What Really Lost the US Mid-Term Election? President Trump's Failure to Win Iran's 47-Year War - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

by Khaled Abu Toameh

The international community should not confuse the eagerness of Iranian officials to host diplomatic meetings with any meaningful change in the regime's dangerous regional policies.

 

• Iran's participation in discussions about "regional peace" does not, in the slightest, indicate that the Iranian regime is prepared to abandon the policies that have helped it comfortably to destabilize the Middle East for decades.

• Had Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, it might have benefited from a really powerful security partnership – with Israel and the United States. Israel possesses extensive experience in intercepting missiles and drones, sophisticated intelligence capabilities and advanced military technology. Combined with American military power, these capabilities could have offered Saudi Arabia a level of protection and security cooperation that Turkey and Pakistan are unlikely to match. Riyadh's refusal to take that step has left the kingdom pursuing alternative security arrangements whose effectiveness seems hapless at best.

• If Saudi Arabia cannot count on its partners to demonstrate military solidarity when it is attacked, what exactly is the purpose of the [Mecca Joint Defense Agreement]?

• Rather than demonstrating that attacks against Saudi Arabia carry consequences for Iran and its proxies, the three countries appeared to be asking -- if not begging -- Iran for permission, or at least appealing to its goodwill, to stop the attacks. The Iranian regime doubtless -- and understandably -- interprets such diplomatic efforts not as evidence of regional strength, but as a sign that its neighbors are scared and reluctant to confront it.

• For a regime such as Iran's that has repeatedly used military threats and proxy warfare to advance its interests, an approach based primarily on appeals and negotiations only reinforces that intimidation and terrorism work.

• The international community should not confuse the eagerness of Iranian officials to host diplomatic meetings with any meaningful change in the regime's dangerous regional policies.

• There can be no lasting regional security of any kind while the current Iranian regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, retains the ability to threaten its neighbors through armed proxies, maintain its program to acquire nuclear weapons, and brutalize its own people.

• US President Donald J. Trump, unless he truly finishes the war that Iran started 47 years ago instead of just saying he did -- and eliminates Iran's bloodthirsty regime -- will sadly go down in history as a failure rather than as one of the great leaders of all time. This can happen only if he eliminates not just Iran's nuclear threat but also eliminates Iran's current regime. Otherwise we will all be here in ten minutes to deal with Iran's new nuclear program again.

• Trump's party did not lose the midterm elections because of the war; they lost it because he actually chose not to win it. He evidently allowed himself to be persuaded by Vice President JD Vance and other isolationists that diplomacy with terrorists can be a viable plan. As Trump himself might say, "That is not how it works." Iran already proved as much with the fatal delay caused by the catastrophic Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding that Vance negotiated and that did not make it to sun-up.

• Trump and other international leaders in Europe and the Middle East need to stop treating the Iranian regime as a potential partner in "regional stability" and start treating it as the principal source of instability that they must finish confronting -- not accommodating.

Had Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, it might have benefited from a really powerful security partnership – with Israel and the United States. Pictured: US President Donald Trump greets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman the White House in Washington, DC on November 18, 2025. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

The October 26, 2026 meeting in Tehran between senior officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan exposed one of the biggest burlesques in the Middle East's emerging security arrangements: countries seeking protection against Iranian aggression are simultaneously negotiating with the Iranian regime about regional security. They seem to imagine that they are hedging their bets.

Saudi Arabia, which has faced threats from Iran and attacks by Tehran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, is looking to Turkey and Pakistan for additional security guarantees. The three countries signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement (MJDA) in August, apparently hoping to establish a regional security framework that would strengthen their ability to defend themselves and reduce their dependence on outside powers.

Yet representatives of all three countries immediately traveled to Tehran to meet Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior officials in a seeming effort to quell the conflict.

How could diplomacy – always considered a form of cringing weakness by expansionist rulers such as Iran's – produce any kind of security so long as they continued to support armed militias and proxy groups throughout the Middle East?

Iran's participation in discussions about "regional peace" does not, in the slightest, indicate that the Iranian regime is prepared to abandon the policies that have helped it comfortably to destabilize the Middle East for decades.

Even as the delegations gathered in Tehran, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis were launching new attacks against Saudi Arabia, including reported strikes targeting the kingdom's oil infrastructure and Riyadh airport.

Saudi Arabia was actually negotiating with the Iranian leadership while facing attacks from one of the armed groups sponsored by Iran.

The MJDA, signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, supposedly treats any armed attack against one member as an attack against all.

The agreement, however, only raises questions about its members. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long sought to expand Turkey's influence in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. Pakistan, meanwhile, which, in sham judicial proceedings, keeps allowing underaged Christian girls to be abducted into forced marriages with Muslim men (here, here and here) and sentences people to death for alleged "blasphemy" (here, here, here and here) has positioned itself as a righteous intermediary between Washington and Tehran. Saudi Arabia is just looking for additional protection after the war exposed the vulnerability of its territory and critical oil infrastructure.

As Saudi Arabia came under attack from the Houthis, neither Turkey nor Pakistan publicly demonstrated the kind of military support that the Saudis might have expected from their new defense partners. Instead, the kingdom's senior representatives rushed to Tehran to negotiate -- seemingly Iran's favorite pastime: talk, talk, talk to run out the clock.

Had Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, it might have benefited from a really powerful security partnership – with Israel and the United States. Israel possesses extensive experience in intercepting missiles and drones, sophisticated intelligence capabilities and advanced military technology. Combined with American military power, these capabilities could have offered Saudi Arabia a level of protection and security cooperation that Turkey and Pakistan are unlikely to match. Riyadh's refusal to take that step has left the kingdom pursuing alternative security arrangements whose effectiveness seems hapless at best.

If Saudi Arabia cannot count on its partners to demonstrate military solidarity when it is attacked, what exactly is the purpose of the MJDA?

Rather than demonstrating that attacks against Saudi Arabia carry consequences for Iran and its proxies, the three countries appeared to be asking -- if not begging -- Iran for permission, or at least appealing to its goodwill, to stop the attacks. The Iranian regime doubtless -- and understandably -- interprets such diplomatic efforts not as evidence of regional strength, but as a sign that its neighbors are scared and reluctant to confront it.

For a regime such as Iran's that has repeatedly used military threats and proxy warfare to advance its interests, an approach based primarily on appeals and negotiations only reinforces that intimidation and terrorism work.

Iranian security officials immediately appeared eager to portray the October 26 meeting as a diplomatic triumph. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's National Security Council, claimed that the visit demonstrated that American threats had little influence on countries around the world. He described the meeting as evidence of a "new and positive atmosphere" in the region. For whom?

Such statements should be treated with caution. The Iranian regime has an obvious interest in presenting diplomatic engagement with its neighbors as recognition of its regional importance, particularly after years of confrontation with Israel, the United States, and its Arab neighbors.

What, however, does their version of regional security actually mean? Will Iran agree to stop supporting armed militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen? Will it end its financial, military, and logistical assistance to Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Will the Iranian regime accept that its neighbors have the right to defend themselves against threats emanating from Iran-backed groups?

Without addressing these issues, regional security is really nothing more than a diplomatic joke. Iran cannot reasonably demand that neighboring countries respect its security while continuing to support armed organizations that threaten their security.

The international community should not confuse the eagerness of Iranian officials to host diplomatic meetings with any meaningful change in the regime's dangerous regional policies.

There can be no lasting regional security of any kind while the current Iranian regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, retains the ability to threaten its neighbors through armed proxies, maintain its program to acquire nuclear weapons, and brutalize its own people.

US President Donald J. Trump, unless he truly finishes the war that Iran started 47 years ago instead of just saying he did -- and eliminates Iran's bloodthirsty regime -- will sadly go down in history as a failure rather than as one of the great leaders of all time. This can happen only if he eliminates not just Iran's nuclear threat but also eliminates Iran's current regime. Otherwise we will all be here in ten minutes to deal with Iran's new nuclear program again.

Trump's party did not lose the midterm elections because of the war; they lost it because he actually chose not to win it. He evidently allowed himself to be persuaded by Vice President JD Vance and other isolationists that diplomacy with terrorists can be a viable plan. As Trump himself might say, "That is not how it works." Iran already proved as much with the fatal delay caused by the catastrophic Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding that Vance negotiated and that did not make it to sun-up.

It is to be hoped that Trump will finally put this adolescent dream of negotiating with terrorists to rest and prove to the world that he really is the great historical president, which is why people elected him in the first place. They clearly hoped that he would complete solving the problems before him, not just leave them half-finished.

Trump and other international leaders in Europe and the Middle East need to stop treating the Iranian regime as a potential partner in "regional stability" and start treating it as the principal source of instability that they must finish confronting -- not accommodating.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on X (formerly Twitter)

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22970/trump-failure-to-win-iran-war

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Eisenkot seeks haredi parties' support to oust Knesset Speaker Ohana on inauguration day - Shir Perets, Keshet Neev

 

by Shir Perets, Keshet Neev

Following Yashar's request, UTJ party chairman MK Yakov Asher said the party would not support efforts to replace Ohana before a new government is formed.

 

Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana at orientation for incoming MKs, November 9, 2026.

(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

 

The Yashar party, led by Gadi Eisenkot, invited the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) on Monday to join the opposition bloc's effort to replace Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana during the inaugural session of the 26th Knesset on Tuesday.

Following Yashar's request, UTJ party chairman MK Yaakov Asher said the party would not support efforts to replace Ohana before a new government is formed.

"United Torah Judaism's principled position is that the replacement of the Knesset speaker should take place simultaneously with the formation of a new government, rather than upon the convening of the Knesset," Asher's statement said.

"Our position is that this is the appropriate and customary practice, as it has been in the past, with very few exceptions. This is intended to prevent an absurd situation in which a Knesset speaker could be elected who would be opposed to the government that is formed."

To replace the Knesset speaker, at least 61 MKs must formally sign a request or vote to elect a new speaker.

Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana attends a Likud party conference ahead of the party’s primary elections in the northern city of Haifa, August 16, 2026. (credit: Sharon Leibel/Flash90)

Replacing Ohana, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud, would give the opposition bloc greater control over the parliamentary agenda, including votes, legislation, and committee appointments, even if Netanyahu remains in office as head of a caretaker government.

Ohana stated last week that he would not hold a vote to replace the Knesset speaker on the day of the inaugural ceremony, but would instead schedule it for the following week if a formal request with sufficient support was submitted.

Incoming MK Roy Folkman, who chairs the Yashar's Knesset faction, sent letters to the heads of both haredi factions inviting them to join the effort. The process of collecting signatures ahead of submitting the formal request is already underway, Yashar stated.

Replacing the Knesset speaker earlier would give the opposition bloc more time to advance its legislative agenda.

The move also signals the opposition bloc's willingness to work with the haredi parties, and comes as party leaders in the bloc have recently opened the door to negotiations with them.

The opposition bloc had previously drawn a red line against partnering with the haredi parties, but has now presented doing so as an alternative path toward forming a government amid the political deadlock between the opposition bloc and Netanyahu's camp following the October 27 elections.

Shas has not openly expressed an intention to partner with the opposition bloc and instead recommended Netanyahu to the president last week as its candidate to form the next government.

This contrasts with the Ashkenazi haredi party United Torah Judaism, which abstained from recommending a candidate to President Isaac Herzog, despite having long been a key coalition partner of Netanyahu. There have been reported tensions between UTJ and the prime minister over legislation concerning the haredi draft during the previous government's term.

The Yashar leader has said that he is open to partnering with MKs from other parties as long as they support the four principles he has recently laid out.

Eisenkot calls on opposition leaders to form 'national emergency gov't'

Eisenkot has called on the opposition bloc to act quickly to form a "national emergency government" and pursue parliamentary measures, including replacing the Knesset speaker immediately after the new Knesset is sworn in. He has also said that once the new Knesset is sworn in, he plans to repeal laws that "threaten democracy."

Meanwhile, the opposition bloc has yet to agree on who should replace Ohana. Party leaders concluded their last joint meeting without reaching a consensus and set Monday as the deadline for a decision, ahead of the Knesset's swearing-in.

Under one proposal being considered, Eisenkot would be Knesset speaker and resign if he succeeds in forming a government and becomes prime minister. If he fails to form a government, Eisenkot could remain in the position and retain influence over the parliamentary agenda.

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman announced last week that he would support B'Yachad's Yair Lapid for Knesset speaker and is reportedly expected to meet with Eisenkot on Monday to discuss the matter.

Eisenkot officially received the mandate to form a government from President Isaac Herzog on Sunday during an official ceremony at the President's Residence, as the opposition bloc continued its efforts to secure coalition partners and replace Netanyahu.

The Yashar leader said at the ceremony that "creative and unconventional political steps" would be required to form a government, reiterating his call for a "national emergency government."

The opposition bloc lacks the 61-seat Knesset majority required to form a government. The election results showed that Netanyahu's bloc secured 53 seats in the next Knesset, while the opposition bloc won 48.

The political deadlock could ultimately lead to another election, although the parties can still reach an agreement through coalition negotiations.

By law, Eisenkot has 28 days to form a government starting Sunday, and the president may grant an extension of up to 14 additional days if necessary.

Other possible outcomes include a unity government between Netanyahu and members of Eisenkot's bloc, or a minority government.

Shir Perets, Keshet Neev

Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-914332

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The Babadook Electorate - Stephen Soukup

 

by Stephen Soukup

What they didn’t expect—what they couldn’t really have imagined—is that this time, Trump intended to do what he’d promised.

 

 

The 2014 Australian psychological horror movie The Babadook is generally well known for a handful of things. It is generally considered to be a uniquely disturbing and frightening film, one of the best horror movies of the decade. It is respected as a powerful commentary on the awful, destructive effects of suppressed grief. It is beloved by some in the LGBT community because the monster (Mr. Babadook) is campy and dramatic and literally comes out of a closet. Mostly, however, it is known as the source of a once-ubiquitous internet meme.

Long story short: “The main character of the film is a mother of a young boy with social difficulties who believes The Babadook, a character from a terrifying children’s book they read together, is real.” In one particularly distressing scene, the mother (Amelia) is exasperated, driving her son (Samuel), who is screaming and generally freaking out in the back seat. Amelia, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, turns to Samuel and yells, “Why can’t you just be normal?!” at which point he starts to scream louder and more violently.

Naturally, the meme is mostly used to mock people who are behaving stupidly or recklessly. It was used to make fun of teenagers dumb enough to participate in the “Tide Pod Challenge.” It was used by opponents of Brexit to insult supporters. It’s been used to taunt both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And now, thanks to yours truly, it’s a universal explanation for American election results.

I know that many analysts blame the Iran War for last week’s GOP midterm disaster. I know that others blame President Trump’s tariffs, while others still blame inflation and Republicans’ general indifference to it. All of these factors and more undoubtedly played a role. And I’ll probably write about some of them presently. Still, the best explanation for the Blue Tsunami is that the American people were the mother, Amelia, frustrated, angry, exasperated, while the GOP was Samuel, irritating, loud, and completely abnormal. Last week, the electorate turned around and yelled at Republicans, “Why can’t you just be normal!” Time will tell how the Republicans react, whether they continue to scream and freak out, or if they break the meme and calm themselves down.

Now, before you go thinking that I’m picking on Republicans, I’m not. Two years ago, that same electorate turned around and yelled at Kamala Harris and her crowd of weirdos. In 2020, they yelled at the impeached and seemingly impervious Trump and the GOP again. In 2016, they yelled at Hillary. And so on, and so on, ad nauseam.

I don’t think it’s always been like this in American politics, but it has certainly been this way for all of this century. Last week, I mentioned that one of my roles as a longtime political analyst for the financial services world was making predictions about things, most notably elections. Way back in 2000, my boss (Mark Melcher) and I predicted that Texas Governor George W. Bush would beat Vice President Al Gore, largely because Bush was infinitely more normal than Gore. Sure, he was a little rich kid, the son of a former president. And yes, he was a reformed drinker. And of course, he was a little squirrelly, the kind of guy who made up words occasionally and might be at risk of choking to death on a pretzel. But he was also just a normal George. He liked baseball. And while he partly owned and ran the team, he was still prone to doing dumb things we all might do, like trading 20-year-old Sammy Sosa for 30-year-old Harold Baines. He was the kind of guy voters described as someone they would like to get a beer with. More to the point, he wasn’t Al Gore.

Eight years earlier, the American people had elected Bill Clinton (and his co-President, Hillary), choosing youth and excitement over the staid regularity of George H.W. Bush. Bill seemed fun—and we didn’t yet know that Hillary would turn out to be the polar opposite of fun. Over the next eight years, we experienced plenty of excitement: Whitewater, Gennifer Flowers, the miraculously disappearing and reappearing Rose Law Firm billing records, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and her missing cat, and, of course, the young White House intern who thought she had spinach dip on her blue dress. The Clintons promised entertainment, and boy did they deliver! Unfortunately, everyone felt a little dirty after all that excitement. The Clinton presidency was, as Father Richard John Neuhaus famously described it, like “watching with fascinated horror as the toilet backed up and overflowed into [the] living room.”

By midsummer 2000, people had had their fill of “excitement.” They were tired of it, in fact. They just wanted their lives and their politics to go back to being normal. They didn’t want to explain to their 8-year-olds what the meaning of the word “is” was. They didn’t want to tell their elderly moms why one of the greatest Boomer feminists had to debase herself and her legacy by writing an op-ed that came to be known for its creation of the “one-grope rule” to accommodate the president’s behavior. They wanted normalcy, and they thought George W. Bush was more likely to deliver it than the guy who missed the White House counsel’s admonition not to shake down Buddhist nuns for donations because he drank too much iced tea that morning and had to go to the bathroom a lot.

In 2004, Bush was in trouble. The war in Afghanistan seemed fine, but we still hadn’t caught bin Laden. More damagingly, the war in Iraq was turning into a mess. We had Saddam, but we had no exit strategy and no working definition of what “victory” would look like. And then the Democrats nominated John Kerry, one of only a handful of people in the country who could make two wars and general foreign policy chaos seem normal by comparison.

The conventional wisdom has it that the voters chose “Hope and Change” four years later, electing the country’s first black president. And to some extent, this is right. By electing Barack Obama, the American people hoped to put an end to centuries of racial dysfunction. Obama’s election would normalize race in the country once and for all—or so they thought. Of course, it didn’t hurt Obama that his opponent was a brave, honorable, and incredibly volatile longtime partisan “maverick.” Sure, John McCain was a hero and had endured things while a POW in Vietnam that most people could never even imagine, but he was also, to put it delicately, a little nuts. Obama won the contest when McCain, in all his capricious glory, paused his campaign about six weeks before the election because he was worried about the collapse of (my former employer) Lehman Brothers…or something.

The following presidential election, in 2012, is the only election this century that might not fit the pattern. When given the choice between Obama and the eminently normal Mitt Romney, the voters chose Obama. To be fair, the Obama campaign team and its allies in the mainstream media did a pretty good job of making Romney look sinister: he forcibly cut his gay classmate’s hair; he put the family dog on the car roof while on vacation, à la Clark Griswold; he gave a woman in Kansas City fatal cancer; he had binders full of women, for crying out loud!

In 2016, everyone, everywhere, assumed that Hillary Clinton would cakewalk to victory over the orange-haired reality-show host. But everyone, everywhere, forgot that the voters knew who Hillary Clinton was. And while they thought—for a brief second—that it might be fun to have Bill as the country’s first “First Gentleman,” they quickly concluded that even that bit of entertainment couldn’t make four years of President Nurse Ratched tolerable. Donald Trump was miles from normal, they understood, but he was miles closer than Hillary.

As I said above, of course, four years later, when they had to choose between reelecting Trump and electing the nation’s goofy uncle, Joe Biden, they chose Uncle Joe—and then they regretted it almost immediately. By the time the 2024 election rolled around, they’d had more than enough of effectively open borders, incoherent public appearances, topless transsexuals on the White House lawn, and bizarre rambling debate performances. Even after Biden dropped out of the race, replaced by his equally incomprehensible VP, the American people couldn’t wait to get Trump back. Sure, he brought planeloads of baggage with him, but at least he was better than the circus that replaced him.

What they didn’t expect—what they couldn’t really have imagined—is that this time, Trump intended to do what he’d promised. The line on the guy had always been “take him seriously but not literally.” Well…in term two, that was a mistake. He promised aggressive immigration enforcement. He promised steep and biting tariffs. He promised not to allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. In short, he promised some things that other politicians promise but never even consider doing. He promised other things that no other politician would dare to do. And then—for better or worse—he did them.

Last week, the American people told him that doing so is not what they consider normal. They don’t like stories in the paper about grandpas being deported after living in the US for 45 years. They don’t like nurses getting shot by ICE. They don’t like wars—or, at least, they don’t like wars we don’t win. They don’t like tariffs. They don’t like inflation. They just want normal, quiet lives.

One could, of course, make a very strong case that the voters chose poorly, that much of the drama of the last two years would have been avoided if the Democrats had simply behaved themselves like an opposition party rather than a perpetually angry, out-of-control mob. Moreover, the idea that the new majority—which is already promising political chaos—could possibly deliver normalcy is itself nutty. Still, that’s the way the game is played these days. You don’t actually have to be normal to win. You just have to seem more normal than the other guys.

That’s also the silver lining for the GOP. If the Democrats deliver the chaos they’re already promising, then the Republicans will look normal by comparison, and they can win the White House and maybe regain control of the House of Representatives in 2028. The key is looking normal. The key is putting the Democrats in the back seat of the car again and convincing the American people to turn around and yell at them. 

Stephen Soukup is the Director of The Political Forum Institute and the author of The Dictatorship of Woke Capital (Encounter, 2021, 2023)

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/11/09/the-babadook-electorate/

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Parsi, Vance and Three Septembers at Tehran's Table - Gregg Roman

 

by Gregg Roman

Trita Parsi called the midterms for Iran more than twelve hours before Vice President Vance blamed the war. What the documents show about the man who reads Tehran to Washington: three New York sessions with Iran's president, a funder who pays both camps, a court file in the court's own words, and what they leave out.

 

President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, at the head of the table, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meets American experts and journalists in New York on September 24, 2026. The place cards that can be read include Robin Wright and Patrick Wintour. One of the photographs released after the session, as carried by Iran International; the presidency’s own gallery holds seven frames.

This Edition

On Friday this newsletter argued that the voters punished an unfinished war, not the decision to fight it, and that “End the war” is a slogan until it says what becomes of the uranium, the strait and the launchers. This Long View is the file on the man who said Iran had won the election before the Vice President said the war had lost it, graded at every step, with what it shows and what it does not.

At 10:04 p.m. Eastern on election night, with returns still coming in, Trita Parsi posted: “Let’s be frank. The Democrats didn’t win the midterms. Iran did.” Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the Washington organization that argues for military restraint. He was a founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its president for years. Eight hours and forty minutes later Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesman of Iran’s foreign ministry, told Washington that “The American people have now sent you a clear message.” Just under four hours after that, Vice President JD Vance wrote: “The reason we lost is the war.”

On Thursday Parsi wrote on his Substack that “it wasn’t the Democrats that won, but Iran,” and that “Tehran, of course, pursued a deliberate strategy of making everyone feel the pain of this war in order to undermine Trump and the GOP, including in the midterms.” On NPR the same morning: “I think reality is that it’s not the Democrats that won this election. It’s Iran.” The President’s decision to go to war, he went on, “in and of itself was a result of an Iranian strategy to create an energy crisis for the precise reason of defeating Trump and the Republican Party. That has now been completed.”

He had forecast the strategy in July, on BreakThrough News: “I suspect that the Iranians will wait even longer this time around ... probably perhaps even after November to give Trump as much of a defeat in the midterm elections, impose as much of a political cost on him as possible.” On Piers Morgan’s program, recorded on Wednesday and posted the next day, he said of the Vice President’s post: “I think it’s undoubtedly true and I think the fact that Vance tweeted this is in and of itself very significant.”

By Friday, Axios reported, Vice President Vance was leading the push inside the administration for a new deal with Tehran. The man who called the election for Iran more than twelve hours before the Vice President blamed the war has been cited in Tehran’s state press 86 times since the start of 2024 and has sat at the Iranian president’s table in New York three Septembers running. His institution shares a funder with the organizations now employing the Vice President’s former aides.

What the documents do not show matters as much. No paper, photograph, recording or witness puts Parsi and the Vice President in a meeting, on a call or in correspondence. The traffic runs one way: Parsi praises and interprets the Vice President, who has never named him.

“Let’s be frank. The Democrats didn’t win the midterms. Iran did.”

Three Septembers in New York

Iran’s president comes to New York each September for the United Nations General Assembly, and since 2024 Masoud Pezeshkian has used the visit to meet a room of American experts and journalists. This year his office published seven photographs of the session of September 24. Pezeshkian sits at the head of the table with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi beside him. The place cards that can be read in the official photographs include Robert Malley, the former American special envoy for Iran; Robin Wright of The New Yorker; Patrick Wintour of The Guardian; and Adam Weinstein, the deputy director of Quincy’s Middle East program, who was a senior law and policy analyst at NIAC.

Iran International, the Persian-language channel based in London, wrote that the images “also showed Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, and journalists Farnaz Fassihi and Negar Mortazavi among those attending.” The Associated Press went further the next morning: “Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute ... who attended, said Araghchi suggested that a speedy agreement would help U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections.” Parsi himself wrote on Bluesky early on September 25 that he and the broadcaster Chris Hayes “both attended meetings with Pezeshkian today in NY.”

Four days later Andrew Napolitano, the former judge who hosts the program Judging Freedom, said to Parsi on air: “You and I had the pleasure of being two of about 35 or 40 people, along with our friend and colleague Jeff Sachs, to a private interview session last week with President Pezeshkian of Iran and Foreign Minister.” Parsi did not dispute it. He said he had been at the United Nations “for all of last week” in “several different sessions and meetings with numerous diplomats.”

The year before, Iran International and three participants described an hourlong private session with Pezeshkian and Araghchi at a Manhattan hotel on September 26, 2025, with Parsi and the Quincy fellow Hadi Kahalzadeh among those present. In September 2024 Iran International placed him at an evening meeting of the Iranian delegation at the Millennium Hilton, ahead of a dinner for the diaspora that Pezeshkian attended, and Euronews Persian listed him among the dinner’s guests. The presidency’s photographs, three outlets’ reporting over as many Septembers, a host on tape and his own post point the same way. No official list of the 2026 attendees has surfaced.

Two rules bear on those sessions. Since 2025 the State Department has confined Iran’s delegation to “the areas strictly necessary to transit to and from the UN headquarters district,” a restriction it restated this September; the 2026 session was held, by Iran International’s account, at the delegation’s accommodation, and no one has alleged a breach.

Quincy’s own transparency page says: “In certain cases, QI staff may accept in-kind support from foreign governments to attend conferences, convenings, and roundtable meetings, with approval from QI management.” Whether a seat at the Iranian president’s table falls under that rule, and who approved it, is a question for Quincy. Three days after the 2026 session Pezeshkian told his cabinet that “in one or two cases, scholars and various individuals openly said, ‘We are embarrassed and ashamed of this situation.’” He named no one. 

Gregg Roman

Source: https://mefinsider.meforum.org/p/special-edition-parsi-vance-and-three-septembers-at-tehrans-table

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Power moves that Trump, Republicans can execute during lame duck Congress to pigeonhole Democrats - John Solomon

 

by John Solomon

Between a legislature subject to presidential veto, his powers of the pardon and the hue and cry of "revenge" from Democrats publicly targeting Trump and his administration members, Trump may be emboldened to act unilaterally on several issues before the "Blue Wave" actually washes ashore.

 

President Donald Trump has already signaled he is willing to play offense in the final two years of his presidency, undeterred by Democrats’ election gains and certain that doubling down on the most popular aspects of his agenda is the strategy for a 2028 GOP comeback.

Republicans in Congress, however, have not shown that sort of swagger, even when they owned all three levers of power in Washington. But in recent days, GOP lawmakers expressed in interviews with Just the News a dozen or more major ideas to pigeonhole the new Democrat majorities, rally the MAGA base and begin to make the case for independent, young male, black and Hispanic voters to return to the coalition by the next presidential election.

Here are eight of those ideas:

• Pass multiyear agency budgets for all key agencies that lock in federal spending until after Trump leaves office

This idea came up more than any in the interviews, both because it erases the failure of the GOP to markedly reshape and cut spending over the last two years and because it would hamstring Democrats from shutting down government or enforcing their priorities in 2027 or 2028. If two or three-year budgets were passed in a reconciliation bill that requires only 51 GOP votes in the Senate, all of Trump’s immigration, law enforcement, election integrity, education, military regulatory reform and foreign aid priorities would be locked, and he could simply veto any Democrat efforts to reverse them.

This blueprint was already executed with the Homeland Security budget passed this summer. A similar roadmap for all spending bills could be followed to keep government funded until 2029. No excuses, no shutdowns and all GOP priorities locked in until a new president takes office.

The most common ideas for the spending bills were: locking in the elimination of USAID and wasteful foreign spending, reducing the Education Department to a shell of a federal bureaucracy, sending tax dollars to the states in bloc grants, making voter ID and citizenship checks mandatory for all states that take food stamp benefits, Medicaid, highway funds, FEMA, DOJ or Homeland grant money, formalizing the environmental regulatory reform agenda enacted by executive orders and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and fully funding the military, FBI, DOJ and immigration enforcement priorities he campaigned and won on.

• Put downward pressure on interest rates by taking a decisive strike against budget deficits and debt.

No actions would more impress Wall Street, bond markets or everyday Americans than launching the first meaningful strike against runaway spending, something that’s been promised since the Reagan era and the Tea Party movement. Trump doesn’t have time in a lame-duck Congress to enact all the fine print for a long-term plan. But he does have time to impose across the board cuts and prioritize where the savings money goes.

The two most popular ideas in the interviews were: enacting within the reconciliation bill a mandatory 15% reduction in each agency’s spending over the next two years but leaving it to the agencies on where to make the cuts; and naming a bipartisan debt and deficit commission to develop recommendations on a long-term strategy to get to a balanced budget to reduce the debt and building tariffs into a national revenue strategy. 

According to the Brookings Institution, reconciliation has been used since 1980 to enact 23 bills as of the end of 2024 (four others were passed but vetoed by the president), including such significant pieces of legislation as major deficit reduction bills in the 1980s and 1990s, welfare reform in 1996, the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the Trump tax cuts in 2017, and the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act under Joe Biden.

• Whipsaw Democrats with a major effort to save Medicare and Social Security.

The Democrats ignored this issue most important to middle America throughout the 2026 campaign, instead focusing on expanding the welfare state and socialist government expansion. Yet, according to a Congressional Budget Office document cited by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, both funds are less than seven years from being bankrupt. Trump could become the first president in a half century to deal with this crisis, refusing to kick this can of crisis down the street any longer.

Boomers and Gen X would benefit. The premise of the fix is simple: rerouting savings and the spoils of fighting fraud to the Social Security and Medicare funds to repay funds long pilfered through budget trickery.

Trump could declare, with the help of the reconciliation bill, a third of the mandatory federal agency budget cuts (5%) could be re-allocated to Medicare and Social Security as well as all monies recovered from the massive crackdown led by Vice President J.D. Vance and Attorney General Todd Blanche to the trust funds until they reach a solvency date of 2045.

• Strike at the left’s richest war chest: Nonprofits that fund ideology and politics instead of genuine charitable purposes

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could work on two executive orders with Trump that could be codified in the reconciliation bill. The first would sanction many tax-exempt nonprofits that have ties to terrorism, anarchism, Communism, socialism, sex trafficking, abortion advocacy, medical harm to children too young to consent to transgender procedures, personal enrichment and overt political activity. 

Such sanctions would immediately suspend these nonprofits' tax-exempt status and refer them to DOJ and the FBI for possible prosecution or civil action. There are many more Southern Poverty Law Centers yet to be exposed.

The second EO would declare that all nonprofits be required to demonstrate by July 2027 that their work substantially contributes to the primary purpose of tax breaks: charitable good. Those that can’t would lose their tax-exempt status at the beginning of the 2028 fiscal years, which is next Oct. 1. 

• Sue to block the Democrat-led state compact seeking to end the Electoral College

Republicans have dangerously yawned for more than a decade as left-leaning states have pushed for ratification of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would require states to award electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote rather than the way the Founding Fathers intended in the Constitution. 

Now that Democrats flipped numerous state legislatures, the GOP’s inaction has put the compact at the brink of being implemented in enough states to give Democrats a long-term blue wall. Many liberal publications declare so after Tuesday’s election. While Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral College, a corrective measure would hew to the letter and spirit of the Constitution in future races.

States that join the NPVIC are committing to assigning their state’s electoral votes in future elections based on a national vote, not the will of the majority of the state’s voters. There are several challenges under the Constitution, including the equal protection clause and the 14th Amendment’s protection of representative government. But the Constitution explicitly declares that "no State shall, without the Consent of Congress [...] enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State.” Congress has never approved states entering into the NPVIC. Voters in states where this has been approved would likely have standing to sue, as would the Justice Department, lawmakers argued in interviews.

• Rewire federal education policy with a major elimination, a bloc grant strategy and a protection of parent’s rights and choices

Conservatives have clamored since Jimmy Carter's presidency that the U.S. Education Department is an illegal expansion of federal authority because education was always intended by our Founding Fathers to be a locally controlled policy and not the responsibility of the central federal government. 

They’ve yammered plenty but never taken any meaningful action until Trump’s second term and Education Secretary Linda McMahon has achieved considerable agency shrinkage. But those cuts can be reversed in the blink of a eye of a future Democrat president.

The lame-duck Congress has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver on decades of empty promise. Congress in the reconciliation bill could downgrade the Education Department from a Cabinet agency to a federal office and put it inside another agency like Treasury or DOJ. But it can survive the likely Democrat demagoguery by taking the savings and increasing the amount of federal funds that go to states to help schools. 

This rewiring could also tie federal education funds – school lunch monies, bloc grants, etc. – to the states' willingness to protect three popular conservative-leaning policy mandates that survived the "Blue Wave": women’s sports are only for women, parents’ rights to guide their children’s education, health and welfare are supreme to the wishes of school boards, education administrators and teachers and tax dollars should follow children to the schools that their parents choose. 

States would be free to impose any policies they wanted – perhaps risking suit by DOJ over civil liberty issues – but they would have to forgo any federal education and school lunch monies if they left boys in girls' sports, infringed on parent’s rights and sought to reverse school choice initiatives.

• Eliminate liberal lawfare’s favorite fund-raising tool: court-directed settlement money from sue-and-settle cases.

The environmental movement and other liberal causes managed to fund themselves with tens of billions of dollars by suing oil and energy companies and other corporations and securing settlements approved by courts that then directed the money back to their causes. This created a court-sanctioned fund-raising scheme for liberal causes.

Congress could neuter this quickly in the reconciliation bill by mandating that all federal lawsuit penalties must be awarded to the U.S. treasury for debt relief, Medicare and Social Security and that any awards reached through settlement or judicial decree can only be awarded to parties who were proven to have suffered actual harm.

• Impose voter ID and election citizenship checking through the reconciliation bill by tying their compliance to Homeland Security, Medicaid and law enforcement funds

Even as they rejected Republicans in the last election, voters in several states (except California) made clear once again they love voter ID and citizenship checks as an election integrity measure. Senate Republicans don’t have 60 votes to impose it as a policy, but they could easily muster 51 votes to mandate it through federal funding ties. All the lame-duck Congress would have to do is tie voter ID and citizenship checks to the state’s ability to receive Homeland Security, Medicaid and law enforcement funding. No state can afford to forgo those.

• Break-up private monopolies that act as quasi-government bodies while operating as liberal cartels

Over the last several decades, several private bodies directly aligned with liberals have functioned like quasi-government bodies, including groups like the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association and teacher’s unions. 

These no longer act as just free-speech trade groups, as the House showed in a series of explosive oversight hearings this summer. They essentially act as licensing and curriculum-setting bodies by virtue of their reach and actions. They have been exposed by Congress as aligned solely with Democrats as adjuncts to the left’s lawfare policy and in the case of teacher unions, fund-raising machines.

Congress as well as Trump agencies, could take decisive action in the tax code, labor law or other venues to break these groups' ability to act as licensing agents for lawyers and curriculum and policy setters that discriminate against and punish those who don’t publicly share their values. 

John Solomon

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/power-moves-trump-republicans-can-execute-during-lame-duck

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Russiagate lawyer Marc Elias lands at center of DOJ probe into Alaska 'Decoy Dan' scheme - Steven Richards

 

by Steven Richards

Elias' firm, which represents both Peltola's campaign and the DSCC, received criminal target letters from the Department of Justice on Election Day as legal experts warn that the campaign's own lawyers may become fact witnesses. Elias first gained notoriety for helping to create the Steele Dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

 

A key Russiagate lawyer known for his bare-knuckle election and legal tactics has landed at the center of the alleged Democrat plot in the Alaska Senate race to recruit a decoy candidate to siphon votes from their Republican opponent.

Marc Elias departed from the Perkins Coie law firm in 2021 and set up his own firm, catering to Democratic Party candidates. About the same time, the Justice Department was investigating its role in the Steele Dossier and its Trump-Russia collusion allegations, and he could face questions about the role his law firm played in representing multiple participants in the alleged scheme to recruit the candidate known as “Decoy Dan” in the Alaska race and whether there was any illegal coordination under federal election law.

Elias and his firm, Elias Law Group, were named in the explosive pre-election New York Times report on how campaign officials for Alaska's Democratic senatorial candidate Mary Peltola coordinated with Democratic operatives and aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to recruit the decoy, Daniel J. Sullivan, whose name is nearly identical to incumbent GOP Senator Dan S. Sullivan.

Still too close to call

The Senate race, which remains too close to call as election officials count ballots in the state’s more complicated ranked-choice voting system, has become the center of legal challenges and a possible criminal investigation related to the purported decoy candidacy.

The Justice Department escalated its probe into the purported scheme on Election Day, reportedly warning roughly 20 Democrats in writing that they may be investigative targets. Marc Elias as well as at least one Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee official were notified. A target letter signals that prosecutors view the recipient as a likely defendant, but it does not guarantee charges will be filed.

Last weekend, before the election, President Donald Trump said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Elias should be held “criminally responsible” for “voter fraud at the highest level” for the alleged scheme.

The Elias Law Group represents both Peltola’s campaign and the DSCC. One of its attorneys, Jacquelyn Lopez, allegedly took part in the effort, which at one point explored creating a “MAGA party” to further split the Republican vote in the state, the Times reported. Texts reviewed by the paper show a campaign consultant asked former Peltola campaign manager Elisa Rios whether they should “follow up with Jackie about maga party stuff,” and a campaign official noted that “Jackie is calling” the operative who led the recruiting.

Lopez also received a records-preservation letter from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

According to Federal Elections Commission records reviewed by Just the News, the Elias Law Group was paid roughly $117,000 in 2026 by Alaskans for Mary, Peltola's principle campaign committee, while Elias was also working for the DSCC.

As part of the alleged scheme uncovered by the Times, Peltola's then campaign manager, Elisa Rios, coordinated with a Democratic operative named Jerid Kurtz, the co-owner of Wingspan Strategies LLC, a political and public relations consulting firm organized in Wyoming in March 2025, as part of a Peltola campaign initiative dubbed internally as the "ballot composition project" to hunter down alternate Dan Sullivans to run in the race. The Times reported that Kurtz successfully recruited Dan S. Sullivan to run against their GOP opponent. Rios and Kurtz were reportedly introduced by DSCC aides.

Decoy Sullivan motivated by hatred for Trump

Kurtz “told us when he found him,” Rios told the Times. Kurtz said that the decoy Dan "said he hated Trump, and if it was going to help Mary, he liked Mary. He didn’t have any interest in being a politician, but if this could help.”

49th State PAC, which was formed in August by Peltola allies following Alaska's open primary, paid Kurtz's Wingspan Strategies LLC nearly $30,000 in management consulting fees, according to FEC records.

Elias confirmed that the top leadership at his firm received letters from the Justice Department and defended his firm, framing the probe as retaliation for their work for Democratic campaigns.

“Elias Law Group attorneys proudly count themselves among this President’s political enemies, and we are proud to represent Democratic campaigns and progressive organizations that fight back against him every single day,” Elias wrote in a statement. “We will not be intimidated by a sham investigation.”

Peltola’s campaign and the DSCC have denied any involvement with Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy. Rios later contacted The New York Times asking editors to retract her statements about the race, but the paper said her statements aligned with its other reporting and included them.

Recruiting a same-name candidate is not itself illegal, but the scheme could expose those involved to other legal violations, like potentially false campaign filings or statements as well as involvement in an effort to deprive citizens of constitutional rights.

Potential underlying criminality of false campaign filings

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley argued that those involved in the alleged scheme, including lawyers, may be exposed through campaign filings and statements, which must be truthful.

“You have what are clearly false statements that some have made, according to The New York Times. And all of those people are going to have to lawyer up, including the lawyers,” Turley said. “At this point, I think Peltola’s lawyers, those campaign lawyers who allegedly played a role in this, have to remove themselves. They are now potential targets or witnesses.”

Article III Project attorney Will Chamberlain previously told Fox News Digital the scheme could violate 18 U.S.C. §241, which makes it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for two or more people to conspire to deprive citizens of a constitutional right — here, the right to vote for the candidate of their choice.

The FBI has also reportedly interviewed former Alaska state Rep. David Eastman, a Wasilla Republican who said he met in April with an operative he later identified as Jerid Kurtz, the recruiter named by the Times as a key player in convincing the decoy Dan Sullivan to run.

Elias helped manifest the infamous Steele Dossier

Elias has drawn federal scrutiny before. As general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, he hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn paid former British spy Christopher Steele $168,000 to compile the dossier alleging Trump-Russia ties, Just the News previously reported.

The arrangement was apparently structured to keep the work shielded. “Elias told Fusion GPS to report only to him, so Fusion GPS’s communications could be solely with a lawyer and thus covered by attorney-client privilege,” the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in its August 2020 report. Elias told Congress in 2017 that he saw “some” of the dossier but “not all of it,” and Clinton campaign officials testified that he briefed them on its findings during the race.

Special Counsel John Durham’s final report later found the FBI could not corroborate “a single substantive allegation” in the dossier. Durham indicted Elias’ former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann and Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko, but both were later acquitted.

In 2022, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign more than $100,000 for misreporting payments to Perkins Coie for Fusion’s research as legal services. The FEC dismissed the allegations against Elias himself.

The dossier episode has followed him since. In a March 2025 executive order targeting law firms, Trump singled out Elias by name, accusing him of being “deeply involved in the creation of a false ‘dossier’ by a foreign national designed to provide a fraudulent basis for Federal law enforcement to investigate a Presidential candidate.” A federal judge blocked the executive order. Elias’ firm has also lost several major election cases in recent years.

Just the News also previously reported that the American Accountability Foundation sent federal prosecutors in Alaska a 114-page referral in October alleging possible illegal coordination between groups tied to the decoy campaign and Majority Forward, a nonprofit affiliated with Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC. The PAC has denied any contact with Dan J. Sullivan. The director of Majority Forward, Christopher Koob, is also the designated agent of Peltola-aligned 49th State PAC, which paid Kurtz's firm. 

Steven Richards

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/russiagate-lawyer-marc-elias-lands-center-doj-probe-alaska-decoy-dan

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US prepares to deploy 250 foreign troops in Gaza as Israel opposes Turkish involvement - Amir Bohbot

 

by Amir Bohbot

Foreign military officers, accompanied by US troops, have been spotted near Gaza as preparations advance for a multinational force, with Israel authorizing an initial deployment of 250 soldiers.

 

Turkish charities operating in the southern Gaza Strip, October 23, 2025

(photo credit: ABED RAHIM KHATIB/FLASH90)

 

The Israeli government has authorized the US to deploy an initial multinational force of approximately 250 foreign troops in Gaza, security officials told Walla on Monday.

Foreign military officers accompanied by US troops have been spotted near the Gaza Strip border over the past two weeks, as preparations advance for the deployment.

Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Uganda, and Albania have so far expressed willingness to participate in the force. Kazakhstan has offered medical and logistical assistance, while Kosovo has proposed supporting security and policing operations.

Israel concerned over Turkish involvement and rapid deployment of multinational force

One of the factors delaying the formation of the multinational force is pressure from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Washington to allow Turkey to participate in operations in Gaza, as part of Ankara's efforts to expand its regional influence, according to Walla.

Officials in Jerusalem and the Israeli defense establishment strongly oppose Turkish involvement, citing Ankara's policies toward Israel, Erdogan's statements, and Turkey's hosting of Hamas's terrorist headquarters.

Palestinians walk near the rubble of buildings destroyed during the war in Gaza City, October 28, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/DAWOUD ABU ALKAS)

According to Israeli assessments, Hamas's headquarters in Turkey directed a terrorist attack near Hebron more than two weeks ago in which two IDF soldiers were killed.

Israeli defense officials are also concerned about Washington's future policies toward Israel and the speed at which the multinational force could enter Gaza.

These concerns come amid fears that senior US administration officials could adopt a more hostile stance toward Israel, particularly following Republican losses in the midterm elections.

"It is not unrealistic that the Gaza Division and Southern Command could wake up one day and discover that there is a foreign multinational force with more soldiers than the number of troops in the Gaza Division. Israel needs to be prepared for several diplomatic and security scenarios with implications on the ground," a security official said.

US military base expands as preparations for new Rafah city advance

Meanwhile, the US military continues to transfer vehicles and equipment to a special base near the Gaza border, within the area of responsibility of the IDF Gaza Division's Southern Brigade.

The equipment includes trucks, armored vehicles designed to transport troops across difficult terrain, medical evacuation vehicles, and armored vehicles equipped with machine guns.

The facility was originally an IDF base before being handed over to the US. Guard towers have since been erected, surveillance and lighting systems installed, and the perimeter fence renovated. Armed US troops now secure the base around the clock.

At the same time, preparations are advancing for the construction of the planned "terror-free Emirati city" on the ruins of part of Rafah, a project approved by the Israeli government.

Engineering work is underway at the site ahead of the planned relocation of tens of thousands of Palestinians, who would undergo strict security screening, including approval from Israeli authorities.

The initial multinational force is expected to secure the area surrounding the new city.

However, security officials said only a limited number of Palestinians would initially be admitted to the compound following security screening, with the project operating as a pilot program.

No timetable has been set for the project's implementation.

The preparations come as Israel's political leadership continues to oppose reconstruction in Gaza without first disarming Hamas and transferring control of the area to a third party. 

Amir Bohbot

Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-914289

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Damascus shifts east: How a Syrian-Saudi defense pact redefines regional power dynamics - analysis - Seth J. Frantzman

 

by Seth J. Frantzman

The regime in Damascus operated outside the traditional Arab state system. Fast forward several decades, and things begin to change.

 

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa ​meets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, November 4, 2026.

(photo credit: Saudi NewsAgency/Handout via REUTERS)

 

Over the past week, a number of reports have indicated that Syria is sending forces to Saudi Arabia. The reports differ on the numbers involved. Reuters, the AFP, and now the Associated Press have all reported that Syria is sending forces to Saudi Arabia.

However, it’s not clear if these forces are to help Saudi Arabia with training and advice, or if they will be deployed to Yemen to fight the Houthis. Other questions remain, such as whether this is part of the Syrians also receiving training from Riyadh.

The latest report in the Associated Press says that “Syria is preparing to send fighters to Saudi Arabia to deploy along its border and potentially help it fight Iranian-backed rebels in neighboring Yemen, three officials with knowledge of the plans told The AP.” This report says that “Syrian military advisers have already deployed to Saudi Arabia,” but that they have not been sent to Yemen

The new report notes that “a Syrian official said that an initial force of about 600 Syrian special forces fighters is expected to be deployed to Saudi Arabia in the coming week…The official said that a Syrian delegation led by Khaled Khattab, commander of the 82nd Division, had recently made a two-week visit to Saudi Arabia.”  There are already several dozen Syrians in Saudi Arabia and these are described as “advisors.”

The Syrian support for Saudi Arabia matters. This is because it increases the chance that Syrians will further integrate themselves into a Saudi-led regional order. This dovetails with the new pact that Saudi Arabia has signed with Pakistan and Turkey.

US Syria Envoy Tom Barrack meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X, SECTION 27A COPYRIGHT ACT)

A net gain with Riyadh as Saudi Arabia becomes a leader

For Riyadh, this is a net gain because it wasn’t so long ago that Riyadh had very cold relations with Turkey. Today, much has changed. Saudi Arabia can take pride in being a leader in the region, among both Arab and Muslim countries. This is a historic role it has played.

The revival of Syria as a state is important to Riyadh. For many years, Syria was controlled by the Assad regime. That regime was close to Iran and backed Hezbollah. It was also very close to Russia. As such, the regime in Damascus operated outside the traditional Arab state system. It’s worth recalling some of the history here.

In the post-colonial Middle East that emerged since the 1940s, there have been several key changes in the region. For instance, Egypt's 1952 revolution eventually led to the emergence of the Arab nationalist Nasser government. In 1958, Egypt and Syria announced a merger as the United Arab Republic. When Egypt intervened in Yemen, the Yemeni forces it was backing also supported the UAR.

Meanwhile, as the Cold War took shape, the West backed the Baghdad Pact, which formed in 1955. This included Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the UK.

Turkey was a member of NATO. Pakistan remained close with the West and with China. Iraq left the group after a coup in 1959. What matters here for our purposes is understanding that in the 1950s and 1960s the regimes in Egypt and Syria were backed by the Soviets.

Nasser’s government inspired crises in Lebanon in 1958 and in Jordan between 1956 and 1958. It should be recalled that the US and the UK helped confront these crises, with American forces entering Lebanon and British paratroopers sent to Amman.

The Eisenhower administration also mobilized the US Navy. President Dwight Eisenhower ordered around 5,000 US Marines to land in Beirut in July 1958 to stabilize the pro-Western government.

Fast forward several decades and things began to change. Egypt switched sides from the Soviets to the Americans and signed a peace deal with Israel. The Islamic Revolution toppled the Shah. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to the US, Pakistan, Saudis, and others backing the mujahideen rebels.

Radicalization, political Islam led to groups like Al Qaeda

This also dovetailed with radicalization in the region and the rise of political Islam, and eventually Al Qaeda.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. This led the US to deploy forces in Saudi Arabia, which in turn increased US bases in the Gulf: Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and other places.

However, the shifts after the 1991 Gulf War weakened many of the historic Arab states. Iraq was weakened in the war and invaded by the US in 2003.

The Arab Spring took place in Tunisia and then spread to Libya, Egypt, Syria, and other places. Iranian-backed proxies such as the Houthis tried to take over Yemen. ISIS was fueled by the Syrian civil war and Iraqi insurgency.

Only in the last decade have things shifted back toward a re-emergence of Arab states. The Assad regime fell in 2024. Iraq defeated ISIS in 2017 and has now struggled with Iranian-backed militias. Egypt under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has tried to return to its historic role in the region.

Saudi Arabia’s role in Syria is an example of how Riyadh is reclaiming its role in the region and helping Arab states return to their former role. In terms of the historic role of these states, it is worth recalling that Damascus, Cairo, and Baghdad have been centers of Arab and Islamic culture and rule in the past.

It will take time for Syria to become a successful country again. Its work with Riyadh is one step on that path.

Seth J. Frantzman

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-914337

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