The Levant Files

The US-Israeli war against Iran has done more than redraw military balances in the Middle East — it has forced a reckoning with the very conceptual frameworks through which the region is understood. So argues Turkish political commentator Yasin Aktay in a wide-ranging piece published Saturday, which draws on recent academic literature to make the case that Iran's strategic behavior cannot be reduced to ideology, and that Turkey stands at a pivotal crossroads as a result. Iran Is a State, Not Just a Revolution The central intellectual move in Aktay's analysis is a turn away from purely ideological readings of Iranian foreign policy. He highlights a recent article by political scientist M. Hakan Yavuz, published on atlasthink.org under the title "Iran's Strategic Logic: Fuller, Nasr, and the Consequences of the 2026 War," which synthesizes the work of scholars Graham Fuller and Vali Nasr to argue that Iran behaves above all as a geopolitically constrained state rath...

Tensions along Turkey's southern flank escalated sharply overnight as sirens wailed over Adana near the İncirlik Air Base — just hours after the first public message was issued in the name of Iran's newly installed Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. A flash of light streaking across the night sky underscored warnings that Turkish security officials had delivered to journalists only hours earlier: Turkey was prepared for further missile strikes originating from Iran or elsewhere, but any such strikes would carry consequences. Writing in YetkinReport, veteran Turkish political analyst Murat Yetkin frames the moment as a decisive inflection point — one he calls the shift to "Mojtaba Gear." A New War-Mode Leadership The question of whether Mojtaba Khamenei is gravely wounded, or even alive, is secondary to the strategic signal his ascension sends, Yetkin argues. The decision by Iran's Assembly of Experts — a clerical body — to elevate him was as much a political and mi...

With the Latest Development When Donald Trump first mused about “doing a number” on Iran’s Kharg Island decades ago, it sounded like one more piece of bravado aimed at Tehran’s leaders. Now, as president, he has ordered what he calls one of the most powerful bombing raids in the “History of the Middle East,” claiming that U.S. forces have “totally obliterated every MILITARY target” on the island while deliberately sparing its vital oil infrastructure. The strike on Iran’s main crude export terminal — long described as the country’s economic Achilles’ heel — marks a dramatic escalation in the war and raises the question of whether Kharg has moved from symbolic pressure point to central pillar in Washington’s strategy. Older Update Kharg Island sits in the northwestern Persian Gulf, roughly 25 kilometres off the Iranian coast. Small in area — barely 18 square kilometres — it is disproportionate in strategic consequence. As Middle East Eye reports, Iran exports around 90 percent of its cr...

One year ago today, The Levant Files took its first steps as a modest pilot initiative — a carefully curated blog with a bold ambition: to offer nuanced, evidence-based insight into one of the world's most complex and consequential regions. We could not have imagined, then, just how consequential the year ahead would prove to be. The twelve months since our launch have confronted us — and the world — with an extraordinary succession of historical ruptures. We have covered the unfolding of wars and armed confrontations that have reshaped borders, alliances, and civilian realities across the Eastern Mediterranean and the broader Middle East. We have traced the fragile and contested transition in post-Assad Syria, the deepening tragedy in Gaza, the shifting postures of regional and global powers, the stirring of new conflict fronts, and the quiet but consequential sociopolitical transformations that rarely make the front pages but define the long arc of the region's future. Throug...

  As the United States edges toward a potential ceasefire with Iran following weeks of intense aerial bombardment, one prominent analyst is cautioning that America's apparent military triumph may sow the seeds of a prolonged and intractable conflict in the Middle East. Writing in a column for The Washington Post, republished by Foreign Policy, veteran journalist David Ignatius argues that while President Donald Trump will inevitably declare victory, the reality on the ground tells a far more complex and troubling story. "This may be a 'win' like the ones that Israel has declared for decades after wars that pounded its adversaries in Gaza and Lebanon," Ignatius writes. "These military victories reflected an overwhelming advantage in firepower, but they didn't vanquish the enemy." Ignatius acknowledges the devastating scale of U.S. military operations. Iran has lost nearly all its nuclear facilities and scientists, most of its missile infrastructure, w...

Israeli officials concede that toppling Tehran's rulers will require far more than weeks of airstrikes, as security forces maintain firm control and Iranian civilians remain too fearful to rise up. Nearly two weeks into the war against Iran, Israeli officials now assess that the Islamic Republic's ruling regime is unlikely to fall in the near future, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Despite sustained military strikes by Israel and the United States, Tehran's leadership remains functional, its security apparatus is intact on the streets, and conditions for a popular uprising have not materialized. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the uncertainty on Thursday. "I can't tell you with certainty that the Iranian people will bring down the regime," he said, adding, "If it doesn't fall, it will be much weaker." While Netanyahu continues to publicly encourage Iranians to prepare for the moment to take to the streets,...

Escalating US/Israel-Iran tensions cast a long shadow over the region as intelligence agencies scramble to prevent potential strikes on Western and Israeli targets As the geopolitical fallout from the ongoing US/Israel-Iran confrontation reverberates far beyond the Middle East, three Eastern Mediterranean nations — Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus — are quietly bracing for a potential wave of "lone-wolf" style terrorist attacks targeting American, Israeli, and Western interests on their soil. Well-informed sources speaking to The Levant Files (TLF) have confirmed that terror alert levels across all three countries have been raised significantly, with security services working around the clock to identify and neutralize emerging threats before they materialize. Turkey: A Dual Threat From Iran Sympathizers And Isis In Turkey, the threat landscape appears particularly complex. Turkish security sources have revealed to TLF that the concern extends beyond Iran-aligned operatives. Accord...

Perpetual conflict management, not regime change, defines Israel's approach to Iran — and guarantees more wars to come. Israel's ongoing aerial bombardment of Iran follows the same strategic logic that has guided its military campaigns against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon for over a decade, according to a sweeping analysis published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Writer Joshua Leifer argues that despite fiery regime-change rhetoric from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers, Israel is not pursuing the overthrow of the Islamic Republic but rather engaging in its well-established doctrine of perpetual conflict management — a strategy Israeli military officials once grimly dubbed "mowing the lawn." In his March 13 article for Haaretz, Leifer traces the origins of this approach to the early 2010s, when Israeli defense officials began describing periodic offensives in Gaza — typically conducted through airstrikes and artillery — as efforts to ...

Trump seeks exit from Iran conflict as Netanyahu pushes to continue; Turkey's quiet diplomatic efforts already credited with neutralizing Kurdish militant dimension A deepening fracture between Washington and Tel Aviv over the course of the ongoing war in Iran is becoming impossible to conceal, with U.S. President Donald Trump actively seeking an off-ramp from the conflict while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on pressing forward toward regime change. Amid the widening rift, Turkey's behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvering has already scored a notable success — and Ankara may be positioning itself as a key broker if negotiations materialize. Trump Begins Distancing Himself The first public sign of Trump's discomfort came during a rambling address on March 9, in which the president appeared to distribute responsibility for the decision to strike Iran among his closest advisers — a remarkable departure for a leader who has long cultivated the image of a dec...