Habib Siddiqui

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli leader “secretary visited” the United Arab Emirates amid attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran and called the trip “historic”, a revelation which the UAE’s Foreign Ministry has denied. Iran’s foreign minister said Netanyahu has “publicly revealed” what was already known by the Iranian security services, warning that “collusion” with Israel is “unforgivable” and those doing so will be “held to account”. US Vice President JD Vance said progress is being made with Iran in negotiations to end the war as US President Donald Trump embarks on a state visit to China. A mother and her two children were among at least 20 people reported killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Wednesday, including at least three strikes on vehicles on a major highway. Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2 have now killed at least 2,896 people and left 8,824 people injured. Read less 6 Updates Auto-updates 11m ago (00:45 GM...

  After British troops had beaten German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s tank forces at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt on November 4, 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared , “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” The same might now be said about humanity’s struggle to defeat the dire threat of global climate change caused by our never-ending burning of fossil fuels. The illegal war of aggression on Iran, abruptly launched on February 28, 2026, by the governments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, has indeed provoked a global energy crisis of a unique kind. The Iranians, of course, responded by imposing a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz that promptly removed about 11% to 13% of all petroleum from the world market, day after day, week after week, setting off a cascade of steeply rising prices for diesel fuel, gasoline, and natural gas. Donald Trump’s b...

  An estimated 43,000 people of the 172,000 injured in Gaza since October 2023 have sustained life-changing injuries, including around 10,000 children, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday. Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, said the updated estimates reflect the devastating long-term impact of the conflict on Gaza’s population and healthcare system. Since WHO’s last report in September 2025, nearly 5,000 additional life-changing injuries have been recorded, almost half of them after the ceasefire was announced in October 2025, she said. According to WHO data, major limb injuries account for the largest share of severe cases, with more than 22,000 recorded, followed by over 5,000 traumatic amputations, more than 3,400 major burns, over 2,000 spinal cord injuries, and more than 1,300 traumatic brain injuries. More than 50,000 injuries now require long-term rehabilitation, Van de Weerdt ...

Robert Kagan, one of the United States’ most prominent neoconservative voices and a long-time pro- Israel hawk, has warned that Washington is heading towards “total defeat” in its war on Iran - a setback he says “can neither be repaired nor ignored”. Writing in The Atlantic , Kagan said the damage inflicted by the conflict cannot be reversed. “There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done,” he concluded bleakly. Kagan, who co-founded the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century in 1997, helped shape a political current that pushed the US to project military power globally. That doctrine culminated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and deeply influenced the George W. Bush administration. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters He remained closely tied to that policy ecosystem,...