On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the same breath, he endorsed Trump’s plan to transform the depopulated ruins of southern Gaza — where over 57,000 Palestinians have been documented killed by Israel to date — into a luxury resort. This grotesque flourish topped a day of backroom deals in Washington, where Trump pushed a ceasefire not as a path to peace, but as leverage for a normalization agreement with Syria.

Against all odds — and in the face of overwhelming military force, foreign occupation, and relentless international slander — Syrians overthrew one of the most brutal and entrenched dictatorships of our time. After more than a decade of revolution, they brought down the Assad regime, a hereditary dictatorship that had ruled by massacre, torture, and fear since the 1970s.

In a heartwarming show of international solidarity — or perhaps nuclear trolling — Russia today announced its willingness to give sanctuary to Iran’s enriched uranium. Not Iranian people, of course. Just the radioactive stuff. Human beings from the Middle East, other than current and deposed tyrants and their families, remain notably less welcome in Moscow than uranium hexafluoride.

Israel’s latest military strike on Iran, dubbed 'Operation Rising Lion', was more than a show of force—it was a political signal. While missiles targeted IRGC infrastructure and killed its head, the operation’s name also raised immediate questions: was this a nod to Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah, who uses the lion as his personal symbol and brand?

Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, is worried. Not about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, not about the 56,000+ civilians Israel has killed there in the past 19 months, not about the crimes against humanity. No — he’s worried that the United States might, in some hypothetical future, support Syria’s internationally recognized claim to the occupied Golan Heights.

Tom Barrack, US ambassador to Türkiye and special envoy to Syria, on Sunday slammed the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement that carved up the Middle East for "imperial gain-not peace." The division of Syria was a historic mistake, he emphasized, stressing a that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria would open the door for prosperity and security.

Syrian activists have raised doubts over the status of the Chinese company, Fidi Contracting, that’s just signed a major contract to invest in the Hasiya Free Trade Zone in Homs and the Adra Free Trade Zone in rural Damascus. The activists revealed that their investigations could find no online presence for the company and they’ve been unable to find any trace of its involvement in business in China or any other countries.

It was another fine speech. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, with his usual mournful gravity, warned the world this week that the situation in Gaza had reached “the cruellest phase yet.” A humanitarian catastrophe. Famine. Children dying. “A moral outrage,” he called it. And then what? A press release. Another grim statement filed under “Too Late, Again.” If the UN were judged not by the eloquence of its leaders but by the lives it failed to save, its headquarters might as well be a mausoleum.

The UN’s Original Sin: Doing Nothing Loudly

Syria’s interior minister revealed yesterday (Thursday May 22) that 8.2 million Syrians– over a third of the country’s population - were wanted for arrest or banned from travel by the deposed Assad regime, explaining that the Ministry of Interior is currently working to resolve the problem. The new government has already removed over 5.2 million names from the list of individuals wanted by the ousted regime for reasons related to military service, he revealed, with approximately 3 million cases still being addressed, including more than 1,130,000 state employees.

The European Union yesterday (Wednesday May 21) announced a formal review of its decades-old Association Agreement with Israel, citing the "catastrophic" humanitarian situation in Gaza. This decision comes amid mounting international criticism of Israel's military actions, which have resulted in over 53,000 Palestinian deaths since October 2023, with over 100 civilians killed in Israeli bombardment of Gaza on Wednesday and at least 38 civilians by noon today.