Amine Ayoub

The Damascus Charade:

Al-Sharaa belongs in the dock beside Assad

All a murderous terrorist needs to do is hire a public relations firm, put on a necktie, and adopt the language of Western diplomacy to be accepted. Opinion.

The Levantine Fault Line:

Navigating the new Turkish-Egyptian security axis

What is currently materializing is a highly pragmatic, transactional alliance between two regimes which are setting aside deep historical grievances to challenge the strategic interests of Israel and its Western allies. Opinion.

The Rafah Sandbox:

The Peace Council Plan imperils Israeli security

Let's face it: The institutional psychology of international peacekeeping operations is fundamentally mismatched with the brutal demands of active counter-terrorism. Opinion.

Trump's overture to Ahmed al-Sharaa:

A risky bet on "reformed" Islamism

Will the Trump administration ever decide to choose a much-needed shift from a policy of wishful engagement to one of rigorous, conditional realism? Opinion.

Amine Ayoub:

The parallels between Morocco and Israel are impossible to ignore

With the Western Sahara stalemate and Morocco-Algeria tensions, UN Momentum meets persistent proxy risks. Morocco, much like Israel, learned that yielding to international pressure or relying on endless peace processes only emboldens rejectionists. Op-ed.

Egypt’s Regional Shakedown:

Gaza reconstruction and the fragile facade of the Sisi Regime

Sisi has long played a double game with Hamas. When he needs to look vital to Washington and Jerusalem, he acts as the stern mediator. When he wants to pressure Israel, the borders mysteriously become porous. Opinion.

The world ignored Somaliland for 35 years. Israel didn't.

A stable, Israel-friendly partner on that coastline does not merely represent a diplomatic trophy. It represents a security asset of genuine long-term importance. Op-ed.

The Iran war's biggest loser is Russia

The Iran campaign handed the United States something it spent decades trying to achieve through other means: a globally witnessed proof of concept that Russian air defense is penetrable, brittle

Israel can destroy Hamas and Hezbollah. Will it be allowed to?

What the critics who warn against "escalation" consistently fail to account for is that the alternative they are defending is not peace. It is a repeat performance.

Iran is not starting a war. It's raising the price of Peace.

Talks must be formally suspended until Iran demonstrates, through action and not rhetoric, a willingness to operate in good faith. Opinion.

Strategic mastery:

Israel's measured response to Iranian aggression

Critics may occasionally misinterpret restraint as weakness. In reality, Israel's current posture reflects immense strength.Opinion.

Israel Under Fire:

Iran's missiles shatter fragile calm as proxies test the limits

Context is essential: Israel strikes back. Its actions arise from survival imperatives after years of rockets, tunnels, and massacres, not from unprovoked aggression. Opinion.

Iran shoots at American destroyers, talks continue anyway

Iran's message to Washington was unambiguous: we can hurt you, but we are choosing not to, and that choice should be compensated with concessions at the negotiating table, and with Trump telling Israel to ignore rockets from Lebanon and missiles from Iran. Opinion.

The Lebanon Ceasefire was never meant to hold

By delivering a ceasefire on paper while Hezbollah's actual behavior guarantees its collapse, Israel and Washington have handed Tehran a paper concession that costs nothing real. Opinion.

Congress just handed Iran its most valuable weapon of the war

Iran's generals were watching. They are already acting accordingly. Four Republicans broke with their own president in wartime to side with a Democratic-led measure that Tehran's state media will now replay on a loop. Opinion.

Rescuing Hezbollah:

Inside France's panic over Israel's deepening incursion

France's panic tells us less about humanitarian principle than about the enduring European compulsion to rescue failing actors from the consequences of their own aggression, particularly when Israel is the one delivering them.

Israel just crossed a Red Line in Lebanon nobody noticed

Hezbollah's capacity to threaten northern Israel from southern Lebanon depends entirely on its ability to control and transit terrain up to the Zahrani River and ending that is the IDF objective. Opinion.

The Litani is no longer the frontier

Why Israel's security now starts at the Strait of Hormuz. Opinion.

The Global Sumud Flotilla:

Dismantling the Islamist maritime lawfare machine

By conventional military metrics, Israel prevailed completely. By the metrics that the flotilla's architects actually care about, the results are more complicated. Opinion.

Iran's Empty Cradles:

Why Washington must not rescue a dying regime

The regime will not be negotiated out of existence, but America must not resuscitate it, because it can be outlasted. The empty cradles of Tehran are the most honest evidence available that outlasting it is an achievable strategy. Opinion.

Tehran's assassins

Why Germany's indictments demand a hardline transatlantic response. Opinion.

Lebanon's Fractured Minorities:

Why Israeli security architecture works better than UN buffers

The choice is between Israeli security architecture and a reconstituted Hezbollah. UNIFIL is not a factor. Opinion.

Disaster ahead?

Iran didn't just close the Strait, Now it wants Internet control

In 1973, the weapon was oil. In 2026, Tehran is reaching for the internet. An IRGC with supervisory authority over data flowing between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv under Hormuz is not a hypothetical threat. It is a strategic catastrophe waiting to materialize. Opinion.

Regime Survival vs. Civilizational Reckoning:

The Jewish imperative for support of Iran's true opposition

Iran is a young country with a highly educated population whose professional and civic ambitions have been systematically crushed by a regime that views indigenous talent as a threat to be managed rather than a resource to be cultivated. This is an opportunity not to be missed. Opinion.

Sovereignty as a Weapon:

Iran's maritime lawfare and the flotilla farce

Iran cannot currently launch a missile campaign, but it can demand international vessels file paperwork. Hamas cannot currently rocket Tel Aviv, but it can sail toward a blockaded coast and let the cameras do the rest. Opinion.

Israel helped Egypt arm Sinai. Now those guns point the wrong way

What should alarm anyone who remembers the years before October 7 is not that the buildup is happening. It is how Israel is processing it. Opinion.

The Hiram Alliance:

Why Lebanon's break from Iran is Israel's north's only hope

When Israeli and Lebanese delegations sit down in Washington on May 14 and 15, they will not be creating something new. They will be attempting to recover something very old: the idea that the Lebanese state is capable of acting in its own interest. Opinion.

Don't let Putin guard the uranium!

Why Russia must be kept out of the Iran nuclear endgame. Opinion.

The UAE just quit OPEC. US and Israel should be paying attention

Cartel membership came with Arab political expectations. Independence from it comes with Arab political freedom.

Bahrain's citizenship purge exposes Iran's most dangerous weapon

Bahrain is battling the network of citizens, residents, and IRGC-cultivated operatives embedded inside Bahraini society who passed targeting intelligence to Tehran while the attacks were still ongoing. Iran has spent decades cultivating this 5th column - and not just in Bahrain. Op-ed.

Pakistan has no incentive to close this Deal

A successfully concluded, permanent deal ends the lucrative Saudi bailouts, American military contracts, high profile presidential phone calls - and Pakistan was never bombed so it feels no urgency. Opinion.

Turkey's economic takeover of Syria has already begun

What is unfolding is the systematic embedding of Turkish institutional infrastructure into Syrian economic life at a moment when Damascus is too weak, too dependent, and too ideologically aligned with Ankara to resist. Opinion.

U.S. Exit from Syria’s Qasrak Base:

A gift to ISIS or a green light for Turkish expansion?

However you look at it, the reality on the ground suggests a volatile outcome. Opinion.

Beyond the Buffer:

Why South Lebanon demands a new strategic logic

An adversary that does not accept the permanence of the opposing state does not experience a ceasefire as a settlement. It experiences it as a reloading interval. Israel must act in accordance with that unpleasant truth. Opinion.

Strategic Drift:

The danger of inconsistent American messaging on Iran

What is missing, and what Israel's own experience of deterrence theory makes painfully legible, is a victory doctrine. Opinion.

The Homs Tunnels and the myth of Syrian neutrality

Western reconstruction funds and diplomatic recognition must not precede verifiable proof that Iranian smuggling networks have been permanently dismantled. The proclaimed neutrality of Ahmed al-Sharaa is a diplomatic posture, not an operational reality. Opinion.

Turkey’s Final Descent Into Autocracy:

Erdogan's digital Iron Curtain

With its new ruling, Turkey can be called 'a consolidated autocracy utilizing 21st-century technology to enforce a level of societal control reminiscent of medieval absolutism.' Opinion.

Another reason to fight to the finish:

The Iran and Sudan Connection: A new Empire crosses the Red Sea

Iran is great at turning battlefields into bases for its ideology, and Sudan's military culture is soaking this up. If no one stops them, they will control the Red Sea and Khartoum will host permanent Iranian drone teams, electronic spying stations, and naval advisors reaching deep into Africa's interior.

Sisi’s High-Wire Act:

Can Egypt survive a victorious Israel and a weakened Iran?

Egypt faces a classic lose-lose proposition. And once the indispensable Arab mediator, Cairo now watches its traditional leverage erode. What will it do? Opinion.

The Strait of Trump:

A strategic imperative for Israel and the Free World

The US must counter Iran’s brazen plan to impose a permanent Hormuz Toll, extorting millions from every commercial vessel seeking safe passage through the Persian Gulf. Opinion.

From Neutrality to Necessity:

The Gulf’s "Turning Point" must cement a Middle East NATO

The Abraham Accords laid the economic and diplomatic groundwork, but the crucible of the current war has forged the true alliance, as Iran attacks GCC states. Opinion.

Iran's Succession Void:

Mojtaba Khamenei’s public silence is the Coalition’s opportunity

The primary, overarching target is the regime’s very claim to absolute authority. The coalition’s most potent tactical opening lies precisely in the exploitation of this glaring succession void. Opinion.

The Salalah Port Attack:

Alienating Oman and dooming the Resistance Axis

Iran shattered the carefully cultivated myth of Omani exceptionalism, the one diplomatic card Tehran played for decades to shield itself from total Gulf isolation. Opinion.

The EastMed Trap:

The Cairo-Ankara rapprochement threatens Israeli energy security

While Israel and the US are concentrating on Iran, a Turkish-Egyptian earthquake is about to erupt that may put the crucial EastMed Gas Forum at risk. Opinion.

Sudan’s Terror Fusion:

The Iran-Brotherhood Nexus and global threat to energy security

Do you know that for three decades the Brotherhood governed Sudan through the National Congress Party? It hosted Osama bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, constructed Sudan’s military-industrial complex with Iranian assistance, and exported jihadist ideology across Africa. It now chokes oil transport at Bab el-Mandeb. Op-ed.

Qatar’s shield is broken:

Israel’s window to bankrupt Hamas permanently

Tehran, perhaps unintentionally, has permanently dismantled the illusion of Qatari diplomatic immunity. The era of tolerating Qatari two-faced hypocrisy should end forthwith. Opinion.

Iran Is killing Saudis while MBS begs it to stop

MBS is paralyzed. When will he realize that the only way out is immediate normalization with Israel instead of his continued groveling to Iran? Opinion.

From Gaza Bribes to Sahel Bullets:

The Islamist adapt-or-die strategy after Iran’s defeat

We may decapitate the Islamic Jihad sponsor, but its franchises are improvising in Gaza and the Sahel. The IRGC may be reeling, but its ideology is entrepreneurial and the West's response must be immediate, surgical and relentless. Opinion.

Subsidizing Slaughter:

Why the PA is the greatest obstacle to regional peace

Western funds intended for civic institution-building are actively being manipulated to sustain a massive, hidden infrastructure that financially rewards past and present terror attacks. Op-ed.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s “Election" Changes Nothing:

The campaign to end the Islamic Republic must accelerate

Mojtaba’s elevation changes nothing about the regime’s nature. It simply reveals its weakness. Opinion.

Turkey removes its mask:

NATO’s Islamist ally chose Tehran over Washington

Erdogan mourns Khamenei while blocking US bases. His behavior is that of a state sponsor of terrorism. Opinion.

Operation Roaring Lion:

The Beit Shemesh massacre proves 'restraint' is a Death Sentence

This cruel strike is a stark reminder that no city in Israel is safe so long as Tehran’s missile infrastructure remains intact. Opinion.

The "Artesh-IRGC Divorce":

How to weaponize Iran’s 14% desertion rate

While the Revolutionary Guards are unconditionally loyal to the Supreme Leader, the Artesh, Iran's regular army, has historically viewed itself as the defender of the Iranian nation. Opinion.

The Death of the 1967 Illusion:

"Greater Israel" rhetoric is the key to peace

Killing the illusion of 1967 can start the only peace process that has a chance of succeeding. Opinion.

Why 2026 is the year Israel finally stopped fearing Ramadan

When Israel retreated from its holiest site during Ramadan, it fueled the hope that the Jewish state can eventually be pushed out of Jerusalem entirely. No more. Op-ed.

Phase 2 of Trump's Peace Plan:

Gaza Peace without disarmament is a countdown to the next Oct. 7

The 60-day window given by the Israeli cabinet is not an "ultimatum" to be negotiated; it is a reality check for the international community. Opinion.

The Sovereignty Shift:

Land Registration in Judea and Samaria is the key to stability

By removing these territories from the "negotiating table" of the failed Oslo framework, Israel is forcing a shift in Palestinian Arab psychology. Opinion.

The Warlord’s Peace:

Why Gaza’s clans are the missing piece of the victory puzzle

A choice is being forced upon the Gazan street: side with the ideology that brought ruin, or side with the local strongmen who can provide security, trade, and survival. Opinion.

The Oxfam Exodus:

When the ‘Genocide’ narrative becomes too heavy to carry

Major international NGOs like Oxfam, once dedicated to the impartial relief of suffering, have been transformed into narrative laundries. Opinion.

Israel's legal option:

Sunset the 'Refugee' myth by equating Gaza with Baghdad

The Palestinian Arab 'refugee' issue is not a humanitarian tragedy; it is a manufactured industry designed to facilitate the destruction of the Jewish state. We must stop asking "How do we reform UNRWA?" and start asking "How do we sunset it?" Opinion.