Friday prayers, killing 31 people and wounding at least 169 others, officials said, a rare bombing in Pakistan's capital as its Western-allied government struggles to rein in a surge in militant attacks across the country. Television footage and social media images showed police and residents transporting the wounded to nearby hospitals. Some of the wounded in the attack on the sprawling mosque of Khadija Al-Kubra were reported to be in critical condition. Rescuers and witnesses described a harrowing scene, with bodies and wounded lying on the mosque's carpeted floor. Hussain Shah said he was praying in the mosque courtyard when he heard a sudden, loud explosion. “I immediately thought that some big attack had happened,” he said. He then went into the mosque to utter chaos — many of the wounded were screaming and crying out for help. Shah said he counted around 30 bodies inside the mosque, while the number of the wounded appeared to be significantly higher. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion, but suspicion is likely to fall on militants such as the Pakistani Taliban or the Islamic State group, which has been blamed for previous attacks on Shiite worshippers, a minority in the country. Militant groups across Pakistan often target security forces and civilians.
A surge in militant attacks
Though attacks are not so frequent in Islamabad, Pakistan has seen a surge in militant violence in recent months, largely blamed on Baloch separatist groups and the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which is a separate group, but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban. A regional affiliate of the Islamic State group has also been active in the country. In the initial aftermath of the explosion, a lower number of casualties was released, but Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Irfan Memon gave the latest tolls. Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif wrote on X that preliminary findings suggest the suicide bomber had been on the move to and from Afghanistan. Asif said the mosque's security guards tried to intercept the suspect, who opened fire at them and then detonated his explosives among the worshippers. The condition of the guards was not immediately known. Pakistan often accuses Afghanistan, where the Taliban seized power again in August 2021 as American and NATO troops were withdrawing after a 20-year war, of harboring militants and members of the Pakistani Taliban. Kabul denies the accusation. Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement Friday saying that the “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan condemns such attacks that violate the sanctity of sacred rituals and mosques and target worshippers and innocent people.”The attack also drew condemnation from the international community, including the United Sates and European Union. Condolences and condemnation also poured in from various embassies in Islamabad. Political and religious leaders condemn the attack. President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif extended condolences to the families of the victims in sperate statements and asked that all possible medical assistance be provided for those wounded. “Targeting innocent civilians is a crime against humanity,” Zardari said. “The nation stands with the affected families in this difficult time.”“Those who are responsible must be identified and punished,” Sharif said. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi also condemned the attack. Friday’s attack occurred as Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who is on an official two-day visit, was attending an event with Sharif. The event in Islamabad was several miles away from the site of the explosion. A top Shiite leader, Raja Nasir, expressed deep sorrow over the attack at Khadija Al-Kubra. “Such a terrorist act in the federal capital is not only a serious failure in protecting human lives but also raises significant questions about the performance of the authorities and law enforcement agencies,” he said and asked for people to give blood as the hospitals in Islamabad were in urgent need for blood supplies for the wounded.
he last deadliest attack in Islamabad was in 2008, when a suicide bombing targeted the Marriott Hotel in the capital, killing 63 people and wounding over 250 others. In November, a suicide bomber had struck outside a court in Islamabad, killing 12 people. The latest attack came nearly a week after the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army carried out multiple attacks in insurgency-hit southwestern Balochistan province, killing about 50 people.Security forces responding to those attacks also killed more than 200 “terrorists,” according to the military. Hours after the Islamabad bombing, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif said on X that she had canceled her events at the music and kite-flying festival in the city of Lahore for Saturday. The festival, which got underway on Friday, was still expected to continue.

The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 06-07/2026
Syria's Genocidal 'Peace': Trump's 'Friends' Have Been Setting Him Up with Jihadists Faking Tolerance
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/February 06/2026
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/02/151883/
It is hard to tell which, so far, is the greatest scam of the century: "Climate Change" while watching North America enjoying its global warming; Putin's protestations of wanting peace while demolishing Ukraine, or the trap being lubricatively laid for US President Donald J. Trump throughout much of the Middle East. The "success" being brought to Syria -- slaughtering non-Muslims -- appears to be the same kind of "success" being brought into Gaza, after Trump leaves office, of course. Some of Trump's "friends" and devoted donors, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan, appointed to his "Board of Peace," do not even recognize Israel.
Trump's vision seems to be that economic prosperity will supersede jihadist ideology and deradicalize "all ships" -- but what if it does not? As can be seen in Qatar, one can be rich and radical – and able to buy even bigger weapons, whether nuclear, broadcastable or financial. Qatar, which runs its state-owned Al-Jazeera television network at an estimated cost of billions of dollars, has, according to reports, donated more than $1 billion to Washington, DC's Georgetown University alone. Georgetown happens to specialize in training future diplomats. Just what information will these future diplomats be exporting
In Syria, the recent assaults on its Christians, Kurds and Yazidis are the third ethnic cleansing campaign that the army and affiliated militias under al-Sharaa have conducted since he took over Syria in December 2024. The others targeted the Alawites, Yazidis and Druze.
Al-Sharaa's regime, after taking almost full control of the country, has been largely dismantling the Kurdish autonomous region that controlled Syria's northeast for over a decade, while the US administration has abandoned its allies – the Kurds and the SDF – who had courageously fought ISIS and helped liberate Syria from ISIS occupation.
Videos on social media show al-Sharaa-affiliated forces abducting Kurdish women, mocking them as "gifts" (sex slaves) and massacring Kurds.
The city of Kobani, still controlled by Kurds, is currently encircled on three sides by al-Sharaa's army and affiliated militias, while the border with Turkey remains closed. Al-Sharaa's armed forces, according to the Kurdish media, also targeted the region's sole source of power, the Tishrin Dam, thereby cutting off the city's electricity and water supply since January 15.
"[Al-Sharaa's] ultimate goal is an Islamist dictatorship in Syria. It was made clear after it leaked from the meeting between him and the Kurds when he asked Mazloum Abdi [SDF leader]: 'why did you let the Christians form their own police force?'" — Rafael Issa, a Christian born in Syria and the founder of the Levantine Greek Association, to Gatestone, January 2026.
"The US should investigate what is really going on in Syria, and not use Tom Barrack's [U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria] point of view. Tom Barrack is obviously working for his own interests." — Rafael Issa to Gatestone, January 2026.
In Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa's regime, after taking almost full control of the country, has been largely dismantling the Kurdish autonomous region that controlled the northeast for over a decade, while the US administration has abandoned its allies – the Kurds and the SDF – who had courageously fought ISIS and helped liberate Syria from ISIS occupation. Pictured: Syrian regime forces block a road as they take over Al-Aqtan prison near Raqqa, on January 23, 2026. (Photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/Getty Images)
It is hard to tell which, so far, is the greatest scam of the century: "Climate Change" while watching North America enjoying its global warming; Putin's protestations of wanting peace while demolishing Ukraine, or the trap being lubricatively laid for US President Donald J. Trump throughout much of the Middle East.Start at Syria. It was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who reportedly groomed al- Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa for Western consumption, and it was Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who persuaded Trump, during his visit to Riyadh May 2025, to give Sharaa, a former Al Qaeda operative, "a chance at greatness" – presumably meaning to bring peace to Syria:
"And I'm very pleased to announce that Secretary Marco Rubio will be meeting with the new Syrian foreign minister in Turkey later this week. And very importantly, after discussing the situation in Syria with the Crown Prince, your Crown Prince, and also with President Erdogan of Turkey who called me the other day and asked for a very similar thing, among others and friends of mine, people that I have a lot of respect for in the Middle East, I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.
"Oh, what I'd do for the Crown Prince."
The "success" being brought to Syria -- slaughtering non-Muslims -- appears to be the same kind of "success" being brought into Gaza, after Trump leaves office, of course. Some of Trump's "friends" and devoted donors, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan, appointed to his "Board of Peace," do not even recognize Israel.
Trump's vision seems to be that economic prosperity will supersede jihadist ideology and deradicalize "all ships" -- but what if it does not? As can be seen in Qatar, one can be rich and radical – and able to buy even bigger weapons, whether nuclear, broadcastable or financial. Qatar, which runs its state-owned Al-Jazeera television network at an estimated cost of billions of dollars, has, according to reports, donated more than $1 billion to Washington, DC's Georgetown University alone. Georgetown happens to specialize in training future diplomats. Just what information will these future diplomats be exporting?
In Syria, the recent assaults on its Christians, Kurds and Yazidis are the third ethnic cleansing campaign that the army and affiliated militias under al-Sharaa have conducted since he took over Syria in December 2024. The others targeted the Alawites, Yazidis and Druze.
Al-Sharaa's Islamist government is currently targeting Kurds and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the country's northeast. Since January 6, an estimated 150,000 people, mainly Kurds, Christians, and Yazidis, have been internally displaced by Syria's armed forces.
Al-Sharaa was head of the terrorist group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and before that, he led Syrian al-Qaeda (also known as the Jabhat Al-Nusra or the Nusrah Front), a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. HTS, based on its affiliation with al-Qaeda and ISIS, was blacklisted as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council and the European Union. Last year, the US State Department, presumably as part of its effort to facilitate the consolidation of al-Sharaa's rule, delisted it as a terrorist organization.
Al-Sharaa became Syria's self-proclaimed president after a jihadist offensive, spearheaded by HTS and supported by the Turkish government, overthrew the Assad regime in November 2024. A $10 million bounty for al-Sharaa's capture was removed by the Biden administration on December 20, 2024.
The regime forces' current attacks against the Kurds started on January 6 in the Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh in the northern part of Aleppo.
On January 18, regime forces seized Raqqa, the former capital of ISIS, and controlled by Kurds since the defeat of ISIS. There, al-Sharaa's forces released thousands of ISIS terrorists from prison.
Al-Sharaa's regime, after taking almost full control of the country, has been largely dismantling the Kurdish autonomous region that controlled Syria's northeast for over a decade, while the US administration has abandoned its allies – the Kurds and the SDF – who had courageously fought ISIS and helped liberate Syria from ISIS occupation.
Videos on social media show al-Sharaa-affiliated forces abducting Kurdish women, mocking them as "gifts" (sex slaves) and massacring Kurds.
One Kurdish woman and SDF fighter was reportedly videotaped being beheaded, and another, Deniz Ciya, thrown from a tall building.
Another video circulating online shows a Syrian Arab Army (SAA) militiaman displaying a severed hair braid of a female fighter, presumably killed, from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and framing it as a trophy.
In Turkey, protests in solidarity with Syrian Kurds, such as in the city of Mardin, were violently crushed.
In Germany, an Arab supporter of the Syrian Islamists publicly celebrated the murder of Kurds by chanting songs associated with calls to kill the Kurds.
In Belgium, a man attacked and wounded multiple people with a knife at a Kurdish demonstration, leaving some in critical condition.
Despite a ceasefire agreed on January 20 between al-Sharaa's regime and the Kurdish-led SDF, regime forces and affiliated factions continued attacking areas controlled by Kurds.
On January 30, after al-Sharaa's forces captured swathes of northern and eastern Syria from the Kurds, forcing them to retreat, his regime ⁠and Kurdish forces declared an "integration deal."
The city of Kobani, still controlled by Kurds, is currently encircled on three sides by al-Sharaa's army and affiliated militias, while the border with Turkey remains closed. Al-Sharaa's armed forces, according to the Kurdish media, also targeted the region's sole source of power, the Tishrin Dam, thereby cutting off the city's electricity and water supply since January 15.
As a result, northeastern Syria is facing a rapidly accelerating humanitarian crisis. There is a severe shortage of bread and a collapse of basic services.
On January 27, local officials and international observers warned that food security for approximately 150,000 civilians is in immediate jeopardy, compounded by a lack of fuel, electricity, and a record-breaking winter storm.
Meanwhile, Syria's Islamists have also been targeting Christians. The X account of Greco-Levantines Worldwide reported on February 1:
"Eli Najjar Taqla, a 21-year-old Antiochian Greek Christian from Muhardeh, was killed in a shooting that has deepened fears among Syria's Christian communities. His death is not seen as an isolated incident, but part of growing concerns over insecurity and the spread of weapons."
On the same day, Antiochian Greeks assembled in Damascus beside the Holy Cross Greek Church to protest the murder and ongoing targeting of Christians in Syria.
Amid this violence and siege, Syrian Christians fear they could be next in an ethnic cleansing campaign.
Eiad Herera, spokesman of the Antiochian Greek Organization, told Gatestone:
"Christians have tended to remain politically silent after what they witnessed and experienced following December 8. This silence is driven by sectarian and radical abuses and rhetoric, Islamist hegemony over both society and state, and clear as well as implicit threats—some of which were carried out, most notably in the Saint Elias Church bombing. This is how Christians are responding to the new reality.
"What makes their fears particularly credible is what other minorities have experienced. The massacres against Alawites in March, the genocidal attempt against the Druze in July, and the most recent attacks on Kurdish communities have reinforced the belief that no minority is safe.
"Christians, alongside other minorities, see that the international community and major powers remain largely silent about what is happening in Syria, especially as regional powers such as Turkey and some Arab states support al-Sharaa's authority.
"Christians fear the normalization of jihadist governance under softer branding. They fear selective justice, where crimes against minorities are ignored or quietly settled. They fear ideological control over education and the imposition of beliefs on their children. They also fear that Western governments, exhausted by Syria, will accept "stability" at the expense of pluralism.
"The long-term goal remains ideological dominance. Al-Sharaa's own trajectory—from an al-Qaeda affiliate to a self-declared "national leader"—does not represent a theological rupture, but rather a tactical evolution. "Governance has become the new battlefield. Sharia-informed authority, centralized control, and the marginalization of non-conforming identities are consistent features of this model.
"What is happening in Syria today suggests there is no perfect solution, but there are clearly bad ones we must stop pretending will work. A centralized Islamist state would guarantee future violence, even if temporarily quiet. A return to Assad-style authoritarianism would be equally disastrous."
Rafael Issa, a Christian born in Syria and the founder of the Levantine Greek Association, told Gatestone:
"[Al-Sharaa's] ultimate goal is an Islamist dictatorship in Syria. It was made clear after it leaked from the meeting between him and the Kurds when he asked Mazloum Abdi [SDF leader]: 'why did you let the Christians form their own police force?'
"Federalism was an idea we initially thought of. Each for his own, but with surprisingly high levels of extremism we have witnessed so far, division is the only plausible solution. The areas of the coast inhabited by religious and ethnic minorities should be separated from Damascus.
"The US should investigate what is really going on in Syria, and not use Tom Barrack's [U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria] point of view. Tom Barrack is obviously working for his own interests.
"If the US government does not want to continue the forming of basically a Sunni Islamic state, they should support the separation of Syria's coast from Damascus because the minorities in Syria are not willing to give their lives for an Islamic state that treats them like cattle – that is, for a state that will sooner or later take them to the slaughter."
Meanwhile, according to a report by Kurdistan24 detailing the conditions within Kobani, the population of central Kobani has nearly doubled in recent weeks as displaced persons from Raqqa, Tabqa, and various frontline villages seek refuge from ongoing instability. This demographic surge has placed unsustainable pressure on the city's limited resources.
The human cost of the siege has already turned lethal. The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) announced that at least one child recently died in a Kobani hospital due to a critical lack of medical oxygen.
Health facilities are reportedly functioning solely on emergency generators, and medical professionals warn that diesel reserves are almost entirely depleted.
In addition, the Kurdish Red Crescent reported on January 24 that five children, including an infant, died in the city specifically due to exposure to the extreme cold. The fatalities are linked to a significant drop in temperatures and a total lack of heating fuel, which has also allowed for the rapid spread of respiratory and chest illnesses among children. Monitoring groups such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have corroborated these reports, describing the situation as a "major humanitarian catastrophe" where citizens lack access to medicine for chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension.
On January 27, the organization Genocide Watch issued a report entitled "Genocide Emergency: Rojava and Northern Syria:"
"Rojava (the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) is facing a coordinated campaign of annihilation. Following the collapse of the Assad Regime and Ahmed al-Sharaa's (Abu Mohammed al-Julani) rise to power, Damascus's conflict with the Kurds has been revived.
"Since mid-January 2026, forces of the Syrian transitional government, joined by allied local tribal militias, have engaged in siege tactics, spreading terror, and mass displacement. The government forces are attacking the very conditions needed for Kurdish survival, through cuts to water and electricity, food scarcity, blocked access routes, displacement, violence and humiliation. We are witnessing a convergence of destruction and destabilization from multiple directions.
"Kobani is a symbol of Kurdish resistance, the city where the Kurds were besieged by the Islamic State (ISIS) and triumphed. Today that same city is being pushed towards collapse.
"People have been melting snow to drink water. Four Kurdish children have died from cold exposure as the siege by government forces tightens, according to the Kurdish Red Crescent. A statement from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) describes Kobani as cut off, with civilians facing growing shortages. "The siege by the Syrian military is especially dire for internally displaced persons (IDPs), who have the least protection and the fewest survival options. Deprivation is not 'collateral' when it is systematic, prolonged, and lethal. This is a humanitarian disaster caused by siege conditions."Fighting and coercion are producing more displacement in and around northern Syria, including Aleppo. Humanitarian reporting describes families fleeing violence in freezing temperatures with urgent needs for shelter, food, heating, and protection. Local agreements intended to protect civilians are being undermined. Documentation by Syria-focused accountability groups warns of dangerous escalation affecting civilian neighborhoods..."International abandonment is now explicit. The United States has again abandoned the Kurds, while Damascus demands the full "integration" of the SDF into the State's forces, without credible guarantees for Kurdish civilian protection or self-administration. "Genocide is not only mass killing. It is also the deliberate destruction of a group's ability to live, as stated in Article II, act (c) of the UN Convention on Genocide.
"Kurds are being punished for seeking autonomy, their aspiration branded as illegitimate. Kurdish identity is being attacked through symbolic violence. The campaign is coordinated and escalating into a humanitarian disaster."
Nadine Maenza, former chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told Gatestone:
"In my conversations with Christians living in northeast Syria, most are terrified as they watch Syrian security forces advance. Recent videos have intensified that fear. Footage circulating appear to show Syrian security forces and aligned fighters beheading SDF fighters, including women, and executing civilians—including the parents of a family after they admitted they were Kurdish. "For Christians, Yazidis, and other vulnerable communities, these images reinforce a clear message: if forces with a record of abuses take control of the northeast through violence, their families may be next. They want to keep living in a region with religious freedom and where communities coexist in relative peace. They do not want the Syrian government to import the sectarian violence that has devastated so much of Syria into the northeast.
"The U.S. has a decisive role in these negotiations, and Syria's religious and ethnic minorities are counting on Washington to press for a settlement that delivers durable peace and stability—for their communities and for Syria as a whole."
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22259/syria-genocidal-peace
**Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2026 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute.

Why is the United Nations Chief Calling for Israel's Destruction?....The United Nations Does Not Stop War, It Conserves War
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/February 06/2026
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22258/un-chief-calling-for-israel-destruction
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is still pushing for the establishment of a Palestinian terror state next to Israel. There are only three ways to read Guterres's position: he is completely clueless; he wants to see Israel eradicated; or he is happy to oblige his constituents at the UN who would apparently like to see Israel eradicated.
At the UN, 26 member states -- including Qatar, US President Donald J. Trump's "neutral" peace negotiator and member of his "Board of Peace," as well as other "Board of Peace" affiliates such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia -- do not even "formally" recognize Israel.
When Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel took place, there was no "occupation" in the Gaza Strip. The "occupation," in fact, ended in the summer of 2005....For most Palestinians, all Jews there are "illegal settlers," and Israel just "one big settlement" that has no place in the Middle East.
Many Palestinians viewed the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a retreat in the face of terrorism. In their eyes, if Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip as a result of terrorism, all that is needed for the rest of Israel to leave is more terrorism. As the great historian Bernard Lewis noted nearly 50 years ago, the UN does not resolve war, it conserves war. Trump, who managed to contain several wars in six months, has shown the world as much.
If Palestinians could be taught -- and learn -- coexistence, their lives could be so magnificent. This change, however, can never take place while the UN and its scores of Arab and European camp-followers enable impossible fantasies.
Finally, Guterres might listen to what the majority of the Palestinians are unmistakably saying: NO to a two-state solution. Palestinians polled two years ago by AWRAD, a Palestinian research group, unequivocally said that they did not want a "two-state solution" -- 75% rejected any solution other than a Palestinian state "from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea" – meaning over all of Israel.
As Guterres must know full well, the establishment of a Palestinian state will not lead the Palestinians to abandon their determination to eliminate Israel. Quite the opposite. A Palestinian state will make them more determined than ever to continue their efforts to obliterate Israel. October 7 did not happen because Palestinians were denied a state. It happened because they were given one. It is hard to believe that, more than two years after Palestinians invaded Israel, murdering, torturing, wounding, and kidnapping thousands of Israelis and foreign nationals, UN Secretary-General António Guterres is still pushing for the establishment of a Palestinian terror state next to Israel.
It is hard to believe that, more than two years after Palestinians invaded Israel, murdering, torturing, wounding, and kidnapping thousands of Israelis and foreign nationals, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is still pushing for the establishment of a Palestinian terror state next to Israel. There are only three ways to read Guterres's position: he is completely clueless; he wants to see Israel eradicated; or he is happy to oblige his constituents at the UN who would apparently like to see Israel eradicated.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) alone consists of 57 UN member states out of a total of 192. At the UN, 26 member states -- including Qatar, US President Donald J. Trump's "neutral" peace negotiator and member of his "Board of Peace," as well as other "Board of Peace" affiliates such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia -- do not even "formally" recognize Israel: Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Niger, Pakistan, and Cuba.
"The two-State solution with Israelis & Palestinians living side by side in peace & security is the only viable path to a just & lasting peace," Guterres wrote this week "The occupation must end. The inalienable rights of the Palestinian people must be realized. International law must be respected."
The UN secretary general seems to have forgotten that the two-state solution was finally laid to rest on October 7, 2023, when Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, accompanied by thousands of "ordinary Palestinians" from the Gaza Strip, attacked Israel's southern communities, murdering more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and wounding thousands. On just one day, more than 250 Israelis and national foreigners, including women, children and the elderly, were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
When Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel took place, there was no "occupation" in the Gaza Strip. The "occupation," in fact, ended in the summer of 2005, when Israel withdrew from Gaza after evacuating 9,000 Jews and destroying 21 Jewish communities.
On October 7, 2023, Israel had no security or civilian presence inside the Gaza Strip. In 2005, every Jew left Gaza; it then became a de facto independent Palestinian state.
After the Israeli withdrawal, the Palestinians could have turned the Gaza Strip into the "Singapore of the Middle East." Instead, most Palestinians in 2006 voted for Hamas, whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel. Hamas, with the help of Iran, Qatar, and Turkey, turned the Gaza Strip into one of the largest bases for jihad (holy war) and terrorism in the Middle East. Hamas, recruiting tens of thousands of soldiers, built its own army.
This period was not used to build prosperity, institutions, or peaceful coexistence. Instead, it was used to arm Palestinians, radicalize them and prepare for war.
On October 7, 2023 the "State of Gaza" declared war on the State of Israel by firing more than 2,000 rockets into the country, roughly the size of New Jersey (approximately 22,000 sq.km.), while thousands of Palestinians poured over the border, many videotaping their atrocities.
The Israeli communities targeted by the Palestinian terrorists are not "disputed territories" or "illegal settlements." They are towns and cities located inside Israel's internationally recognized borders. Even Guterres's UN does not dispute that fact. Additionally, Israeli citizens living near the border with the Gaza Strip are not, according to the UN and international law, "illegal settlers."
The Palestinians, incidentally, do not distinguish between a Jew living over the Green Line and a Jew living in Tel Aviv or any other city inside Israel. For most Palestinians, all Jews there are "illegal settlers," and Israel just "one big settlement" that has no place in the Middle East.
Although the "occupation" of the Gaza Strip ended more than two decades ago, the Palestinians' dream of eliminating Israel has not disappeared. In fact, conversely, Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip increased their appetite to pursue their jihad to replace Israel with a Palestinian Islamist state. Many Palestinians viewed the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a retreat in the face of terrorism. In their eyes, if Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip as a result of terrorism, all that is needed for the rest of Israel to leave is more terrorism. The Palestinians and their Arab brothers have already voted against a two-state solution many times, starting in November 1947. The UN had offered a partition plan dividing then Mandatory Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem as an international city. Rather than accept the offer, the Arabs attacked Jewish civilians and looted Jewish shops, setting them on fire -- with the apparent aim of terrorizing Jews in order to prevent a Jewish state in any part of the land. Since then, Palestinian leaders have rejected all Israeli peace offers that would have given them a state.
In 2000, US President Bill Clinton hosted Israeli and Palestinian leaders at a summit in Camp David with the hope of reaching a comprehensive peace agreement between the two sides. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat walked away from the summit after turning down an Israeli offer that would have given the Palestinians control of nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as large parts of east Jerusalem.
Clinton said:
"It was historic: an Israeli government had said that to get peace, there would be a Palestinian state in roughly 97% of the West Bank, counting the swap, and all of Gaza where Israel also had settlements. The ball was in Arafat's court. "I was calling other Arab leaders daily to urge them to pressure Arafat to say yes. They were all impressed with Israel's acceptance and told me they believed Arafat should take the deal. I have no way of knowing what they told him, though the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, later told me he and Crown Price Abdullah had the distinct impression Arafat was going to accept the parameters. "On the twenty-ninth, [US envoy] Dennis Ross met with [Palestinian negotiator] Abu Ala, whom we all respected, to make sure Arafat understood the consequences of rejection. I would be gone. Ross would be gone. [Then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak would lose the upcoming election to [Ariel] Sharon...."I still didn't believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake."By continuing to call for a Palestinian state, Guterres is clearly seeking to reward Hamas for its October 7 massacre – and doing a great service to Hamas. The Palestinians' repeated rejection of the two-state solution shows that their leaders have repeatedly chosen to sacrifice their own people to achieve their goal of destroying Israel.
The UN has done nothing but prolong the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the great historian Bernard Lewis noted nearly 50 years ago, the UN does not resolve war, it conserves war. Trump, who managed to contain several wars in six months, has shown the world as much.
Guterres and his UN staff, if they were honest, would tell the Palestinians in no uncertain terms that they will never "return" to Israel – even after Trump and Netanyahu are long gone -- and that, in their own best interests, they would be wise to abandon 78 years of failed attempts to eliminate Israel. If Palestinians could be taught -- and learn -- coexistence, their lives could be so magnificent. This change, however, can never take place while the UN and its scores of Arab and European camp-followers enable impossible fantasies.
Finally, Guterres might listen to what the majority of the Palestinians are unmistakably saying: NO to a two-state solution. Palestinians polled two years ago by AWRAD, a Palestinian research group, unequivocally said that they did not want a "two-state solution" -- 75% rejected any solution other than a Palestinian state "from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea" – meaning over all of Israel.
Guterres is right. International law must be respected. It is the Palestinians, however, who must respect international law by recognizing Israel's right to exist and ending their jihad to destroy it. Unfortunately, there are no signs that the Palestinians are coming around.
As Guterres must know full well, the establishment of a Palestinian state will not lead the Palestinians to abandon their determination to eliminate Israel. Quite the opposite. A Palestinian state will make them more determined than ever to continue their efforts to obliterate Israel. October 7 did not happen because Palestinians were denied a state. It happened because they were given one.
**Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East. His work is made possible through the generous donation of a couple who wish to remain anonymous. Gatestone is most grateful.
© 2026 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Shared vision behind Saudi-Turkish economic momentum
Dr. Sinem Cengiz/Arab News/February 06, 2026
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s one-day visit to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday proved that these two regional middle powers, with strong competitive advantages and complementary economic systems, are driving a solid plan for expanding economic ties — but not stopping there. The visit demonstrated that Ankara and Riyadh are speaking the same language: on trade, investment, development and action. It is not surprising that economic considerations are key factors shaping the new momentum in Turkish-Saudi ties, which is, by its very nature, multifaceted. From the agreements they have signed, it has become evident that Ankara and Riyadh are engaging in promising efforts to bolster their economic ties, while placing their relations on a more sustainable and institutionalized track.
As part of Erdogan’s visit, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye signed a $2 billion agreement to develop large-scale solar power projects in Turkiye. Under the agreement, Saudi companies will construct solar power plants in Sivas and Karaman with a capacity of 2 gigawatts in the first phase. The total capacity of solar and wind power plants that the Saudi Arabian companies will construct is expected to reach 5 GW. The solar power plants are expected to meet the electricity needs of 2.1 million households in Turkiye.
The agreement not only aims to enhance cooperation between the two countries in the fields of renewable energy and green technologies — to which the Kingdom gives special importance — but it also supports the two countries’ diversification goals in terms of energy security and investment strategies. This agreement is among the most significant examples of direct foreign investment in the Turkish energy sector. It is also the realization of a deal signed between two states in 2023 to advance their cooperation in energy, oil and the mining of critical minerals. Both Saudi Arabia and Turkiye are seeking to direct their investment plans and collaboration in a more strategic way
During the major investment forum held on the day of Erdogan’s visit to Riyadh, officials from both sides stated they were targeting $10 billion in bilateral trade by 2026 and $30 billion in the longer term. In 2023, the Turkish and Saudi trade ministers agreed to implement a “robust plan” to increase bilateral trade, especially mutual investments in diverse sectors. We are now seeing this taking shape. Both Turkiye (through the Century of Turkiye vision) and Saudi Arabia (through Vision 2030) are reconstructing their own economies. Therefore, both are seeking to direct their investment plans and collaboration in a more strategic way. These agreements and understandings show there is a strong will from both sides to strengthen their investment coordination, which could encourage private sector partnerships. They also reflect the development of the mutual trust between the two countries. Mutual trust is strengthened when two countries fully embrace each other’s policies, both political and economic — this has been the case for the Turkish-Saudi regional vision for a while. I believe mutual trust has been built on both sides now, thanks to the working consultation mechanism that has been created.
The main priority of the growing Turkish-Saudi economic momentum is to focus on long-term investment strategies. But it does not stop there. The political elites in both countries want to accelerate trade relations while also moving beyond simple trade figures. What we understand from this visit is that both leaders see economic cooperation not only as a means for capital flow, but also a tool for fostering closer institutional collaboration.
This institutional collaboration will come with the transfer of knowledge and expertise across businesses and institutions alike. Even in areas like the defense industry, which is often seen as purely strategic, there are commercial opportunities that can strengthen economic collaboration between the two countries. For instance, Turkish defense industry products are widely showcased at defense exhibitions and shows across the Gulf, including the World Defense Show in Riyadh, which opens on Sunday.
While stability within these countries is essential for investment and development, stability in the region is equally vital
The day after his Riyadh visit, Erdogan announced that Saudi Arabia could make a joint investment in Turkiye’s fighter jet project, KAAN. As in trade, defense cooperation encourages joint planning, standardization and institutional partnerships, which opens space for the involvement of several sectors.
However, the sustainability of the mutual trust and goals to enhance the investment environment require consistency, predictability and, most importantly, economic and political stability. Predictability, both political and economic, is the most important concern for investors on both sides because past negative experience has an imprint on relations. So, long-term confidence-building was an important task for the leaderships on both sides — and the current momentum shows that this has started to bear fruit.
However, while political and economic stability within these countries is essential for investment and development, stability in the region is equally vital. In the current geopolitical context, the boundaries between economy and security are becoming increasingly blurred. Economic interests are never separated from security considerations and, therefore, the recipe for a secure region is an integrated economy through cooperation, with threats eliminated from the domestic and external environments.
It is no surprise that regional security is often mentioned by the Turkish and Saudi leaders, even when signing agreements on trade. Today, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia share overlapping regional interests and both view their own security and stability as inseparable from that of the wider region, from Sudan to Syria and from Yemen to Somalia. This shared vision provides a strong foundation for the current boost in economic ties.
**Dr. Sinem Cengiz is a Turkish political analyst who specializes in Turkiye’s relations with the Middle East. X: @SinemCngz

US should build a lasting relationship with Central Asia
Luke Coffey/Arab News/February 06, 2026
The Trump administration has made no secret of the fact that it sees stability and security in the Western Hemisphere as a priority. This emphasis has been outlined in multiple strategic documents, including the most recent National Security Strategy. But even with this focus on regions closer to the homeland, there is another area — thousands of kilometers from the US — that is receiving far more attention than it has in the past: Central Asia, which includes the countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In just the past fortnight, Washington has taken several notable steps to bolster engagement in the region. This week marked the launch of the B5+1 Forum in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The B5+1, the business counterpart to the C5+1 political platform between the US and the five Central Asian states, brought more than 50 US business leaders into the heart of the Eurasian landmass to explore opportunities for expanding American investment in the region. The initiative reflects a growing recognition that economic engagement will be central to any sustainable US approach to Central Asia.
Also this week in Washington, the US State Department hosted a Critical Minerals Ministerial, convening leaders from dozens of countries to discuss supply chain resilience and security-related challenges tied to the critical minerals that are becoming increasingly important to modern life. Central Asia was well represented, underscoring the region’s growing importance as a potential source of rare earth elements and other strategic materials at a time when global supply chains remain vulnerable.
Meanwhile, last week, the US secretary of the army paid a rare visit to Turkmenistan. While unusual, the visit makes sense in light of broader regional dynamics, particularly given Turkmenistan’s long border with Iran. The visit was followed by a phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the president of Turkmenistan, reflecting Washington’s heightened awareness of the country’s geopolitical significance.
There is growing recognition that economic engagement will be central to any sustainable US approach to Central Asia
These are only the most recent examples of the Trump administration’s renewed focus on Central Asia. Over the past year, additional initiatives have highlighted the region’s rising importance in US strategic thinking. Last August, President Donald Trump helped bring long-lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, unlocking the potential for expanded transport, trade and transit between the US, its partners and Central Asia.
The South Caucasus serves as a critical gateway to the region, offering Washington access to Central Asia that bypasses Russia, China and Iran. Azerbaijan, in particular, is so central to Central Asia’s global connectivity that the original C5 format was expanded into a C6 framework to include Baku in regional discussions. In October, the US hosted a historic C5+1 summit to mark the 10th anniversary of the initiative. For the first time, all five Central Asian heads of state were welcomed to the White House. Trump also appointed one of his closest advisers, Sergio Gor, to serve as the first US special envoy to Central Asia, institutionalizing Washington’s engagement in a way previous administrations had not.
The logic behind this renewed focus is straightforward. Central Asia sits at the heart of the Eurasian landmass, a region that is becoming increasingly important in a more multipolar world. It is rich in natural resources, including oil, natural gas and rare earth elements, and it contains some of the most important transit corridors across Eurasia, many of which trace their origins to the ancient Silk Road. The region also matters from a security and energy perspective. The US has a long history of working with Central Asian governments on combating transnational terrorism and cooperating on energy-related issues. These relationships have contributed to regional stability and served broader US security interests for decades.
Today Central Asia is shaped by the growing influence of multiple external actors, including Russia, China and Turkiye
The timing of Washington’s renewed engagement could hardly be better. After the Sept. 11 attacks, almost a quarter of a century ago, the US engaged deeply with Central Asia, largely because of operations in Afghanistan. As US involvement in Afghanistan waned, so too did attention on the broader region. Today, however, Central Asia is shaped by the growing influence of multiple external actors, including Russia, China and Turkiye — and, to a lesser extent, Iran and India. It is only logical that the US reassert itself as a meaningful player. A defining feature of Central Asian foreign policy is balance. Governments across the region seek to manage relations with multiple powers simultaneously, avoiding overdependence on any single actor. As the US expands its engagement, it should pursue policies that help these countries balance their external relationships more effectively while strengthening their ties to the West. US policy should aim to enhance regional sovereignty by enabling governments to resist malign influence without forcing them into zero-sum choices. One reason Washington has made rapid inroads in the region is Trump’s business-oriented instincts and transactional approach. The administration has largely abandoned the lofty and often unrealistic objectives pursued by previous administrations — goals that were frequently outside US control — and instead focused on achievable outcomes such as economic growth, political stability and sovereignty. This pragmatic approach has resonated in Central Asia.
There are also several quick policy wins Washington could pursue to build on recent momentum. Trump could visit Central Asia to signal his personal commitment to the region — no sitting US president has ever done so. The administration is also due to publish a new Central Asia strategy. The last was released in 2020 and both the region and the world have changed dramatically since then. Transactionalism alone is not sufficient. As the US develops a reinvigorated approach to Central Asia, it must begin laying the foundation for a durable, long-term relationship. The region’s importance will only grow over the course of the 21st century.
**Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. X: @LukeDCoffey

Rafah is not a favor — and the Board of Peace must ensure it is only the beginning
Hani Hazaimeh/Arab News/February 06, 2026
The partial reopening of the Rafah crossing has been welcomed in some quarters as a diplomatic breakthrough, even framed as a gesture of goodwill. This narrative, however, misses the point — and risks lowering the bar.
Humanitarian access to civilians under siege is not an act of generosity, nor is it a concession deserving gratitude. It is a legal obligation under international humanitarian law and a moral imperative grounded in the most basic principles of human dignity. For Gaza’s more than 2 million people, Rafah is not symbolic. It is a lifeline — often the only corridor for wounded civilians seeking advanced medical care, the primary entry point for humanitarian assistance, and the sole exit for students, families, and professionals whose lives have been suspended by closure.
When this artery is sealed or restricted, the consequences are immediate and measurable: preventable deaths, untreated trauma, food insecurity, and a deepening sense of abandonment. That is why the reopening of Rafah should not be framed as a political achievement, but as the bare minimum required by law. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power is obligated to ensure the provision of food and medical supplies to the civilian population (Article 55) and to facilitate relief operations when civilians are inadequately supplied (Article 59). Additional Protocol I further requires parties to allow rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance. These obligations are reinforced by UN Security Council Resolution 2286, which affirms the protection of medical services and access to care during armed conflict.
Seen through this legal framework, Rafah’s opening is not progress — it is compliance, partial and overdue. Yet even with Rafah open, Gaza remains under severe closure. Israel continues to exercise decisive control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, maritime access, population registry, and most commercial crossings — realities recognized by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross as constituting effective control under international law.
This means that legal responsibilities persist regardless of administrative arrangements or troop deployments. The result is a paradox: Gaza is described as “unoccupied,” yet subjected to one of the most restrictive movement regimes in the world. Rafah, in this context, functions less as a gateway to freedom than as a pressure valve — opened temporarily during crises, then closed when attention fades. This is not sustainable humanitarian policy. It is crisis management.
That is why the formation of the Board of Peace is not merely welcome — it is necessary. For decades, Palestinian civilians have experienced relief in bursts and rights in fragments. Humanitarian access has been conditional, political progress episodic, and accountability largely absent. The Board of Peace offers something fundamentally different: a structured, internationalized mechanism that can institutionalize civilian protection, safeguard humanitarian corridors, and ensure that temporary openings translate into permanent norms.
The UN has long warned that humanitarian action cannot substitute for political resolution. Relief corridors, however necessary, cannot replace political corridors toward stability, rights, and peace.
This matters because humanitarian relief without political grounding produces dependency rather than dignity. Gaza today risks becoming the world’s most enduring emergency — sustained by aid flows but denied sovereignty, economic recovery, and meaningful self-rule.
The UN has long warned that humanitarian action cannot substitute for political resolution. Relief corridors, however necessary, cannot replace political corridors toward stability, rights, and peace.
The Board of Peace must therefore ensure that Rafah’s reopening is not treated as an endpoint but as a baseline. It must work to transform ad hoc humanitarian gestures into durable legal guarantees. That means institutionalizing crossings under international oversight, insulating humanitarian access from political pressure, and embedding civilian protection within enforceable frameworks rather than discretionary arrangements.
International law is clear: collective punishment is prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Yet Gaza’s closure regime — which restricts movement, trade, medical access, reconstruction materials, and energy supply — has affected the entire civilian population indiscriminately.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory has repeatedly characterized these policies as incompatible with humanitarian law. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights further guarantees rights to health, food, education, and an adequate standard of living — rights that UN treaty bodies affirm apply fully to occupied territories. Against this backdrop, Rafah’s reopening is not generosity — it is an obligation. But obligation alone does not produce stability. That requires sustained implementation, monitoring, and accountability. This is precisely where the Board of Peace can play a transformative role. First, the Board can serve as a guarantor that humanitarian access remains uninterrupted, predictable, and needs-based rather than politically contingent. Second, it can provide oversight mechanisms to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law and human rights standards.
Third, it can help coordinate international funding streams not merely toward emergency relief, but toward reconstruction, institutional rebuilding, and long-term civilian resilience. Fourth — and most importantly — it can anchor humanitarian action within a political process that restores Palestinian agency, dignity, and self-determination. Because humanitarian corridors without political horizons become permanent bottlenecks.
Gaza’s people do not need symbolic openings. They need structural change — freedom of movement, functioning healthcare, economic recovery, education systems, and security grounded in rights rather than coercion. They need the normalization of civilian life, not the normalization of crisis.
The opening of Rafah also raises a deeper question: what kind of peace does the international community seek? One that manages suffering, or one that ends it? One that celebrates minimum compliance, or one that demands full accountability? One that stabilizes conflict, or one that resolves it?
International humanitarian law was not drafted to regulate benevolence. It was drafted to regulate power. It exists precisely because civilians cannot be left at the mercy of political calculation or military discretion. When humanitarian obligations are framed as favors, accountability dissolves. When relief is framed as diplomacy, rights are reduced to transactions. And when survival becomes conditional, law becomes optional. This is why language matters. Gratitude implies benevolence. Benevolence implies choice. And choice implies the absence of obligation. None of these apply here.
The Board of Peace must ensure that Rafah becomes a precedent, not an exception — a floor, not a ceiling. It must also ensure that humanitarian progress does not become decoupled from political progress.
The UN General Assembly has repeatedly affirmed the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, including sovereignty over their territory and natural resources. UN Security Council Resolution 2334 reaffirmed the applicability of international law to the occupied Palestinian territory and called for steps to preserve the viability of a two-state solution. These frameworks remain the legal and moral foundation for any sustainable peace architecture.
Because Gaza’s crisis is not merely humanitarian. It is structural. It is political. And it is legal. And while Rafah’s reopening may save lives — as it must — it cannot be mistaken for justice. Justice begins when access is no longer conditional. When crossings are no longer bargaining chips. When civilians are no longer hostages to geopolitics. When international law is not selectively applied but universally enforced. The opening of Rafah should be welcomed as a humanitarian necessity. But it should never be mistaken for generosity — nor allowed to substitute for deeper obligations.
The real test is not whether Rafah opens today, but whether it remains open tomorrow — and whether Gaza’s people are finally granted what international law already guarantees them: freedom of movement, access to healthcare, economic dignity, and protection from collective punishment.Because peace does not begin with gratitude. It begins with rights. And rights, once recognized, must never again be conditional.
*Hani Hazaimeh is a senior editor based in Amman. X: @hanihazaimeh
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Financialization will not improve global health
Walter O. Ochieng and Tom Achoki/Arab News/February 06, 2026
For the past half-century, the economics of global health were straightforward. Rich countries gave grants to poor countries, which used the funds to meet their populations’ health needs. Success was measured in services provided or lives saved, rather than balance sheets balanced. While this model was far from perfect, the approach that is now replacing it — focused on using tools like guarantees and blended finance to crowd in private capital — threatens to produce even worse outcomes.
There are legitimate criticisms of the grant-based approach. Grants are finite, draw on limited public budgets and are subject to donor-country politics. Official development assistance for health has stagnated, in real terms, since the late 2010s, even though need has grown. Moreover, the grant-based system makes much use of vertical health programs, which advance specific, measurable, narrow and often short-term objectives. Since these programs have their own procurement systems, reporting requirements and priorities that run parallel to overarching national objectives, they tend to lead to more fragmented health systems, not stronger ones.
More fundamentally, the grant-based system makes recipients accountable to donors, rather than citizens. Donor “earmarks” — restricting contributions to specific projects, objectives or places — create perverse incentives, as they are often narrow in scope and reflect short-term thinking. As a result, countries might be left with gleaming tuberculosis clinics but no funds for basic child health services. And grants often breed dependency, with services collapsing as soon as the money dries up.
Rather than address the grant-based system’s weaknesses, however, development finance institutions and donor countries want to scrap it, arguing that the embrace of “catalytic capital” can deliver scale without ever-larger budget lines. An independent evaluation found that, between 2015 and 2024, the World Bank Group collectively issued more than $60 billion in guarantees, mostly to mobilize private investment in low- and middle-income countries. Development finance institutions now trumpet additionality ratios — “for every $1 of public money, private sources deliver $5” — as a primary metric of success, including in health-related investments.
This new architecture distorts the risk landscape in ways that socialize losses, while privatizing profits and control
Once you get past the jargon, however, it becomes clear that this new architecture distorts the risk landscape in ways that socialize losses, while privatizing profits and control. Of course, altering the distribution of risk is the point. For example, guarantees entail an entity (usually public or philanthropic) pledging to step in if a borrower defaults on a loan from private investors. Enabling private actors to enjoy financial and reputational benefits, with capped downside risks, lowers the cost of capital for projects deemed socially valuable.
But the results are far from benign. Donors claim fiscal prudence, but they are committing to obligations that materialize when things go wrong. Since the shocks that are covered — such as currency depreciation, political instability, regulatory changes and weak demand — are very common in lower-income countries, the chances donors will have to pay up are high. Recipient governments, meanwhile, remain bound by their repayment obligations, often denominated in foreign currency.
Consider vaccine manufacturing. Guarantees can de-risk factories and encourage local production — a genuine public good, particularly in a region like Africa, which imports more than 99 percent of its vaccines. But vaccine demand is volatile, procurement depends heavily on donors and margins are thin. To make projects bankable, guarantees often extend beyond construction costs to cover offtake risk or exchange-rate losses for years. When vaccine demand collapsed after the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturers’ liabilities did not disappear, they shifted to the public actors that had underwritten the risk. This redistribution of risk affects decision-making. Private actors have little incentive to exercise discipline when they know their losses are backstopped. And risk-laden guarantors are more likely to emphasize the financial viability of projects, rather than the health system’s needs. Revenue-generating services (urban hospitals, diagnostics, tertiary care) are favored over lower-margin investments (primary care, worker salaries, rural clinics) that offer the most cost-effective health gains. Most of the private health investment that development finance institutions have mobilized in low-income countries has gone toward hospitals and specialized facilities.
Risk-laden guarantors are more likely to emphasize the financial viability of projects, rather than the health system’s needs
Guarantees flatter the technocratic belief that the main constraint on global health is money — and, specifically, the structure of financing. But the biggest constraint is politics, in both donor and recipient countries. Guarantees cannot conjure sustainable health financing where tax bases are weak, debt burdens are high and trust in public institutions is low. Low-income countries now spend more on servicing external debt than on public health — a constraint that no amount of leverage can overcome.
Furthermore, guarantees cannot change the domestic political economy. Governments underinvest in health even when capital is accessible, because health spending delivers diffuse benefits, whereas other priorities — security, patronage and visible infrastructure — offer more concentrated political returns. Nor can guarantees deliver the long-term recurrent spending — including on personnel, maintenance and logistics — that is needed to keep a health system running. Private capital dislikes overhead and operating expenses; it prefers assets, contracts and exits.
This is not to say that guarantees have no place in global health. But they should be used sparingly, transparently and for genuine public goods, such as pandemic preparedness, regional manufacturing capacity or cross-border surveillance systems. And they should be evaluated not by how much private capital they mobilize, but by whether they strengthen health systems without shifting unsustainable risks onto fragile governments.
Meanwhile, donors must honor existing grant commitments and increase overall official development assistance. And efforts must be made to support domestic resource mobilization in low- and middle-income countries, such as by strengthening tax systems and improving governance.
Global health does not suffer from a lack of clever financial instruments. It suffers from a shortage of predictable funding to pay nurses, keep clinics open and ensure that drugs arrive on time. The language of leverage might appeal to those who make funding decisions but it will do little to fix health systems on the ground.
Walter O. Ochieng is a physician and global health researcher at the Africa Institute for Health Policy.
**Tom Achoki, a former Sloan fellow at MIT, is a physician and Co-Founder of the Africa Institute for Health Policy.
© Project Syndicate

Selected X tweets for February 06/2026
U.S. State Dept - Near Eastern Affairs
Disarming Iranian proxy terror groups and cultivating peace in the Middle East are essential parts of @POTUS 's agenda. Today SBO Palladino met with Lebanese Chief of Defense General Haykal to continue discussions regarding the United States’ support of Lebanon’s effort to dismantle all non-state actors.

Antoine Saad
Somebody should tell M. @LindseyGrahamSC that Lebanon lost his sovereign decision in 1969, 1975, 1984, and 1992, when USA left him for his cruel destiny for "a few dollars more".Cf "Spheres of intervention us Foreign policy and the collapse of Lebanon, 1967-1976".

Lebanese Patriot
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The people need real leaders who are willing to move our country forward, not pander to the demands of a group who has held our country hostage. 🇱🇧

Fatima J
Lebanon was destroyed the moment it joined the Arab League. From there the corrupt elite allowed the land and people to be used, abused and killed while they lined their pockets and their wives closets.
The Lebanon that people know is a terrorist state, nothing more. Mount Lebanon, a Christian controlled Lebanon, may be our final chance to see the Lebanon we know in our souls, exist

Mount Lebanon
The Assad regime fell. The Baath in Iraq fell. Now the Iranian regime may be next. Meanwhile, Lebanon is flooded with millions of Arab invaders labeled Palestinian and Syrian, along with the remnants of collapsing regimes. If we do not move fast toward the independence of Mount Lebanon, Lebanon will be destroyed and the Christian presence erased. Elections will not save us. A new system will. Elections are just another dose of drugs that mask the symptoms before the final collapse, and by then it will be too late to save our people.

Charles Elias Chartouni
This whole power structure is anti-constitutional and has no more operational legitimacy. It's a self- destructive course.

Charles Elias Chartouni
The US is the lifeline of LAF... And it's none of our business to discuss the US policy. If the incumbents in power are disgruntled and disapprove of US policy, nobody is asking them to come to Washington in the first place.... Otherwise, this visit is a diplomatic blunder done by silly amateurs who know nothing about US politics.