Alex Simon

Jordan’s environmental crisis is often framed as a simple case of scarcity: too many people, too little water. It is that, but it’s also more: It’s privatization, profit, state decay. My latest tells this story, and asks what we all can learn from it synaps.network/en/post/Jordan…

Lebanon's leaders are pantomiming sovereignty: an impotent ban on Hezbollah, expelling the Iranian ambassador while ignoring a promise from Israel Katz to occupy the country, micromanaging the foreign aid response despite lacking the capacity to do so effectively

Dear @Uber : Why are you giving a 30% discount on rides in Beirut while global fuel prices are rocketing? With these prices—less than $3 to cross Beirut—some rides won't cover what drivers spend on gas. Please fix this, and in the meantime let's all pay the normal price.

(This was also true under the Biden administration, which was marginally less clownish but still completely and malignantly incompetent)

Even in its public outreach ostensibly serving its own citizens, Washington is primarily an agent of chaos and confusion. In addition to being useless, such statements frighten people (both in the region and the US) and prompt scrambling to understand wtf is happening

Iranian officials and Pete Hegseth have very similar speech patterns

For those of us who remain anti-nihilism, that poses the question: What does it mean to be useful in this new phase? What can be salvaged from dying systems—for aid, diplomacy, advocacy—and what must be built from scratch?

Instead, they embrace a form of nihilism that will shape every aspect of this conflagration, to include the ensuing displacement.

Israel has forced a new wave of mass displacement in Lebanon, whose people never had a chance to recover from prior rounds of uprooting. There’s much we don’t know, but also much we do:🧵

Reuters' headline conveys the opposite: "Just one in four Americans supports US strikes on Iran." This is a trend in how major outlets report on polls: They spotlight opposition to Trump's most flagrantly illegal policies, when the real story is the die-hard loyalty on the right

73% of Republicans think Trump's use of military force is "about right," per a Reuters/Ipsos poll. That is a harrowing figure, given we are now on the second regime change operation in as many months.

@OAjjoub 🙏many thanks Orwa

A year of hope and heartache in #Syria open.substack.com/pub/peoplespla…. Sober reflection by @AlexGSimon

We are making available free of charge our latest map of Syria's oil and gas fields. Don't hesitate to download it and use it as a reference. This map came with an extensive interview we did with SPC officials who gave us a detailed breakdown of the status of all the fields that the government took control of in the past week. @TheSyriaReport . The Syria Report has more than 900 articles on Syria's energy sector, including 48 articles in the past year alone (one evry week!).