Watching #Nasrallah's speech today, after the Arouri assassination + attacks in Iran & South Lebanon today, I am more worried than ever about a swift and violent regional escalation.

US coming off as impotent; Israel as reckless 🧵 First, main takeaways from Nasrallah speech:
-Sought to proclaim the independence of Iranian-backed movements from Iran, absolving Iran/IRGC from culpability.
-Linked the different “axes of resistance” to one another in one shared, regional vision.
-Defended attacks on the northern border of Israel as a necessary deterrence.
-Stopped short of declaring an expansion of military attacks/all out war with Israel *unless* Israel starts one, but significantly more aggressive tone than in previous speeches and promised a retaliatory attack for last night’s assassination. 2/

I met numerous people with similar underlying racism/dehumanisation to Stuart Seldowitz during my time in US government & before that when I was a young translator in Iraq & GTMO.

Bear with me as I offer some thoughts as to why that is and what should be done to address it🧵

https://twitter.com/MedDhiaH/status/1727127065231524336

I was 20 yrs old when 9/11 happened. For many Arab and Muslim Americans, it was a scary time. We watched our identities and loyalties questioned and our religion and heritage securitised and militarised. That was the beginning 2/

cbsnews.com/news/supreme-c…

I worked 8 years under Obama & was a volunteer on candidate Biden's ME policy team

🧵on the content of this letter and what the list of public signatories says about the climate of fear in Washington, DC right now. As in, who gets to speak out freely & who cannot. 1/

https://twitter.com/AndrewJBates46/status/1724492935629000708

First off, the timing of this letter, which says "a ceasefire is not possible at this time" is shocking. To voluntarily & publicly state this at a time when 1/200 Gazans have been killed & we are seeing babies pulled out of their incubators and dying, is hard to believe 2/

Been working on a long article about US Middle East policy for a while now, but in the meantime, some thoughts <thread>

1-The Middle East is a graveyard for “western” values. Democracy, accountability, transparency, human rights..it all falls by the wayside in this region. Why?

https://twitter.com/stephenkalin/status/1551937199482064898

2-Why? Because not one Western country actually prioritises values over interests here. Equally importantly, the West doesn’t prioritise LONG-TERM interests over short-term interests. Elections + campaigns are good for democracy at home, bad for democracy activists in the ME.