Alex Martin Astley

After years of war, life is trickling back to Palmyra, the modern town beside the fabled ruins. My latest piece, for @ForeignPolicy. #Syria #Palmyra foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/01/syr…

[Video via local media]

All that remains of the southern Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab.

Israeli attacks on #Lebanon yesterday killed 110 women, children and elderly, health ministry has just confirmed. That is a massacre of innocent life by any measure.

LEBANESE HEALTH MINISTRY SAYS TOLL FROM ISRAELI ATTACKS ON WEDNESDAY RISES TO 303 DEAD. This is not the final toll.

An Israeli double-tap killed Al Jazeera reporter Muhammed Wishah in Gaza. His colleagues said they had feared for his safety months earlier, after an Israeli incitement campaign targeted him over his reporting on the genocide over the past two years. middleeasteye.net/news/israel-ki…

“Whether or not Israel intends to, it definitely is aware that it's causing major rifts and chaos in a country that has a history of civil war and a history of Israeli occupation,” I told ⁦@The_NewArab⁩ newarab.com/analysis/how-i…

Hussein Saleh lost 8 members of his family in an Israeli strike on their home, including his pregnant wife. He found the head of his young daughter amid the rubble. “When I picked up her head, everything changed. Something in my heart broke and went silent.” It is one of the most heartbreaking stories @NadaOHomsi and I have worked on during the war. Nothing could justify such a horrific attack.

With Israel's war demographically reshaping the country, its military strategy is deliberately pitting Lebanon's religious communities against each other @AlexMAstley reports from Beirut newarab.com/analysis/how-i…

How Israel’s war on Lebanon is sowing sectarian strife. My latest for @The_NewArab’s analysis desk ⬇️ newarab.com/analysis/how-i…

As war continues to rage in Lebanon, the most vulnerable — migrants, LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities — are left with few options. @suzanHaidamous & I report w/ photos by @guypeterson_ washingtonpost.com/world/2026/04/…

The saddest advisory: after at least 100 Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, advice should you come across a parentless child. It says stay calm and reassure them, take them to the nearest rescue centre, call the authorities

Israel attacked Lebanon with 100 strikes in 10 minutes yesterday cross Lebanon, killing more than 250 people and injuring more than 1,000 including women and children, throwing the nation into chaos following the U.S.-Iran two-week ceasefire. #Beirut For @GettyImagesNews

Aftermath of an Israeli strike on southern Lebanese city of Tyre.

Israel committed a massacre in Lebanon today

The Lebanese army just announced that they have evacuated the Qasimieh bridge, after receiving an Israeli threat to bomb it. The bridge is a lifeline for over 150,000 people still living south of the litani river, who depend on it to access food, medicine & aid. Catastrophic.

Best summary of America I have seen

Taken from under the rubble. Less than a year old

Ceasefire day 1: Israel took multiple waves of Iranian missile fire after the ceasefire was announced. Kuwait reports that more than two dozens drones were launched by Iran since 8am. UAE is currently under an Iranian missile attack. Iran, via state media, reports strikes against Lavan Island and the oil infrastructure there.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s scuttling of the Lebanon part of the ceasefire will be disappointing news to the more than one million people displaced, some of whom were already heading back south at dawn, lined up at checkpoints in hope despite there being no official announcement from the state, Israel, Hezbollah, US or Iran

No civilisation thankfully died last night, but a Presidency deserves to. Here below a former senior US security official concedes that the ceasefire agreement Trump has signed is not “status quo ante bellum” ie the US is now worse off than at the start of this war of choice. To spell it out, Trump needlessly started a war at the urging of Israel, refused to listen to those experts urging caution, devised a strategy built on a misapprehension of Iran, sparked a ruinous regional conflict, caused the death of thousands of civilians, unhinged the world economy, strengthened, for now, the repressive instincts of the Iranian and Russian governments, left America more discredited & isolated, provoked serious questions about the President’s fitness for public office, laid waste to large parts of Iran and Lebanon, including medical research centres, primary schools and universities, did not resolve Iran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium or its future nuclear program, strengthened those in Iran backing possession of a nuclear weapon, and yes ensured Iran and Oman still plan to control and toll the Strait of Hormuz for the first time. A return to war will doubtless soon be threatened even before the 2 week ceasefire ends, but the use of force in this decades old conflict has now been test driven and proven the wrong vehicle since it can only achieve its objectives at an inconceivable price. Trump has now agreed that Iran’s 10 point maximalist plan is a “workable basis for negotiation”, and Trump’s 15 point plan will also be considered. But that leaves him worse off than when Witkoff and Kushner were in Geneva in February. The US with a weaker hand may need to send a team led by Vance and some proper nuclear experts to Islamabad to rescue the negotiating progress previously made, and prematurely spurned. Iran will feel less to no pressure to concede on its right to enrich uranium domestically, the single biggest previous point of dispute. Iran has also not explicitly conceded the need to negotiate over its ballistic missiles or support for proxy resistance groups such as Hezbollah. It will instead negotiate bilateral or multilateral “non aggression pacts with its regional neighbours”. Trump is now prematurely speaking of a golden era for the Middle East but scars are deep and negotiations will require far more than a fortnight. With luck the exhausting governing style of threats, deadlines, expletives, and menacing abuse that demeans America will now be set aside or denounced, starting with Cuba. Someone in the Trump cabinet may even look in the mirror and realise dollops of sycophantic praise may feed the narcissist, but only sullies them, and the political future of Republicans. Even Lindsay Graham might learn there is virtue in reticence. Some way of tethering Trump in the seven months to the mid terms is badly needed. European countries including UK Italy and Germany will now have to decide what lessons they learn from this shameful episode, and how they secure their national sovereignty. The European pillar in NATO may have to become the only pillar relatively soon. For when the US vice president crosses the Atlantic to campaign to keep a pro Russian authoritarian Viktor Orban in office, it looks as if America has tragically evolved into something more sinister than a wayward ally. As Mark Carney at Davos advised “it’s time to live in truth”.