Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Iran’s ruling ideologues are murderous and resilient. The Trump administration’s limited military strikes and efforts to “sever every economic lifeline that sustains” the regime are commendable. Yet the thugs in charge won’t abandon their most cherished goals until they fear being unable to suppress the next round of riots by angry Iranians. As long as their hired enforcers believe payment will resume when the government next outwits Washington, Tehran’s negotiators can hew to a hard line, write FDD's Lewis Libby and Justin Fields in The Washington Post. Read the full op-ed: https://bit.ly/4ArhaMj

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Qatar has positioned itself as the world's go-to mediator, brokering deals from Gaza to Ukraine to Venezuela. But does that record hold up? In a new FDD Memo, Natalie Ecanow reports that Qatar's mediation "successes" often come by paying off or empowering groups like Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban — while its failures just let conflicts keep grinding on. She argues Washington needs a due-diligence policy for vetting mediators in the future. Read more: https://bit.ly/4dq784g

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As the Iran War wages on, some of its emerging victors never fired a shot: Turkey, Pakistan, and Qatar. With the U.S. rationing its power across the Middle East, these three made themselves indispensable to U.S. diplomacy. FDD's Sinan Ciddi and Benjamin Acosta trace how these countries converted the conflict's fallout into lasting diplomatic and security gains with Washington. Read more in The National Interest: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/09/17/the-three-quiet-victors-of-the-iran-war/?utm_campaign=&utm_content=1790020812&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

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The Houthis are no longer just a regional nuisance. They are a serious and growing threat. Since declaring a blockade against Saudi Arabia on July 20th, the Houthis have struck vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, fired missiles and drones at Saudi cities, and — over recent weeks — seized Yemen's entire Red Sea coast, along with islands in the Bab al-Mandeb, the southern exit from the Red Sea. On the latest episode of Foreign Podicy, I sat down with two of FDD's leading experts on Yemen and the Houthis — Senior Fellow Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British Ambassador to Yemen, and Research Analyst Bridget Toomey — to make sense of all of it. We also discuss the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from their last base in Iraq — and what that means for American influence in the region. Plus, how an attempt to hijack and crash a flydubai passenger jet was foiled by an Indian pilot and Israelis passengers. 🎙️ Listen to the latest Foreign Podicy here: https://lnkd.in/ekMmqFVT

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In September, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that "all the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world.” In Turkey, they're still flying. FDD's Ahmad Sharawi and Sinan Ciddi Ph.D. found that at least 83 flights operated by U.S.-sanctioned Iranian carriers landed in Turkey in the days after the announcement and were kept in the air by Turkish ground-handling firms like FUGO Ground Services. They argue that Treasury should sanction FUGO directly for helping these airlines stay operational. Read more: https://bit.ly/4iTapwA

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Hezbollah's fighting forces can no longer operate openly in Syria. But the commercial networks tied to its former financial facilitators haven't disappeared. A new memo from FDD's Ahmad Sharawi reports that companies tied to Hezbollah financier Mohammad al-Bazzal, spanning the battery manufacturing, copper trading, and agribusiness industries, remain active more than a year after the Assad regime's fall. If Washington fails to address this infrastructure now, Syria's economic reopening could let Hezbollah preserve, and eventually rebuild, the financial networks it needs to regenerate. Read the full memo: https://bit.ly/3Tznpxa

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How does Israel actually run a war on three fronts at once — Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran? On today's episode of The Iran Breakdown, I speak with Elliot Kaufman and Yonah Jeremy Bob , co-authors of new book "In the War Room," about the decisions, debates, and personalities that shaped Israel's fight from October 7 to the strikes on Iran.

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Thrilled to share a major investigation that I started almost a year ago. I believe this is the first publicly documented example of a covert network of watchdog organizations and news websites advancing Qatari interests. You can read the report here: https://lnkd.in/e4czz3He. I will also be presenting these findings in person at the UK OSINT Community’s conference next week. This network attempts to discredit Belgium’s investigation into the Qatargate corruption scandal in Europe. It also consistently attacks Qatar’s geopolitical rivals, chiefly the UAE, often framing Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood as the victims of various smear campaigns. It also targets at least 250 U.S. individuals, organizations, and companies, including dozens of pro-Israel and Jewish organizations. The network calls for institutional action against some of its targets, including blacklisting, investigations, and even sanctions. The network spans at least 11 websites that present themselves as independent organizations and news outlets. The primary network includes an NGO watchdog (ngoreport[.]org), an anti-money laundering website (amlnetwork[.]org), a Brussels-focused watchdog (brusselswatch[.]org), a European news website (informeurope[.]com), and a UK news website (eveningstar[.]uk). A secondary network includes Nordic Rights (nordicrights[.]org) and Fokuset (fokuset[.]com), which present themselves as Scandinavian human rights and news outlets; Dagblad Bergen (dagbladbergen[.]com), a Norwegian digital newspaper; and three French-language news websites: Bureau de Presse (eupressdesk[.]com), L’Europe Libre (leuropelibre[.]com), and Le Parisien Temps (leparisientemps[.]com). None of these websites publicly acknowledges its connection to the others. The investigation is very complex technically, and most of the details are spelled out in the appendices of the memo. We can say with high confidence that a Bangladeshi web developer and digital marketer, possibly with associates, created and managed these websites. The man appears to be a commercial, rather than political, actor, leaving the question of who paid him to create these websites. What is clear is that whoever pays for these sites seeks to advance Qatari interests. Thank you to Maria Riofrio for co-authoring this memo with me, and to Natalie Ecanow, Ethan Sheinker, Emmerson O., Kyrylo Busorgin, and Mariam Lomtadze for supporting the investigation.

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The race to choose the next U.N. secretary-general has yet to produce a clear frontrunner, but at least one candidate currently making headway should ring alarm bells in Washington. The most recent straw poll of U.N. Security Council members showed Rebeca Grynspan, a former Costa Rican vice-president who has led the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development since 2021, with a razor-thin lead. But right behind her was Guyana’s current ambassador to the U.N., Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, who had led in the previous straw poll. Rodrigues-Birkett’s positions are more aligned with the Chinese Communist Party, the Cuban regime and Hamas than the U.S. and its closest allies. Indeed, China — Washington’s principal global adversary — appears likely to endorse her, write FDD's Richard Goldberg and Ben Cohen in The Hill. 📝 Read the full op-ed: https://bit.ly/4AFO3VG

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