Welcome back to the MBN Agenda, our look at the events driving the news in the Middle East in the week to come. Kurdish power in Syria is collapsing. ISIS prisoners are on the move. Iraq edges ...

As northern Syria entered a new phase, the transfer of thousands of Islamic State detainees to Iraqi custody was seen as more than a logistical operation. Analysts said the move reflected shifting ...

Claims that China carried out a large military airlift to Iran in late January spread quickly online. U.S. officials say the story is false and distracts from the more limited reality of Beijing’s ...

The “Menteshor” health center in the heart of the predominantly Kurdish city of Kobani has been receiving fatalities and dozens of wounded as a result of shelling carried out by Syrian ...

The “New Gaza” plan promoted by President Trump’s administration presents the enclave as a reconstruction and investment project, but it sidesteps a fundamental question: Who owns the land? In ...

The Board of Peace was signed in Davos as a Gaza initiative. It landed as something larger: a transatlantic rupture. A U.S. State Department official told MBN that Washington views the Board as a ...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has laid out a new political framework for the war in Gaza by linking the completion of the return of all hostages to a transition to what he described as ...

What looks like a collapse of Kurdish power in Syria is better understood as the final phase of a gradual U.S. downgrade. A Kurdish official close to the Washington Kurdish Institute told MBN’s ...

Welcome back to the Friday Briefing, our weekly round-up of MBN’s best reporting about the events that drove the news in the ...

It did not take long after Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a joint strategic defense agreement in September 2025 for Pakistan’s Minister of Defense Production, Raza Hayat Harraj, to announce that ...

Dear Colleagues, The news out of Iran this week is horrific. The regime now acknowledges that at least 5,000 people were ...

The Iraqi government and major political forces are dealing seriously with U.S. demands to ensure that Iran-aligned militias are not included in the next government, an Iraqi government adviser ...