Thanassis Cambanis

3 weeks ago | tcf.org | Veena Ali-Khan |Thanassis Cambanis

The Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance” has suffered a year and a half of withering setbacks. Now, its future is more uncertain than ever before. Faced with the most serious threat in its history, the alliance’s core groups—Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen—are turning back to basics: local power. The Axis of Resistance spans a wide variety of states and sub-state groups that share some common enemies. But not all members are equally aligned.

1 month ago | tcf.org | Veena Ali-Khan |Thanassis Cambanis |Aron Lund |Sam Heller

The demography of both Lebanon and Syria is in flux, after the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Thousands of people are now on the move, inside the two countries and across their shared border—in both directions. Since Syrian rebels toppled the Assad government on December 8, hundreds of thousands of people have crossed the Syrian–Lebanese border—both Syrian refugees in Lebanon returning home, and Syrians and Lebanese escaping the new Syria.

1 month ago | tcf.org | Sajad Jiyad |Nicholas Danforth |Veena Ali-Khan |Thanassis Cambanis

Donald Trump has quickly made it clear that the guiding light in his relationships with Arab countries of the Gulf will be his trademark transactionalism. In the first days of his new term, he announced that he was entertaining the idea of Saudi Arabia being his first foreign destination—if the Kingdom helped bring down oil prices and increased its investments in the United States to $1 trillion.

1 month ago | tcf.org | Thanassis Cambanis |Aron Lund |Sam Heller |Sajad Jiyad

The events of the last year have upended many assumptions about the Axis of Resistance, the loosely defined network of Iran and its core partners. For as long as the Islamic Republic of Iran has sought to export revolution and project power in the Arab Middle East, surprisingly persistent debates have raged over core questions. Did Iran tightly command a network of proxies and dependents—or did it stand at the center of a loose network of like-minded groups and opportunistic fellow travelers?

2 months ago | tcf.org | Nicholas Danforth |Sam Heller |Thanassis Cambanis |Haley Bobseine

Century International: On Thursday, March 6, Syria’s new rulers began a military crackdown on what they described as a nascent insurgency by supporters of the deposed Assad regime in the coastal region. In the violence that ensued, hundreds of civilians were killed, in addition to large numbers of both pro- and anti-government combatants. Credible evidence implicates regime militias in sectarian massacres of Alawite Syrians. How widespread is sectarian violence? Is it ongoing?