Taylor Luck

Amman, Aroumd

Freelance Writer at Freelance

Middle East Correspondent at The Christian Science Monitor

The non-Swift Taylor. @csmonitor Middle East North Africa correspondent. Hoper of Far-Flung Hopes. https://t.co/BdtOxwEdbs @taylorluck.bsky.social

Featured in: Favicon

csmonitor.com Favicon

businessinsider.com Favicon

yahoo.com (+5) Favicon

flipboard.com Favicon

startribune.com Favicon

khaleejtimes.com Favicon

post-gazette.com Favicon

roadsandkingdoms.com Favicon

christiancentury.org Favicon

kstatecollegian.com

Articles

Iran just fought a punishing war with Israel. Why its allies stayed away.

3 days ago | csmonitor.com | Taylor Luck

An Israel-Iran war has come and gone, for now. Yet the conflict, which culminated in weekend U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and an Iranian missile barrage lobbed at a U.S. base in Qatar Monday, was marked by a noticeable absence. Iran’s network of militant groups, which Tehran spent two decades building up across Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Levant, were nowhere to be seen.
Is bombing of Iran nuclear sites the end of US war or the beginning?

5 days ago | csmonitor.com | Scott Peterson |Anna Mulrine Grobe |Dina Kraft |Taylor Luck

The United States struck three key nuclear sites in Iran overnight, leaping into Israel’s eight-day military campaign against Iran with bunker-buster bombs, in a dramatic American attack that could reshape the Middle East for decades to come. President Donald Trump said the U.S. attack “totally and completely obliterated” what remained of Iran’s nuclear program, after more than a week of pummeling by Israeli airstrikes.
In the line of fire, Arab states urge Trump to deescalate Israel-Iran war

1 week ago | csmonitor.com | Taylor Luck

With much to lose, Arab states have emerged as the loudest voices calling for diplomacy to end the Israel-Iran conflict and are spearheading eleventh-hour contacts to prevent a wider war. Gulf Arab states and Jordan are currently trying to deescalate the conflict, with Oman and Qatar set to host last-ditch talks this week between U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and the Iranian foreign minister. The twin goals: to reach a ceasefire and a nuclear deal.
In Gaza, Palestinians wonder: Is it worth braving bullets to find food?

2 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Ghada Abdulfattah |Taylor Luck

Efforts to feed desperately hungry Palestinians in Gaza are facing setbacks, peril, and pandemonium. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed venture with alleged links to the Israeli military, says it is making progress in providing meals in the blockaded Gaza Strip since taking over food distribution from the United Nations in late May. But Gaza residents, who are struggling to find food, describe the distribution process as chaotic.
For divided and threatened Druze, what role in peaceful Syrian future?

2 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Taylor Luck

The southern Syrian town of Suwayda is like a base under siege. The first checkpoint is 10 miles away. Drivers must navigate five more, further down the road, each staffed by a different militia group, though all fly the multicolor flag of Syria’s Druze community. Large earthen berms force vehicles to swerve in a zigzag; at one checkpoint, an aging battle tank sits at the ready, its cannon pointing at surrounding Sunni Bedouin towns.
Lawrence of Arabia bombed the Hejaz Railway. Syria wants it to run again.

3 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Taylor Luck

On ground littered with bullet and artillery casings and the remains of rockets, the Qadam train station stands like a forgotten city, hinting at an illustrious past. The 50-acre depot in Damascus, once a pivotal terminus on the historic Hejaz Railway, was a center for locomotive and carriage construction and repair, complete with ironsmiths, housing for staff, a mosque, and baths. In 2025, it resembles a train graveyard. Its basalt stone buildings are collapsing.
As food trickles into Gaza, UN calls US-Israeli plan ‘vastly insufficient’

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Ghada Abdulfattah |Taylor Luck

Even amid Israel’s intensified military operations in Gaza, and the ever-evolving displacement of the enclave’s Palestinian residents, another Israel-Hamas war flash point has come to the fore this week: the entry and distribution of lifesaving aid. On Tuesday, Israel began distributing food through a controversial U.S.-backed mechanism it is implementing unilaterally in southern Gaza, cutting out international aid organizations that have been working on the ground in the strip for years.
Across Arab Mideast, a new alignment rises: An axis of cooperation

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Taylor Luck

Banner portraits of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hang from buildings and overpasses in Damascus. In the Syrian capital’s hotels, Kuwaiti, Qatari, and Emirati investors fill the lobbies. In Baghdad, at a successful Arab League summit, the Iraqi government declared its support for a united Arab world and its rejection of foreign interference.
As sanctions fall, long-suppressed Syrian economy is poised to take off

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Taylor Luck

A rare optimism is sweeping Syria, where a brutal 14-year civil war and a five-decade dictatorship have left the country’s economy cut off from the global financial system and decades behind its neighbors. Just days after U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to lift sanctions, one of the world’s oldest economies is gearing up to roar back to life. Syrian business owners who for years worked around sanctions to turn a profit by hook or by crook are now eyeing a meteoric rise.
‘We just want to live.’ Syrian farmers pay the price for Israeli power play.

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Taylor Luck

Clinging to the fringe of a sweeping plateau at the southernmost tip of Syria, a cluster of six quiet farming communities has emerged as an unlikely, but hotly contested, geopolitical fault line. Above the Yarmouk Valley in Daraa province, 25,000 villagers find themselves squeezed between two regional superpowers. On one side is Israel, whose troops have seized a United Nations-designated demilitarized zone and pushed into a sliver of Syrian territory that includes the villagers’ homes and farms.