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Hassan I. Hassan Profile picture
Hassan I. Hassan
@hxhassan
Founder and editor in chief of the award-winning @newlinesmag. Award-winning journalist. New York Times Bestselling Author. Email etc in link. Syrian-American.
9 subscribers
Apr 16 • 8 tweets • 6 min read
On the day Ahmad al-Sharaa received an invite to attend the Arab Summit in Iraq a month from now, a pro-Iran Telegram channel leaked documents about his prison years & case in Iraq.

Some useful details.

A significant irony in the leaks, in this thread 🧵 Image
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Image Ahmad al-Sharaa was detained by U.S. forces in Iraq from 2005 to 2011, under a false identity. He was released two days before the first Syrian protest against the Assad regime in 2011. Image
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Jan 7 • 28 tweets • 4 min read
Fascinating details about Assad’s last days in this interview with Assad’s media “tsar”, his media chief and close aide.

Thread 1/x Assad in Moscow had to wait two days to meet Putin. On the day of the meeting, his appointment was moved three times. The Russians asked for only Assad and his escort, Brigadier General Muhsin Mohammed. The meeting lasted for one hour.
Dec 10, 2024 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
“Top secret and urgent” classified documents found after Assad’s fall provide interesting insights about the “mechanism” overseen by Russia to manage Israeli-Syrian-Iranian dynamics, and Israeli military actions against Iranian & Hezbollah buildup.

Details in this thread Image
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Image For years, Russia mediated a process designed to allow Assad’s military to function while limiting Iran & Hezbollah's ability to expand militarily in Syria. This mechanism required Israel to avoid certain strikes if these limitations were enforced. Image
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Dec 1, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
A lot of confusion & misreporting about the Kurds and opposition forces in northern Syria. Rebels faced no resistance from the regime but hit a brick wall with Kurdish-dominated areas.

Details in this thread 1/x They’ve been avoiding direct conflict, trying to broker a peaceful deal for Kurdish fighters to leave Aleppo.

This deal now seems to have taken place, and the rebels say Kurdish fighters started evacuating the city toward Manbij and eastern Syria.

2/x
Nov 9, 2024 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Folks, there is misreporting on Qatar’s decision to expel Hamas.

Reuters’ reporting is the most accurate — and logical — so far.

Context in following tweets: Reuters reports it as an ultimatum, Doha warning it’ll pull out of Gaza ceasefire mediations until Hamas & Israel “demonstrate a sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table”.

Not just expulsion, because the US asked it to expel Hamas.

>>>
Sep 30, 2024 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
As always, Syria is the most important "non-important" story in the Middle East -- the story that doesn't seem to matter, but ends up being a key piece of the puzzle.

A short #thread Two stories that begin to demonstrate how Syria is central:

How Israel penetrated Hezbollah in Syria - FT

And my deep-dive story just before the killing of Nasrallah on the tricky game Assad is playing since Day 1 of the Gaza war ft.com/content/663881…
newlinesmag.com/argument/syria…
Sep 21, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
When Iran’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in 2020, there was intense debate over whether his killing would set back Iran’s proxy warfare in the Middle East. It took years for us to see the effects of it, and few today dispute that the vacuum he left remains unfilled. 👇


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Image Some believed his killing won’t matter significantly, because he’d already built a well-oiled machine.
Oct 20, 2023 • 9 tweets • 7 min read
I haven’t seen such relentless interrogation of Palestinian leadership before, esp. in Arabic.

On Saudi Arabia’s main TV channel, Hamas leader is clearly startled by the intensity of the questions & responses to his answers.

Crucial points in next tweets One of the most significant ones to Hamas leader by the Saudi TV interviewer is why Hamas expects Arab countries to back them up when Hamas hadn’t consulted them before carrying out an operation akin to declaration of war.

‘You didn’t consult even fellow Palestinians.’
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Oct 19, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Two crucial points. Al Faisal isn’t an official, but you can think of this speech as the *clearest* indicator of the Saudi leadership’s thinking beyond the generic official remarks. Thus: Saudi is messaging that the Gaza war must NOT end the Saudi-Israeli normalization talks 1/2 Second, and despite the growing conventional wisdom about this, I never believed even for a second that the latest round of the conflict has sabotaged the Saudi-Israeli normalization talks.

They’ll be resumed, albeit in greater secrecy than for a while until progress is made.
Nov 30, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
ISIS announces its leader Abu al-Hassan Al-Qurashi has been killed in action, and declares Abu al-Hussain al-Hussaini al-Qurashi as its new leader.

[Important to note that this is quite possibly a fake announcement. See next tweets] Scenario 1 is that the ISIS leader was killed "accidentally" during a raid or fighting without him being known to whoever killed him (the US, Iraqis, Kurds) so those did not know they killed the leader.

That'd be unprecedented, but possible.

Another scenario is this is fake:
May 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
#important Our institute has released a significant and legally-reviewed report detailing evidence of how Russia is inciting genocide in Ukraine. Tremendous work in @NewlinesInst - coverage of the report in @nytimes here .@CNN has an exclusive story on this landmark report.

Leading experts accuse Russia of inciting genocide in Ukraine and intending to 'destroy' Ukrainian people | CNN

cnn.com/2022/05/27/eur…
Mar 10, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Gonna summarize the new release by the Islamic State (ISIS) about the killing of its leader and the appointment of a new leader. The release is by its new leader Abu Omar al-Muhajir.

Follow this #thread The release, titled "Of them were some who passed away," reveals that both the leader Qardash and his spokesman Abu Hamza al-Qurashi (who died on February 3, in a US special forces raid in northern Syria). The group offers different details.
Mar 7, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Afghan businessman @BarakShoaib, once a symbol of everything the U.S. claimed to support during the war against the Taliban, pens a powerful essay on the U.S. sanctions, their immorality and the profound betrayal they symbolize | New Lines Magazine apple.news/Ax8qjKV4USW2GY… “Since the day the U.S. froze the reserves of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, I have had almost no access to the more than $3 million in my bank accounts. I probably never will again.” apple.news/Ax8qjKV4USW2GY…
Mar 2, 2022 • 22 tweets • 9 min read
In an interview, former Qatari foreign minister on the Gulf states’ alliance with the U.S. versus Russia and China: the US is easier, as long you’re straight with them, not as difficult as others, and Russia/China are “dictatorships like us” via @YouTube The US told former Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Saleh about their intention to attack Iraq from the sea rather than from the nature continuous land near Kuwait, because they knew Saleh was leaking messages over to Saddam — former Qatari FM
Oct 7, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
One major flaw in jihadism/counterterrorism analysis is to compensate for knowledge of the human terrain by relying on (flawed) stats/numbers or statements on social media. We’ve seen that in Iraq and Syria, and we’re seeing it now in Afghanistan.

To give a quick example: Not a single Afghan talks about an expanding Islamic State there, for example. This is almost exclusively coming from non-Afghan observers, old or new. But let’s entertain this claim, which really relies on not reporting or in-field woek but on “stats”. Still, let’s see the stats
Apr 17, 2021 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Wow! For the first time, a video showing the ISIS leader defending his PhD thesis at the university of Mosul in 2007. This is the first time he’s seen in live footage, and the discussion in the video is quite astonishing in multiple levels. (H/t @NihadJariri)

1/ As detailed here, at that point he was part of al-Qaeda in Iraq (Islamic State of Iraq) and was just appointed the general sharii (judge) of the group. He would be jailed by the Americans at Camp Bucca a short while later.
Dec 21, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Today is the death anniversary of Dr Mohammed Shahrour, a Syrian intellectual known for his controversial views on Islam (radical but on the opposite spectrum of jihadism). He came up with a novel way of approaching the Quran, widely rejected by clerics but fascinating at times. To me, the most fascinating is that he came up with a method that's almost identical to Islamic radicals but in a way that pushes a liberal view of Islam, different from traditional & extremist views. A "literalist" view with modern applications.
Dec 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Even as it tries to do the right thing, @nytimes falls short. Who has a history of misrepresentation that the NYT has avoided specifying?

The Times said its investigation had “found a history of misrepresentations by Mr. Chaudhry”

nytimes.com/2020/12/18/bus… Really? After months of investigation, the paper found the interviewee is to blame? Apart from the rhetoric, it really merely walked back on its earlier decision to still use the podcast but edit it. Now it’s saying no, we’ll retract it, and everyone is supposed to applaud.
Dec 2, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Important: A breakthrough in the Gulf rift in the coming hours, sources tell Al Jazeera aja.me/b5k8f Kuwait is to issue a statement about a "breakthrough" in the Gulf rift, between Saudi Arabia & Qatar. The breakthrough will be a set of confidence-building measures before a full end of the crisis that began June 2017. Moves to resolve the Saudi-Qatari dispute started last fall.
Nov 6, 2020 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Doom & gloom within Arab regime circles about reports of a Biden win. They were hoping Trump would win.

Even if they don’t think Biden would actively be against them, they get how their detractors will have space & multiple advantages perhaps unprecedented in recent decades! In 2016, it was a whole different world: Arab dictators and their circles were simply intoxicated with their love of the incoming Trump presidency. They saw historic opportunities, and they were right to a certain degree but not entirely.
Oct 18, 2020 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Two weeks before the anniversary of the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdad, ISIS is releasing a new statement from the media outlet specializing in top leadership releases.

The new leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi has not yet made a public statement: cgpolicy.org/articles/exclu… ISIS releases a statement by its spokesman Abu Hamza al-Qurashi titled "So recount the tales"