Archives Middle East - Page 18 of 48 - New Eastern Outlook

A series of meetings between representatives of the United States, Qatar and Israel have just taken place in Cairo with, aimed at working out the details of an increasingly elusive ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Hamas representatives have repeatedly been invited to join these negotiations, but they have not yet given their consent.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to drag his country into a war with no end in sight. Despite the fact that Israel razed the Gaza Strip to the ground and eliminated several Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, it did not come close to victory on either the northern or southern fronts.

If the core purpose of Washington’s sanctions on Iran was to force a regime change in Tehran and cripple its ability to affect geopolitics in the Middle East, none of this has happened. In fact, recent events show Iran behaving as a country that sounds neither deterred by Israel nor under immense pressure, both economic and military, from Washington. In response to Israel’s killing of Ismael Haniyeh in Iran, Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri said that Iran will “make the aggressor Israeli regime pay the price for its aggression in a legitimate and decisive action”.