“Today, the United States faces a legitimacy crisis not only in the Middle East but also in Latin America and East Asia,” Ali Akbar Velayati, Khamenei’s adviser on international affairs, told Iran’s state media in an interview published on Tuesday.

Newsweek has contacted the U.S. State Department for comment.

Why It Matters
Iran has condemned increased U.S. military activities near Venezuela. U.S. President Donald Trump has escalated the U.S. military’s counter-narcotics posture in the southern Caribbean region, carrying out multiple strikes on vessels alleged to be trafficking drugs from Venezuelan waters. The strikes have fanned concerns in Caracas about regime-change intentions disguised as anti-drug operations.

Iran, a principal challenger to U.S. influence in the East—alongside powers such as China and Russia—has long positioned itself as part of an emerging multipolar order countering Washington’s dominance. Velayati echoed this view, describing what he called a global transition “from a unipolar to a multipolar and just order,” driven by growing coordination among Eastern powers seeking to counter U.S. unilateralism.

What To Know
In a detailed interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, Velayati highlighted Russia and China as examples of countries countering U.S. unilateralism, citing Moscow’s resurgence under President Vladimir Putin and Beijing’s rapid economic growth and strategic independence.

“The strategic alliance of China and Russia within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS clearly signals the emergence of a new Eastern pole standing against the unilateral policies of the United States,” he said.

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BRICS, a group of 10 major emerging economies, formed in 2009 to promote economic cooperation, political coordination and development among its members. The group’s founding members were Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa joined in 2010, while the remaining five members—Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia—joined in the past two years.

Velayati also positioned Iran as a central actor in the Middle East, part of a broader “resistance front” that, together with these emerging powers, is shaping a multipolar order to challenge Washington’s global dominance.

The U.S.’s calls for Hezbollah’s disarmament, aimed at reducing Tehran’s influence in Lebanon and curbing the group’s military capabilities, are countered by Iran’s continued political and military support for the organization. Trump, who brokered the Abraham Accords, seeks to push more Arab countries toward normalization agreements with Israel, the U.S.’s key ally. The American president views Iran as a major obstacle to those efforts.

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. remain high over the nuclear issue, with Washington conducting targeted strikes in June amid concerns about Tehran’s program.

What People Are Saying
Ali Akbar Velayati, the adviser for international affairs to Iran’s supreme leader, told the Islamic Republic News Agency in Persian on Tuesday: “The U.S. seeks to expand its influence from South America to the North Pole and simultaneously aims to control strategic areas such as the Panama Canal, Venezuela, Chile, and Bolivia.”

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on November 7: “Iran has been asking if the sanctions could be lifted. Iran has got very heavy U.S. sanctions and it makes it really hard for them to do what they’d like to be able to do. And I’m open to hearing that, and we’ll see what happens, but I would be open to it.”

Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking in Tehran last week, said: “Only if the United States completely cuts its backing for the Zionist regime, removes its military bases from the region, and ceases interfering in its affairs, their request for cooperation with Iran, not in the near future but much later, could be examined.”

What Happens Next
Iran is likely to strengthen economic and political alliances with Russia, China and regional partners to counter what it perceives as U.S. unilateralism.

Stage one of the peace plan occurred with the exchange of the 20 remaining live Israeli hostages being held by Hamas for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel, including about 250 life prisoners and about 1,700 who had been captured since the war started on October 7, 2023, with Hamas's terrorist attack on Israel. The attack resulted in approximately 1,200 deaths, mostly civilians, and 251 people taken hostage. The other part of stage one was the ceasefire, which has been fragile at best.

The next stage of the peace plan has proven problematic, as Hamas has so far refused to give up its weapons and control over Gaza.

Turkey is reportedly planning to send thousands of soldiers to Gaza as part of the ISF, though both the U.S. and Israel are resisting that effort. Based on the Trump administration's proposed resolution sent to the United Nations Security Council, the ISF would oversee the Gaza ceasefire, the disarming of Hamas, and the humanitarian relief effort.

But Israel has been clear that no Turkish troops would be allowed to enter Gaza. "There will be no Turkish boots on the ground," a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a press conference, according to Algemeiner.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly praised Hamas. Just this week, the Turkish government issued arrest warrants for 37 Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, accusing them of "genocide" in Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blasted the accusations, calling them "ridiculous."

"Take those ridiculous arrest warrants and get the hell out of here," he said in a post on X. "They're more fitting for the massacres you've committed against the Kurds. Israel is strong and unafraid. You'll only be able to see Gaza through binoculars."

Sharaa cited Israel’s “occupation” of the Golan Heights as a reason Syria would not enter such talks.

“I believe that this situation in Syria is different from the situation of the countries that went on with the Abrahamic agreement,” Sharaa told Fox’s Gillian Turner. “Syria has borders with Israel, and Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967. We are not going to enter into a negotiation directly right now.”

Sharaa’s answer came after Gillian noted that “Trump would like Syria to join the Abraham Accords.” She then asked whether Sharaa agreed with the accords’ “foundational principle,” which is that Israel had “the right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state.”

While Sharaa stated that Syria would not enter talks to join the accords at this time, he floated the possibility that “maybe the United States administration, with President Trump, will help us reach this kind of negotiation.”

Sharaa’s nom de guerre while active in terror organizations, including al-Qaeda and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, was “al-Jolani,” honoring his parents, who were residents of the Golan Heights until 1967, when they fled due to the Six-Day War. Sharaa was born in Saudi Arabia.

Israel-Syria agreement to be achieved before year's end, Syrian official believes
His interview with Fox followed a historic meeting between the Syrian president and Trump at the White House. The event was the first such visit by a Syrian leader. Israel and Syria are expected to come to several security and military agreements by the end of 2025, a Syrian official told Agence France-Presse in September.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also confirmed that negotiations are underway on September 24.

The United States is preparing to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus to help enable a security pact that Washington is brokering between Syria and Israel, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters last week.

The US plans for the presence in the Syrian capital, which have not previously been reported, would be a sign of Syria’s strategic realignment with the US following the fall last year of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran.

The base sits at the gateway to parts of southern Syria that are expected to make up a demilitarized zone as part of a non-aggression pact between Israel and Syria mediated by the Trump administration.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani warned that, in his view, Israel is “pursuing expansionist projects, exploiting recent changes in Syria, and destabilizing the region,” during an interview with state-run Al Ekhbariyah TV in October.

“Israel wanted to impose a new reality and an expansionist project, exploiting the change that took place in Syria,” he said.

He also affirmed his view that Israel’s actions are reinforcing Syria’s instability.

His comments came amid the clashes in southern Syria between Bedouin and Druze populations, with Israel assisting the Druze with military strikes.

Masri was shot by British troops while on a protest march as a boy, in 1943. The leg injury has continued to plague him over the decades, like those countless Palestinians who have been injured, killed or displaced since the creation of Israel 77 years ago.

As a boy he lived through the Nakba in 1948, in which 750,000 Palestinians were made homeless by Zionist militias. Many arrived as refugees in his native Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

“I saw them, it was really terrible, they were hungry, afraid, bare footed, they had walked hundreds of miles to come to Nablus for refuge,” he tells Middle East Eye.

Six decades later, his grandson, also named Munib, was shot by Israeli forces in 2011 while on a peaceful protest from the Lebanese side of the Israeli border, leaving him paralysed.

In September, Masri and his grandson delivered a petition to Number 10 Downing Street alongside British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim and international law expert Dr Victor Kattan.

They demanded an apology for the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and reparations for the consequences of that short letter that promised to deliver Palestine as a homeland to the Jewish people, above the heads of the indigenous Palestinians.

“By occupying Palestine in 1917, reneging on undertakings made to the Arab people, and self-granting its Mandate in 1922, Britain transformed the legal, political and demographic character of the territory without authority to do so,” the 400-page petition, written with the aid of academic and legal experts, including Ben Emmerson KC, said.

Now in his 90s, Masri is Palestine’s richest businessman, with a sprawling business empire across the Middle East and North Africa that he launched in the 1950s in the oil and gas sector.

He lives in his palacio-style villa in Nablus, surrounded by olive orchards.

Masri served as minister of public works in Jordan’s government in the wake of Black September, when King Hussein’s army fought Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1970, and two decades later as a minister in Arafat’s first Palestinian Authority administration, following the Oslo Accords in 1994.

In 2021 he filed a successful lawsuit in Nablus, occupied Palestine, against the British government for actions during the British Mandate period (1917-1948) and for the Balfour declaration of 1917, issued by the UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour.

Out of this came the legal petition delivered to Downing Street in September.

Speaking to Middle East Eye over the phone from Nablus, Masri said he hoped to meet British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss the petition in the wake of British recognition of Palestine in September, two weeks after he delivered the Balfour petition.

In a telling irony, on the day Masri delivered the petition to Downing Street, Starmer was controversially hosting Israeli President Isaac Herzog for an official meeting.

The Israeli president said early on in the genocidal Gaza war that “there are no innocents in Gaza”, and has been pictured signing missiles that would be fired on the besieged territory.

At least 79,000 Palestinians have been killed or are missing since October 2023. More than 4,000 people have been killed in Lebanon.

Push for UK apology and reparations
Masri told MEE that the next steps are in the hands of the British government, led by Starmer.

“We cannot do anything about it until we hear from them, the British government.

"We hope after a couple of months we will hear if they are going to settle it out of court, or they are going to take it to court, but we are determined to take our right.

“Balfour was a very, very ugly letter, a deceipt, it was unjust and it was not legal.”

He hopes Starmer's Labour government will act on the petition as it has recognised the State of Palestine.

“We want to thank [Starmer] for recognising the Palestinian state, because the moment you recognise the Palestinian state, the Balfour declaration is null and void.

“I hope that if we have an audience with the new prime minister, that they [the UK government] realise that it’s about time they say sorry and make it right.”

The genocide in Gaza has opened the world’s eyes to the reality of Israel’s violent occupation and efforts to erase Palestinians, Masri says.

“Because of the Gaza war, the whole world realised that they had been completely fooled by the Israeli propaganda of a peace-loving and democratic state.

“But the whole cause of this came from something called the Balfour Declaration and that’s why England should really do everything they can to say 'I’m sorry' for the big mistake they did to Palestinians and the world, and to pay reparations for so many people who have suffered for this, like they did in India, like they did in Kenya.”

Masri studied in Texas in the 1950s and went on to build a fortune in the oil and gas industry, and as vice chairman of Arab Bank.

Over the decades he has met many of the key players in the Middle East, from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to US Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

He also hosted Lord Jacob Rothschild, whose family were instrumental in gaining UK imperial support for the Zionist project to build a colony in Palestine more than a century ago.

Helping Trump buy a New York icon
Masri met current US President Donald Trump in the 1980s, when he was vice president of the Arab Bank and Trump was a New York City real estate tycoon.

The bank formed part of a global consortium that lent Trump the money to buy the Plaza Hotel for $390m.

Four decades on, there is a hope that Trump – a man who recognises the value of money above everything – will repay this in delivering a Middle East settlement that ends Israel’s wars and recognises Palestinian rights.

“I have written two letters to President Trump who I met when I was in the [Arab] bank in New York, where we had made a loan for him to buy the most famous hotel in New York.

"We were part of the consortium that delivered to him $400 million and I visited him in Trump Tower. He was very kind and very nice, so I reminded him of this.”

He says that Trump is doing “okay”.

“I hope that America will go back to support the two-state solution. Because it is the only way – they cannot kill us all, and we don’t want to kill them, we want to live together.”

In 1993, when Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat returned to Palestine from exile as part of the Oslo Accords, Masri accompanied him.

"We went to Gaza, we went everywhere. They called me the black box of Yasser Arafat, because I was very close to him.”

Arafat appointed Masri as a minister without portfolio in the first Palestinian Authority administration in 1994.

“I believe I was the only person who held a ministerial post in both Jordan and Palestine. I was proud of it.”

Masri ran his business empire from the UK in the late 70s and 80s, but has lived in occupied Palestine since 1993, founding a number of businesses, including Palestine Telecom (Paltel).

His palatial home, Beit al-Falastine, which is on the site of an excavated fifth-century Byzantine monastery, stands above the crowded Balata refugee camp in the valley below.

Masri insists that had he not built it, it would now be an illegal Israeli settlement.

The site was occupied by Israeli troops during the Second Intifada, who “left it like a big latrine,” he previously told The Guardian.

Broken promises
Masri has experience of the way US political leaders often promise something in person and then renege on it.

This was the case with Biden. It should perhaps dent his optimism, which remains undimmed.

“I met Mr Biden when he was vice president, and very briefly when he was president, and he agreed with me on the two state solution.

"But then he changed his mind; he started not saying anything, because of the Zionist pressure on him.”

Masri, perhaps in line with his allies in the Mahmoud Abbas administration, clutches at the hope that Trump will deliver on the vague words of point 19 in his plan, which says there is a possibility of a future Palestinian state.

“Even Mr Trump agrees on it and now I think he will eventually [deliver on it]. His number 19 point shows there is a possibility of a Palestinian state.”

Masri has also attempted over recent years to end the division between Abbas’s Fatah, in the occupied West Bank, and Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007 and still has control of the strip despite a two-year onslaught that has destroyed most of it.

Many critics see Abbas as the main obstacle to unity on the Palestinian side. MEE put this to Masri, who says: “Ending division is the most important issue. President Abbas has to accept this, and I wrote him a letter on this.”

His view of the now widely discredited two-state solution – made less likely each day as Israel expands illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank – is that it is a stepping stone to a federated one state of all citizens in Israel-Palestine, which he calls a “workable utopia”.

“We support a two state solution, which emerged from the United Nations, and hopefully the Israelis will accept it, but there is no room for the Zionist belief or doctrine in the future."

He hopes that “Jews and Arabs could live together like they lived many centuries ago. Palestine could be the first federated state, hopefully in a federation with all the Arab states.”

Meeting Netanyahu
In the 1990s, while working for the PA under Arafat, Masri met Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, who had signed the Oslo Accords with Arafat, but who was then assassinated in 1995.

“I met Rabin and I met Netanyahu, in accordance with what Arafat wanted me to do,” Masri says.

He recalls his meeting with Netanyahu in 1996, at the beginning of the International Criminal Court-indicted war criminal’s first premiership.

“The first time he was prime minister I went to see him with my daughter; it lasted three hours, and after the meeting he told his aides, ‘I like Munib. Make sure he and I meet once every month.’ I was very happy.

“I said there is no way other than living together, and he agreed. But then, he deceived me, he did not stand with his word. I stood with my word.”

There were no further meetings with Netanyahu.

For Masri, the Gaza genocide has been horrific, but has delivered a change in the view of millions of Americans and Europeans over Palestine that he could not have imagined.

“You see what is happening in Gaza… I cannot sleep at night when I see what is happening there.

“If we [Palestinians] spent 15 or 20 billion dollars on changing people’s minds in America we would never have succeeded, but God gave us this privilege – finally, Israel made it clear what they want. They want us out, they want to kill us.”

He brings the current genocide back to Balfour and Britain. He is grateful for the Palestine protests that have swept the UK and US since 2023.

“I want to thank the British public who have been demonstrating against what Israel is doing and what their government is doing.

“This document [Balfour] made seven million Palestinians homeless. And you see the result of this in what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.

“An apology is not just words, it is the recognition of truth and the start of healing.”

Sharaa’s bid to cement his alignment with the US comes as his government faces an Israeli occupation in a swath of southern Syria, festering problems with Kurdish fighters in the north and a sputtering economy that has been unable to draw outside investment because of sanctions.

None of those topics is expected to be resolved outright when Sharaa visits, but the image of Sharaa – who Trump has praised as an “attractive”, “strong”, and a “tough guy” – sitting in the Oval Office is going to resonate far.

“Sometimes the meeting is the message. This is one of those times,” former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told Middle East Eye. “Think about other leaders that the US has called terrorists. Were they ever in the Oval Office? It's unprecedented.”

While it is rare, there are a few examples in recent history, including South Africa's Nelson Mandela, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's Yasser Arafat and leaders from the Irish Republican Army.

Sharaa’s ability to assuage the concerns of bigger foreign powers about his past has been his top success, experts say, even as Syrians face corruption, economic woes and the fallout of sectarian violence against Christians, Alawites and Druze.

“Sharaa’s policy is very clear, zero problems, and not just with Syria’s neighbours,” Patrick Haenni, an expert on Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), told MEE, referring to a line made famous by Turkey’s former top diplomat, Ahmet Davutoglu, decades ago.

On Friday, ahead of Monday's meeting, the Trump administration swiftly removed sanctions on the Syrian president and removed the Specially Designated Global Terrorist designations on Sharaa and Syria's interior minister, Anas Khattab, according to the US Treasury website.

'Zero problems, not just with neighbours'
Sharaa’s military is moving closer to Nato-member Turkey, which is now training Syrian troops. Meanwhile, his cash-strapped government is relying on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, two key US partners, to pay government salaries.

Sharaa’s Islamist group, HTS, toppled Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, but that did not prevent Sharaa from visiting Assad’s main backer, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in October.

Sharaa’s decision to formally sign onto the coalition against IS codifies his government’s security cooperation with the US and the Gulf.

It is still a head-spinning turn for Sharaa, who served roughly five years in a US prison after travelling to Iraq to repel the 2003 invasion. He went on to found al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's Syrian branch.

“Sharaa’s main success has been showing that Syria will not be the breeding ground for any movement that will challenge another state. That includes everyone: Palestinian militants, Shia militant groups, the PKK, and the Muslim Brotherhood, for what it’s worth,” added Haenni, who is the co-author of Transformed by the People, a book on HTS’s rise to power.

Of course, Sharaa still has his detractors.

Egypt is nervous about Trump normalising Sharaa, given President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s ousting of an Islamist president a decade ago. While the UAE has pledged millions of dollars in investments in Syria, it is taking a backseat to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

But Sharaa’s biggest threat is Israel.

Syria-Israel deconfliction agreement
Syria’s neighbour took advantage of Assad’s downfall to occupy a United Nations buffer zone in southern Syria and launched powerful air strikes that reached the capital, Damascus, over the summer.

Israel is digging in on Syria’s Mount Hermon, the highest peak in the region. It has also sought to portray itself as a defender of Syria’s Druze minority by backing Druze leader Sheikh Hikmat Salaman al-Hajri with arms, experts say.

Over the summer, when fighting broke out between Druze and Bedouins, Israel prevented Sharaa from deploying his mainly Sunni security forces to the south. The intervention upset Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Trump administration.

After its attack on Iran, some in Israel mused about Syria joining the Abraham Accords, but Trump’s envoy to the country, his billionaire friend and ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, ruled that out as impractical, given Sharaa's "backing of Sunni fundamentalists".

Barrack is trying to broker a more modest security deal between Syria and Israel that would replace the 1974 disengagement agreement that Israel tore up when it invaded Syria's south.

Saudi news-site Al-Hadath reported last week that the US is working on a plan for US, Syrian and Israeli troops to jointly patrol Mount Hermon.

“A security agreement will happen. It’s just a matter of time,” Dareen Khalifa, an expert at the International Crisis Group, told MEE.

“The Israelis will need to give something, but there will be flexibility in terms of a withdrawal," she added.

Ford, the former ambassador, said any agreement would stop short of a broader peace deal because Israel is unlikely to surrender occupied territory to Sharaa’s government.

“I see no evidence the Israelis are preparing to withdraw from the territory they seized after December 2024, much less the Golan Heights. So what does Sharaa get in return for a deal with Israel? What’s in it for him?” he said.

How Sharaa is sidelining Syria's Kurds
Trump campaigned on reducing the US’s entanglements in the Middle East.

Syria, where about 1,000 US troops are stationed in the northeast, has been a focal point of efforts to end the US’s so-called forever wars.

This issue is so divisive that Trump’s nominee for the top State Department position on the Middle East saw his nomination torpedoed last week – in part over his opposition to troop withdrawals during Trump's first term.

Now, the US may deepen its role on the ground. Reuters reported on Thursday that the US is planning to take over an air base south of Damascus to monitor a security deconfliction agreement with Israel.

Syria’s foreign ministry denied the report, but experts say such a move would represent a victory for Damascus.

Since 2014, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been Washington’s main security client in Syria. The US used the SDF to fight IS.

Washington’s support for the SDF has been a long-running sore point with Turkey, which views the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The SDF’s ranks are filled out by the YPG, the PKK’s Syrian wing.

Barrack is lobbying for a deal whereby the SDF incorporates into the Syrian military, but the SDF has been loath to surrender the autonomy it earned while Assad was in power. Experts say the closer Sharaa moves to the US, the more American support for the SDF becomes redundant.

“Time plays in Sharaa’s favour. The Americans are moving gradually to Damascus,” Khalifa, at the International Crisis Group, said. “The military resources that are coming to Damascus will also be significant.”

Haenni said the next logical step will be the transfer of IS prisoners and their families to Damascus’s control. Those prisons in northeast Syria are currently guarded by the SDF, which is one of their key forms of leverage with the US.

US concerns about the professionalism of Sharaa’s troops will be gradually addressed through closer military cooperation with Turkey, a US official told MEE. Syrian cadets entered Turkish military academies last month.

Sharaa is arriving in Washington at a time when tensions in Syria between Turkey and Israel have somewhat eased. The US mediated for both its partners to enter deconfliction talks in the spring. Ford, the former US ambassador, said Sharaa’s government could still be dragged into a potential flare-up.

“The Israelis feel they have total military superiority in the region. While Erdogan does not want to stir up a fight with Israel, the Turks will look for ways to challenge them,” Ford told MEE.

Israel's campaign to keep Caesar Sanctions on Syria
Sharaa’s visit is being closely watched by Syrians who want to reintegrate into the region. One analyst who has met Sharaa and his advisors said that a common quip was that among HTS’s base, “the global coalition against ISIS is seen as a global coalition against the Sunnis".

“Joining does not come without costs,” Haenni said. “But significant parts of Sharaa’s own social base will see this as a way out of international isolation.”Trump announced in May that he was lifting all US sanctions on Syria. The country was under one form of sanction or another since the 1970s, but Washington slapped most of them on during Syria's civil war that pitted rebels against Assad.

Trump has removed sanctions by executive order, but experts say Gulf states and western businesses are reluctant to make long-term financial commitments in Syria if Caesar sanctions, the most crippling regime, are not repealed fully by Congress.

Advocates in Washington hope the imagery of Sharaa in the Oval Office hits two people in particular, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Congressman Brian Mast.

“They are doing essentially all they can not to repeal the Caesar sanctions,” Mouaz Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, told MEE.

Mast, who often wears an Israeli military uniform in Congress, told The Hill on Thursday that his opposition to repeal Caesar "should be obvious to anyone following the situation in Syria".

Two US officials familiar with the matter said Mast and Graham are responding to a lobbying push by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s advisor, Ron Dermer, to keep the sanctions on Syria.

“The Trump administration, at the highest levels, has been lobbying actively for Congress to repeal Caesar, but diehard pro-Israel lawmakers are against it,” Moustafa told MEE.

Although Congress is not in session, the House and Senate are working on an amendment to the 2026 Defence Act that some hope could be ready by the time of Sharaa’s visit.

Moustafa, whose group is spearheading the push to repeal Caesar, a law they originally helped author, said there needs to be a “clear-cut repeal” in order for Gulf states and western companies to have confidence in investing.

“If there is any hint of a snapback, no company is going to move into Syria. That is what Netanyahu wants and President Donald Trump is against,” Moustafa said.

Mothers huddle in the corridors of the last functioning hospital, terrified that the next drone strike will claim the wounded they tend. Fathers dig graves with their hands, burying children in the courtyards of shattered schools.

For 18 months, the city endured a siege that stripped it of food, water, and life. When its gates finally fell, it was not liberation that entered. It was annihilation.

Witnesses speak of men dragged from their homes, women and children executed in the streets, hospitals shelled while terrified civilians sheltered inside.

Human Rights Watch has documented scenes of mass killings, burning, and looting. The UN has described the assault as a "campaign of extermination". And behind the force that carried out this atrocity stands a patron whose fingerprints stain every front of Sudan’s war: the United Arab Emirates.

If the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are the visible executioners, the hand that directs them is Abu Dhabi’s.

It has poured cash, weapons, and political cover into the war machine of RSF leader Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo – known as Hemeti – igniting a conflict that has torn Sudan apart.

A dark history
Arms continue to reach the RSF commander through the porous borders of Chad and Libya, and by air flights through UAE bases in Somaliland, sustaining a war that has displaced millions and hollowed out the country’s institutions.

Even the UK’s own military equipment has found its way into RSF hands, exposing the West’s silent complicity in the crimes it publicly condemns.

The RSF’s roots lie in the darkest corners of Sudan’s modern history. Formed under former President Omar al-Bashir as a paramilitary arm of the National Intelligence and Security Service, it was later folded into the army’s framework without losing its autonomy.

Its leader, Hemedti, rose from humble camel trader to warlord, from Bashir’s enforcer in Darfur to deputy head of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council.

In 2019, the RSF helped depose Bashir, joining the transitional government while quietly preserving its independence and foreign sponsors. That fragile coexistence with the army collapsed in April 2023, when negotiations over security reform failed.

What followed was not merely a military confrontation but a struggle for the nation’s survival: a state pitted against the mercenary force it once created.

Since the popular uprising of 2018 that overthrew Bashir, Abu Dhabi has intervened to sabotage the Sudanese revolution and divert it from its course.

It armed and financed Hemedti – the Janjaweed commander once used by Bashir to crush Darfur – and sought to exploit that same brutal expertise to destroy Sudan, fragment it, and divide it further, using its petrodollars as a weapon of disintegration.

A Middle East Eye investigation revealed how this support operates: through a clandestine network of airlifts, arms, and mercenaries. In Somalia’s port city of Bosaso, Emirati cargo planes marked "hazardous" land and depart under cover of night, part of a covert operation funnelling weapons and fighters into Sudan.

Colombian mercenaries recruited by UAE-based private firms have been deployed under RSF command in Darfur’s killing fields. This is not proxy war by accident, but by design.

But Sudan is only the latest theatre in Abu Dhabi’s long campaign of counter-revolution.

A counter-revolutionary crusade
The RSF’s brutality was first exported to Yemen, where tens of thousands of Sudanese fighters were deployed under Emirati command to wage the UAE’s war for dominance.

There, the same Janjaweed units that once razed Darfur became instruments of Emirati ambition, hired muscle in a regional war that shattered another Arab nation.

Since the Arab Spring, the Emirates – under Mohammed bin Zayed – has waged a counter-revolutionary crusade across the Arab world.

It has funded coups, armed militias, and fuelled proxy wars to halt democratic change and preserve the region’s authoritarian order.

Its foreign policy has become one of pre-emptive sabotage, ensuring that no revolution succeeds, no democracy survives, and no freedom takes root that might threaten the monarchies of the Gulf.

In Egypt, it bankrolled the coup that brought President Abdel-Fatah el Sisi to power and restored military rule.

In Tunisia, it embraced Kais Saied’s 2021 power grab, strangling the Arab world’s last surviving democracy.

And in Libya, it went further – repeatedly violating international law to install a new autocrat. A UN report documented the UAE’s repeated breaches of the arms embargo on Libya: attack helicopters, drones, and missile systems secretly supplied to Khalifa Haftar’s Libya National Army (LNA), escalating the war and enabling the seizure of strategic territory.

The pattern is now impossible to deny.

The Wall Street Journal has detailed how Emirati arms pipelines have bolstered a Sudanese militia accused of genocide, a mirror image of the Libya playbook.

Meanwhile, a parallel story has unfolded in Gaza, one that couples "humanitarian" optics with carceral engineering.

Evidence suggests the UAE is entangled in Israel’s scheme to raze eastern Rafah and erect a "humanitarian city" to corral 600,000 Palestinians, a "concentration camp" by any honest measure.

Mondoweiss traces this to Israel’s operation codenamed Gallant Knight 3 to the emergence of Abu Shabab’s "Popular Forces" as a local proxy to police the enclosure.

To service this prison without bars, the UAE has built six desalination plants in Egypt’s al-Arish, boasting a combined capacity said to serve over 600,000 people – the very figure echoed by Israeli officials and sympathetic media. UAE state-aligned coverage touts this as charity.

In context, it looks like infrastructure for mass containment. Nor did Abu Dhabi merely stand by as Israel waged a genocidal onslaught. It helped keep Israel’s arteries open.

With the Red Sea contested, Israel moved to overland shipping from India via the UAE to bypass Yemen's Houthi attacks.

Reports and follow-ups detailed trucking routes running from Gulf ports to Haifa. At Ben-Gurion airport, as most airlines suspended service, Emirati carriers kept flying, effectively serving as a lifeline for Israeli travel during the war.

An ideological partnership
This partnership is not merely logistical; it is ideological and commercial.

Israeli and Emirati online networks have worked in tandem to shape narratives around Sudan and Gaza, targeting Sudan’s army even as RSF massacres mounted in El Fasher.

On the defence-industrial side, firms are expanding inside the UAE, tightening a two-way flow of money, tech, and intelligence. Israeli defence firm Controp is opening a UAE subsidiary making it the latest emblem of this deepening security embrace.

All the while, Emirati rulers boast of their "development model" as a "shining example for the region": authoritarian, anti-political, drenched in consumerism and spectacle.

It is a façade of progress built on repression. A mirage of modernity concealing a machinery of tyranny.

They preach that prosperity without freedom is the path forward for Arabs. But the reality their model produces is fragmentation, mayhem, and bloodshed.

The Emirates does not act alone. It has become Israel’s most significant regional partner, an accomplice in a shared project of disintegration. Together they invest in chaos: igniting civil strife, arming factions, and turning disorder into opportunity.

Through money, mercenaries, and propaganda, they pit sect against sect, tribe against tribe, reducing nations to feuding fiefdoms over which Israel reigns supreme.

Domination through division
The spoils are both strategic and material. Sudan’s gold flows through RSF-UAE channels; Libyan oil and Yemeni ports are quietly absorbed under the guise of "investment". Israeli and Emirati companies profit from looted resources and smuggling networks that thrive in the chaos they helped create.

For Israel’s far-right government, the goal is domination through division. For the UAE, it is borrowed power: the illusion of empire through servitude to one.

Both see the region not as sovereign nations but as pliable territories, a mosaic of weakened entities ripe for manipulation. From a small Gulf principality, Abu Dhabi has recast itself as a regional meddler, entangled in every conflict from Yemen to Libya to Sudan.

The irony is that it imagines itself a great power, intoxicated by wealth, emboldened by its alliance with Israel, and convinced that exporting crises will shield it from change.

But geography and history offer no such protection. The UAE remains a small state playing at empire, waging wars beyond its means and courting consequences it cannot contain.

For the fires it has kindled in Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and beyond will not burn outward forever. Sooner or later, every arsonist meets their own blaze. Those who build power on flames always end up being consumed by them.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

The US Department of the Treasury removed al-Sharaa, a former fighter linked to al-Qaeda, from the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list on Friday. The United Nations Security Council also removed al-Sharaa from a largely symbolic sanctions list on Thursday.

The official removal of al-Sharaa from the list is the latest move meant to remove potential barriers to Syria’s pursuit of economic and political integration after years of devastating civil war and former leader Bashar al-Assad’s removal from power in December 2024.

Washington and the UN also removed Anas Hasan Khattab, a former fighter linked to al-Qaeda but now serving as Syria’s interior minister, from the list.

“With the adoption of this text, the council is sending a strong political signal that recognises Syria is in a new era since Assad and his associates were toppled in December 2024,” Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, said in his statement after the UNSC vote on Thursday.

The US president is expected to host al-Sharaa, who, as a former fighter, once battled US troops in Iraq, at the White House on November 10, the first Syrian president to make the trip.

Trump met al-Sharaa for the first time in May during a summit in Saudi Arabia, where he announced an end to some US sanctions on Syria put in place during the Assad regime that some analysts said would have made it difficult for the country to rebuild its economy.

The US Congress has said it is working to repeal additional sanctions on Syria that remain in place, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee welcoming the removal of UN sanctions and saying it was time to “bring the Syrian economy into the 21st century”.

Sudani’s comments come ahead of Iraq's highly anticipated parliamentary elections on 11 November.

Sudani is balancing between Washington, which is critical for Iraq’s dollar transactions, and neighbouring Iran, which backs a constellation of mainly Shia militias called the Popular Mobilisation Forces.

Sudani is courting public support ahead of elections as he seeks a second term in office.

“There is no ISIS. Security and stability? Thank God it's there … so give me the excuse for the presence of 86 states,” he told Reuters in an interview in Baghdad, referring to the number of countries that joined the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group in 2014.

"Then, for sure, there will be a clear programme to end any arms outside of state institutions. This is the demand of all," he said.

US troops began withdrawing from two key Iraqi bases over the summer.

In September 2024, Reuters reported that US and Iraqi negotiators had agreed on a plan during the Biden administration to end the US military presence, which just required the sign-off of leaders in Baghdad and Washington.

According to Reuters, the plan called for all US-led coalition forces to leave Ain al-Asad air base in western Anbar province and significantly reduce their presence in Baghdad by September 2025.

Sudani said that militias could become absorbed into the state’s official security forces or their members could enter politics after laying down their arms.

Parallels in Lebanon
The proposal comes at a time when the US is finding it very difficult to disarm Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Popular Mobilisation Forces and Hezbollah belong to a loose group of militias, alongside Yemen’s Houthis, that receive funding and training from Iran. The so-called "axis of resistance" was battered by Israeli attacks following the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

Militias in Iraq were behind an attack on US troops in Jordan in January 2024, but mainly stood aside while the Houthis and Hezbollah attacked Israel, in what they said was solidarity with besieged Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel's war on Gaza after 7 October 2023 has been recognised as a genocide by world leaders, the United Nations and human rights experts. The US brokered a fragile Gaza ceasefire in October that has been marred by Israeli violations.

The US has long been lobbying Iraq to dismantle armed groups affiliated with the Popular Mobilisation Forces. A more overt campaign led by US envoy Tom Barrack is underway in Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah.

Hezbollah was resigned to sign a lopsided ceasefire last year that enshrined Israel’s ability to attack the group with US support. The group has endured Israeli strikes without responding.

The Lebanese army has disarmed Hezbollah in much of southern Lebanon, analysts and regional diplomats tell Middle East Eye.

The government has been trying to negotiate a transfer of Hezbollah’s heavy weaponry in the rest of the country to the army. Hezbollah has resisted this.

Speaking at a conference in Bahrain last week, Barrack said that he did not think using force to disarm Hezbollah would work, and instead said oil-rich Gulf states need to offer an economic incentive for Hezbollah fighters to turn in their arms.

Hezbollah is the largest political party in Lebanon, and its members sit in the US-backed government. Both its armed wing and a network of social services exist outside the government.

In Iraq, the Popular Mobilisation Forces receive government payments. Under Sudani, the roughly 150,000 members of the forces were allocated an additional $700m in Iraq’s three-year budget released in 2023.

Turkey’s relations with Israel collapsed during the Gaza war, and it has been a harsh critic of Jerusalem, but it also served as a key mediator of the tenuous three-week-old ceasefire. Now, it is pushing for Muslim nations to bring their influence to bear on the reconstruction and future governance of the embattled Strip.

“Our principle is that Palestinians should govern the Palestinians and ensure their own security. The international community should support this in the best possible way — diplomatically, institutionally, and economically,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said after the talks.

“Nobody wants to see a new system of tutelage emerge,” he told a news conference, using a term meaning foreign supremacy over a territory.

Brokered by US President Donald Trump, the October 10 ceasefire — which halted two years of war sparked by the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack — has been tested by Hamas attacks on Israeli soldiers and fresh Israeli strikes.

The talks also involved top diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

All of them were called to a meeting with Trump in September on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly, just days before he unveiled his plan to end the Gaza war. Trump has credited their support with helping build momentum for his peace proposal.

“We’ve now reached an extremely critical stage: We do not want the genocide in Gaza to resume,” Fidan added, saying all seven nations supported plans for the Palestinians to take control of Gaza’s security and governance. Israel adamantly rejects the accusation that it has committed genocide in Gaza.

Fidan, who held talks at the weekend with a Hamas delegation led by its chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, said the terror group was “ready to hand Gaza to a committee of Palestinians.”

The future makeup of Gaza’s government has been a sticking point in the talks about the enclave. Israel has insisted that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority play a part in running Gaza after the war, but Muslim countries have favored a postwar role for the PA, which currently governs daily life in Palestinian population centers in the West Bank.

Trump’s peace plan calls for a “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” to run Gaza under the supervision of an international body chaired by Trump called the “Board of Peace.” The plan says the PA can assume control of the territory after undergoing reforms, but does not lay out a timeline.

The territory is now split between a region controlled by the IDF in the east and one effectively run by Hamas in the west. The peace plan calls for Hamas to disarm, which Trump has repeatedly demanded, but which the terror group has not agreed to do.

Fidan expressed hope that long-running reconciliation efforts between Hamas and the PA “will bear fruit as soon as possible,” saying inter-Palestinian unity would “strengthen Palestine’s representation in the international community.” Multiple previous attempts at PA-Hamas unity have failed.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has praised Hamas, said the group was “determined to adhere to the (truce) agreement” and urged Muslim states to play “a leading role” in Gaza’s recovery.

“We believe the reconstruction plan prepared by the Arab League and the OIC [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] should be implemented immediately,” he said of the plan unveiled in March.

Regarding security in the Strip, Fidan said it was crucial that the planned International Stabilization Force, which will oversee the Gaza ceasefire under Trump’s plan, have a “mandate defined by a UN Security Council resolution and a framework for legitimacy.”

Washington is currently working with Arab and international partners to decide on the composition of the force, with Turkey hoping to play a role. Israel has long viewed Turkey’s diplomatic overtures with suspicion over Ankara’s close ties with Hamas, and adamantly opposes its joining the force.

A Turkish disaster relief team, sent to help efforts to recover the remains of those trapped under the rubble — including deceased Israeli hostages kidnapped in the October 7 attack and held by Hamas — has been stuck at the border because of Israel’s refusal to let them in, according to Ankara.

Azerbaijan is said to have expressed interest in participating in the ISF, and Indonesia has offered to do so.

“The countries we’ve spoken with say they will decide whether to send troops based on … the ISF’s mandate and authority,” Fidan said. “First, a general consensus needs to be reached on a draft, then it needs to be approved by the members of the Security Council.

“And it needs to be free from vetoes by any of the permanent [UNSC] members,” he added, referring to the US, a permanent Security Council member, which frequently vetoes resolutions in alignment with Israel.

The post Turkey, Muslim allies demand Palestinian self-rule in Gaza following Istanbul summit appeared first on The Times of Israel.

In a report released on Tuesday, the charity said 520 million children in 2024 were exposed to war, marking a record high for the third consecutive year.

Save the Children verified 41,763 grave violations against children last year, a 30 percent increase from 2023.

This means an average of 78 children endured grave violations – such as being killed or maimed, abducted, recruited or sexually abused – each day, the report said.

Growing up in militarised areas also often means dropping out of school, being forced to leave home, and being subjected to physical and mental trauma, it added.

“This disproportionate rise in grave violations reveals that beyond exposure to conflict, there is also a deep erosion of the international norms and protections designed to shield children from harm,” said Inger Ashing, Save the Children’s CEO.

“This report also reveals another troubling reality: The current unilateral focus on combating violence through military, state and private security solutions is failing to adequately protect children from the gravest forms of harm,” Ashing added.

In 2024, there were 61 state-based conflicts, meaning that at least one of the warring parties was a state government.

Less than 2 percent of global security funds went towards peacebuilding and peacekeeping in 2024, mirroring a long-term trend in declining peace spending.

By contrast, military spending hit a record high as it soared by more than 9 percent to total $2.7 trillion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Africa has the highest number and ratio of children living in conflict zones – 218 million – surpassing the Middle East for the first time since 2007.

However, the highest number of grave violations recorded against children took place in occupied Palestinian territory while one in three children killed or maimed in war were Palestinian.

Overall, more than half of the violations against children took place in Palestinian territory, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Somalia.