The Levant Files

The US-Israel military campaign against Iran has introduced a stagflation shock that is reverberating through the Eastern Mediterranean with particular force in three economies — Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece. While the conflict's ultimate duration and intensity remain uncertain, analysts broadly agree that none of the three benefit in net terms unless hostilities prove brief and contained. Pre-war forecasts assumed a stable, if tense, regional environment. Those assumptions no longer hold. Three Channels, Three Vulnerabilities The principal transmission mechanisms are well-established. Disruption to the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which roughly 20 percent of global oil flows and critical LNG volumes pass — has pushed energy import costs sharply higher. A second channel is the risk-off financial sentiment now spreading through emerging and peripheral markets, tightening credit conditions and widening sovereign risk premia. The third is a broader regional insecurity narra...

When the United States and Israel launched Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury on 28 February 2026 — nearly 900 strikes targeting Iranian leadership, nuclear infrastructure, missile arsenals and IRGC facilities, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei within hours — the strategic calculation in Washington and Tel Aviv was framed around Iran. What was not foregrounded, at least not publicly, was the catastrophic collateral pressure the war would generate on two already-fragile Arab states: Lebanon and Iraq. Sixteen days into open interstate conflict, neither country is merely a bystander. Both are being consumed by the war's spillover — and both now stand at a threshold that serious analysts are beginning to describe not as crisis, but as potential state failure. The mechanism is not identical in each case, but the structural logic is the same: the US-Israel war on Iran activated Iran's regional network of armed proxies and affiliated militias at precisely the moment when the host soci...

Yemen’s Houthi movement, known formally as Ansarallah, is signaling that it is prepared to join the expanding confrontation involving the United States, Israel, and Iran. For now, however, the group appears to be holding back from full-scale entry, while positioning itself to escalate if the conflict broadens or certain red lines are crossed. A Message of Readiness The Houthi leadership has adopted an increasingly assertive tone as regional tensions intensify. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group’s leader, has declared that Ansarallah’s “fingers are on the trigger,” signaling that the movement stands ready to act at any moment depending on how the US-Israeli campaign against Iran develops. That message has been reinforced by senior political figures within the movement. Members of Ansarallah’s political bureau have said Yemen is already in a declared state of war and that the group will join the confrontation against the US-Israeli coalition when its leadership determines that the timing i...

As Iranian ballistic missiles and drones rain down on Israeli cities and military installations, a parallel battle is being fought — not in the air, but over the image. Israel's military censorship apparatus, one of the most institutionalised in the democratic world, has been mobilised at full capacity to control what the public, at home and abroad, can see, hear, and know about the strikes. The result is a carefully managed information environment in which the scale of destruction, the location of damage, and the true toll of Iran's campaign remain, by design, only partially visible. Written Orders to Editors: The Censor Moves First From the earliest hours of the current Iran–Israel confrontation, Israel's Military Censor — a body with legally binding authority over all media operating within the country — issued written guidelines to editors setting out what could and could not be published. The rules are specific: no precise locations of impact sites near security facili...

  Year One 0 Unique Visitors Thank you for trusting The Levant Files One year ago, we began mapping the shifting fault lines of the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant. You crossed our threshold — 150,000 times over. This milestone belongs to every reader who sought depth over noise. Special analyses published in five languages English Ελληνικά Türkçe العربية Français Analysis In-depth reports on the Levant & Eastern Mediterranean New · Podcast Multilingual audio service launching in Year Two Year Two Expanded coverage, new formats & broader partnerships The journey continues — and the map is still being drawn. The Levant Files  ·  Est. March 2025

Ποιος είναι ο πιο επικίνδυνος στρατός στον κόσμο; Η απάντηση κρύβει το απόλυτο στρατηγικό παράδοξο: Ένας στρατός χωρίς κανέναν απολύτως διοικητή. Βρισκόμαστε στον Μάρτιο του 2026. Η Μέση Ανατολή φλέγεται υπό τη σκιά της κολοσσιαίας σύγκρουσης με την κωδική ονομασία "Operation Epic Fury", ανάμεσα στις ΗΠΑ, το Ισραήλ και το Ιράν. Μέσα σε λίγες ώρες, η ανώτατη στρατιωτική και πολιτική ηγεσία της Τεχεράνης εξαλείφεται πλήρως. Η λογική και η ιστορία υπαγορεύουν πως ο ιρανικός στρατός θα παραλύσει. Όμως, συμβαίνει το αδιανόητο: οι εκτοξεύσεις βαλλιστικών πυραύλων όχι μόνο δεν σταματούν, αλλά εξαπολύονται μαζικά και ανεξέλεγκτα. Το μυστικό αυτής της ασύμμετρης απειλής ονομάζεται «Ψηφιδωτή Άμυνα» (Mosaic Defense). Πρόκειται για ένα ψυχρά υπολογισμένο σχέδιο αποκέντρωσης που τέθηκε σε εφαρμογή το 2008. Η στρατιωτική μηχανή έχει χωριστεί σε 31 ημιαυτόνομες διοικήσεις. Λειτουργώντας σαν ένα δίκτυο "smart home" που χάνει την κεντρική του σύνδεση, οι τοπικοί πυρήνες μπαίνουν σε ...

If you sever the arm of an octopus, the limb doesn't just go limp. Thanks to a highly decentralized nervous system, a severed tentacle can still independently react, grasp, and even hunt. For centuries, traditional military doctrine has been built around the exact opposite biological concept: cut off the head of the snake, and the body dies. But what happens when a modern nation-state intentionally engineers its military to function like an octopus? The year is 2026, and the Middle East is navigating an unprecedented crisis. Following a catastrophic US and Israeli decapitation strike, the absolute apex of Iran’s central leadership has been wiped out in a single night. By every conventional metric of war, the conflict should be over. The brain is gone. Yet, the missiles are still launching, drones are still swarming, and the region is spiraling into a chaotic abyss. Welcome to the terrifying reality of the "Mosaic Defense" doctrine. Anticipating a centralized collapse, the...

In the fog of a war that has already claimed Iran’s supreme leader and its top military brass, a new and perhaps more dangerous threat is emerging from the rubble of Tehran’s shattered command structure: a Revolutionary Guard Corps that, by design, no longer needs orders from above. Sources with direct knowledge of the situation confirm that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) continues to prosecute strikes across the region not under the direction of the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, but according to pre-programmed autonomous protocols embedded deep within its decentralized “mosaic defense” architecture. The result is a war machine that has become, in the most literal sense, self-propelling — and increasingly difficult for anyone to stop. A New Supreme Leader With Limited Command Mojtaba Khamenei was formally elected Supreme Leader on 8 March 2026, succeeding his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening wave of the US-Israeli “Operation Epic Fury...