New Delhi / Abu Dhabi / Washington, May 18, 2026 — Three drones entered UAE airspace on the evening of May 17. Two were intercepted. One was not. The surviving drone struck an electrical generator at the perimeter of the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant — the UAE’s sole nuclear facility, a four-reactor complex in Abu…

Beirut / Jerusalem / Washington, May 15, 2026 — On paper, it is a ceasefire. In practice, it is a live conflict with a diplomatic label attached. Israel and Lebanon agreed on Thursday to extend their fragile truce by 45 days, following a third round of direct talks in Washington brokered by the United States.…

New Delhi / Tehran, May 15, 2026 — The port of Chabahar sits on Iran’s southeastern coastline, 87 miles west of Pakistan’s Chinese-backed Gwadar, just outside the choke of the Strait of Hormuz. For a decade it has been India’s most ambitious strategic infrastructure bet — a sovereign foothold in Iran that bypasses Pakistan, unlocks…

Riyadh / Washington / Brussels — May 15, 2026 — As the guns of the US-Iran War fall into an uneasy silence and ceasefire talks remain deadlocked in Islamabad, Saudi Arabia is quietly proposing one of the most ambitious regional security frameworks since the Cold War. Riyadh is floating a formal non-aggression pact between Gulf…

The order arrived without warning. Troops from Fort Hood, Texas were already boarding planes — some had already landed in Poland — when the Pentagon abruptly cancelled the deployment of more than 4,000 soldiers to one of America’s closest NATO allies. Inside the Pentagon, officials said they had “no idea it was coming.” Defense Secretary…

Beijing / Washington / Tehran — It is the question that every foreign ministry, every intelligence service, and every energy market analyst with a stake in the US Iran war’s outcome is now asking with increasing urgency: will Xi Jinping help Donald Trump end it? The question is deceptively simple. The answer is layered with…

Washington / Beijing / Geneva — There is a particular quality to the silence that precedes a meeting between the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations — a held-breath quality that diplomats, markets, and governments across every continent recognise and respond to with the same mixture of hope and dread. As President Donald…

Riyadh / Washington / Beijing — For eight decades, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States has been the load-bearing pillar of Middle Eastern geopolitical order — an alliance built on the foundational exchange of American security guarantees for reliable Saudi oil flows, and sustained through crises, contradictions, and ideological tensions that would…

Moscow / Tehran / Washington — In a diplomatic move that is simultaneously bold, self-serving, and genuinely significant, Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed that Russia take custody of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium as a confidence-building measure designed to alleviate dangerously escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington. The proposal — framed publicly in the…

He has not been photographed. He has not spoken publicly. He communicates only through sealed handwritten messages carried by human couriers to an undisclosed location where he is recovering from severe burns, a fractured leg, and injuries that have, at times, limited his ability to speak. Yet according to a new US intelligence assessment, Iran’s…