1) At the INSS, Raz Zimmt analyses ‘The Iran–Israel War and the Stability of the Islamic Regime’.
“As the regime increases internal repression and clamps down on dissent, it is simultaneously making efforts to rally the public around symbols of nationalism, sovereignty, and territorial unity, as well as symbols associated with Iran’s pre-revolutionary and even pre-Islamic past. This is not a new phenomenon. For years, the Iranian regime has promoted religious-Islamic nationalism and galvanized the public around symbols of Iranian identity. However, we can see that the war accelerated this trend.”
2) At the JCFA, Dalia Ziada explains why ‘Syria’s Jihadist Order Is a Global Threat’.
“Under Al-Sharaa’s leadership, Syria’s “public security” forces are not working for the public or their security. They are an amalgamation of Salafi-jihadist militias. Many of them are foreign fighters, now masquerading as state officials. Their recent campaigns of violence against the Druze in Suwayda and Alawites along the western coast are not isolated security incidents. These are systematic purges meant to cleanse the Levant of communities that do not conform to their radical Sunni orthodoxy.”
3) The FDD’s Ahmad Sharawi clarifies why ‘Syria’s Parliamentary “Elections” Are a Charade’.
“Parliamentary elections in Syria will take place in September, Damascus announced on July 27 — but the people will not vote and presidential appointees will choose the winners. […]
There will be neither a direct vote by the Syrian people nor an indirect process where elected representatives choose lawmakers.”
4) At the JISS, Eran Lerman contends that ‘The Muslim Brotherhood and its Offshoots Should be Identified in the West as a Threat’.
“Some in the West have fallen prey to a misperception, fed by organizations (such as CAIR in the United States) who act as advocates of the Muslim Brotherhood. Given the willingness of the Brotherhood movement and its affiliates to take part in competitive elections – as Hamas did in 2006, and the MB “mother movement” did in Egypt in 2012 – analysts and journalists came to see them, and the “front” parties they created, as legitimate political forces participating in a democratic process. Yet democrats they are not. Political participation was and is for them a vehicle, not a goal.”
5) MEMRI’s Alberto Fernandez looks at ‘Macron’s Palestine Gambit’.
“Obviously, for Hamas this European recognition is seen as a direct result of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel by Hamas. The recognition, despite any reservations or caveats attached by European diplomats, is seen as an advance for the Palestinian cause and justification or indirect approval that Hamas’s action that day was not only warranted but yielded concrete international results, without Hamas having made any political concessions of any sort. The Hamas feeling is that the Palestinian street will regard this French step as a clear Hamas success rather than as the result anything its rivals in the PLO have done.”
6) Hussein Aboubakr Mansour discusses ‘Palestine and Jihad’.
“Already for several years before 1998, the International Left, still hysterically reacting to the fall of the USSR, had made the U.S.-sponsored sanctions against Iraq the imperialist crime of the century. For several years, the international and Arab press, media outlets, journals, and academic output were filled with dystopian stories of how the U.S. is systematically and intentionally denying Iraqis access to food and destroying their water supply to ensure their starvation and death. U.N. institutions, entirely staffed by Third World intellectuals, issued reports with fantastical data and outdid even the propaganda of Saddam Hussein. Hussein had claimed that sanctions killed over 500,000 children, a number described a decade later in an investigation by the British Medical Journal of Global Health as “a massive fraud,” while U.N. agencies claimed the number was over a million children.”
7) At WINEP, Noga Halevi explains ‘Hamas’s Strategic Use of Captivity in Cognitive Warfare’.
“While hostage-taking has served multiple purposes for Hamas, the organization’s strategy of cognitive warfare transformed hostages into instruments of psychological manipulation aimed at paralyzing Israeli leadership, fracturing public unity through emotional attrition, and manipulating international narratives by weaponizing empathy. Understanding hostage-taking as a long-term information and influence operation is critical to formulating an effective response against actors that engage in this tactic. Policymakers should move beyond viewing hostages solely as human shields or bargaining chips and also recognize them as instruments in a broader strategy of psychological warfare.”
