BEIRUT: A high-level Hezbollah source said on Saturday that contact with Hashem Safieddine, widely touted as potentially the group’s next leader, had been lost following Israeli strikes this week.
Responding to the AFP report, the group said in a statement that there were “no Hezbollah sources and our viewpoint is issued in official statements.” It did not confirm or deny whether contact with Safieddine was lost.
“Contact with Sayyed Safieddine has been lost since the violent strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs” early on Friday, the official told AFP.
“We don’t know if he was at the targeted site, or who may have been there with him,” he added.
A second source close to Hezbollah also confirmed that communication had been cut off with Safieddine and that his whereabouts were unknown.
Hezbollah “is trying to reach the underground headquarters that were targeted, but every single time Israel starts striking again to impede rescue efforts,” he said.
Safieddine “was with Hezbollah’s head of intelligence,” known as Hajj Murtada, when the strikes took place, he said.
Both sources requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Early on Friday, a source close to Hezbollah said Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group’s south Beirut stronghold, in one of the most powerful raids since Israel intensified its campaign of bombardment last week.
AFP footage showed giant balls of flame and thick smoke rising from the site that was attacked.
Israel’s military said it had hit “targets belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut.”
The attack came a week after the Israeli military said it killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in air strikes on the group’s headquarters in south Beirut.
Hezbollah source says contact ‘lost’ with top figure Safieddine
https://arab.news/pwhmm
Hezbollah source says contact ‘lost’ with top figure Safieddine

- “Contact with Sayyed Safieddine has been lost since the violent strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs” early on Friday, the official told AFP
- “We don’t know if he was at the targeted site, or who may have been there with him“
US to appoint Thomas Barrack as special envoy for Syria, sources say

DAMASCUS/ISTANBUL: The United States will appoint President Donald Trump’s longtime friend and current US ambassador to Turkiye, Thomas Barrack, as a special envoy for Syria, a person with direct knowledge of the matter and a diplomat in Turkiye said.
The decision follows Trump’s landmark announcement last week that US sanctions on Syria would be lifted. It also suggests US acknowledgement that Turkiye has emerged with key regional influence on Damascus since Syrian strongman Bashar Assad’s ouster by rebels in December, ending 14 years of civil war.
Asked for comment, a US State Department spokesperson said: “There is no announcement at this time.”
Speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Rubio said he was allowing Turkish embassy staff, including Barrack, to work with local officials in Syria to understand what kind of aid they need.
“We want to help that government succeed, because the alternative is full-scale civil war and chaos, which would, of course, destabilize the entire region,” Rubio said.
A US-Turkish meeting focused on Syria took place in Washington on Tuesday with Barrack in attendance, according to Turkiye’s foreign ministry, which said sanctions relief and efforts to counter terrorism had been discussed.
The US had sought a step-for-step approach to Syria sanctions relief until Trump’s announcement that he was ordering “the cessation of sanctions,” which he said aimed to give Syria a chance to recover from devastating war. He said he made the decision after discussions with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
Trump also met with Syria’s interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia on May 14 and urged him to normalize ties with longtime foe Israel following his surprise sanctions announcement.
Removing US sanctions that cut Syria off from the global financial system would clear the way for greater engagement by humanitarian organizations working in Syria, and ease foreign investment and trade as the country looks to rebuild.
South Sudan’s President Kiir promotes sanctioned ally as ruling party deputy

- The reshuffle follows months of political uncertainty in which authorities placed Kiir’s longtime rival First Vice President Riek Machar under house arrest
NAIROBI: South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has reshuffled the senior leadership in the ruling party, according to an official decree, as the country faces fresh fighting between rival armed factions and widespread speculation about Kiir’s succession plans.
Kiir, 73, promoted sanctioned ally Second Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel as his SPLM party’s deputy chairperson, according to a decree read on the state broadcaster on Tuesday night, weeks after the United Nations said the country was on the brink of civil war.
Seen widely by political analysts as Kiir’s chosen successor, Bol Mel was sanctioned by the United States in 2017 over suspicions his construction company received preferential treatment in the awarding of government contracts.
If Kiir stepped down, Bol Mel’s new role as the SPLM party’s deputy chairperson would make him acting president of the country.
The reshuffle follows months of political uncertainty in which authorities placed Kiir’s longtime rival First Vice President Riek Machar under house arrest, accusing him of trying to stir a rebellion.
Machar’s opposition party denied the charges, and said the move effectively voided a 2018 peace deal that ended a five-year civil war between Kiir’s Dinka forces and Nuer fighters loyal to Machar.
Western countries, including the United States, Britain and Germany closed embassies or cut back operations in South Sudan.
Tuesday night’s ruling party shake-up saw Kiir demote three veterans of South Sudan’s liberation struggle, including former Second Vice President James Wani Igga, according to the decree read on state television on Tuesday night.
Muslim World League backs UK, France, Canada statement on Gaza, West Bank

- MWL urges international community to act, force Israel to comply with international law, hold perpetrators accountable
DUBAI: The Muslim World League on Wednesday welcomed the joint statement issued by the UK, France and Canada regarding Israel’s war on Gaza and the West Bank.
The statement warned of concrete measures, including targeted sanctions, should the Israeli occupation government fail to halt its military operations, stop settlement expansion, and lift restrictions on humanitarian aid.
The MWL’s Secretary-General Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, who is also chairman of the Muslim Scholars Association, praised the joint stance.
In a statement, Al-Issa described it as “an important and just step in the right direction for the Palestinian people, whose suffering has been prolonged under the killing and destruction machine of the Israeli occupation government.”
He urged the international community to fulfill its legal and moral responsibilities by increasing pressure to end the ongoing violations, and for the perpetrators to be held accountable.
Al-Issa said the Israeli government should be compelled to immediately comply with UN resolutions and international humanitarian law.
UAE reaches deal with Israel to allow aid delivery to Gaza

- Israel has come under international pressure to allow aid into Gaza, where humanitarian agencies say a total blockade has sparked critical food and medicine shortages
- Israel's minimal aid move aims to avoid famine claims while keeping Gaza on the brink, says MSF
- Pope Leo XIV also called for sufficient humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza
- Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas welcomes international rejection of Israel ‘blockade and starvation’ of Gaza
DUBAI: UAE Foreign Affairs Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed held a phone call with his Israeli counterpart during which an agreement was reached to allow the delivery of “urgent humanitarian aid” to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Wednesday that the amount of aid Israel was allowing through was inadequate and merely a “smokescreen to pretend the siege was over.”
UAE Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed held his phone call with Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar which led to an agreement to allow the delivery of urgent humanitarian aid from the United Arab Emirates, the country’s state news agency WAM reported on Wednesday.
“The aid will address the food needs of approximately 15,000 civilians in the Gaza Strip in the initial phase,” it added.
The initiative will also provide “essential supplies to support the operation of bakeries, as well as critical items for infant care, while ensuring a continuous supply to meet the ongoing needs of civilians.”
Israel has come under international pressure to allow aid into Gaza, where humanitarian agencies say a total blockade imposed on March 2 has sparked critical food and medicine shortages.
Israel said 93 aid trucks had entered Gaza from Israel on Tuesday, but the United Nations said the aid had been held up.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week it was necessary for Israel to prevent famine in Gaza for “practical and diplomatic reasons”, after his government announced it would allow limited aid in.
But MSF said on Wednesday that the amount of aid Israel had started allowing into the Gaza Strip was not nearly enough and was “a smokescreen to pretend the siege is over.”
“The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while in fact keeping them barely surviving,” said Pascale Coissard, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza’s Khan Younis.
Pope Leo XIV also called on Wednesday for sufficient humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza.
“The situation in the Gaza Strip is worrying and painful. I renew my heartfelt appeal to allow the entry of sufficient humanitarian aid and to put an end to the hostilities, the heartbreaking price of which is paid by children, the elderly, the sick,” the pope said during his first weekly general audience.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday hailed international rejection of Israel’s “blockade” and “starvation” of Gaza, after the European Union ordered a review of its cooperation deal with Israel.
“We reiterate our welcome for the joint statement issued by the leaders of Britain, France, and Canada, as well as for the positions of the European Union countries, the joint statement of the donor countries and the statement of the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee on this matter,” Abbas said in a statement. “They all rejected the policies of blockade, starvation, displacement and land seizure.”
(With input from AFP)
How President Trump’s Middle East tour signaled a bold reset in US foreign policy

- From lifting sanctions on Syria to backing talks with Iran, Trump declared a readiness to end old conflicts, embracing transactional diplomacy
- Trump’s Gulf-focused strategy prioritizes mutually beneficial partnerships over traditional loyalties, casting Israel as a costly, underperforming ally
LONDON: Standing ovations and scenes of jubilation are not normally witnessed at investment forums. But there was nothing normal about the speech President Donald Trump delivered at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Riyadh last week.
Speaking at the beginning of a four-day tour of the region, Trump’s geopolitical surprises came thick and fast.
“After discussing the situation in Syria with the (Saudi) crown prince,” he said, “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.”

The last few words were almost drowned out by the wave of applause, which was followed by a standing ovation led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Although the announcement came as a big surprise to most, including seasoned analysts and even some in Trump’s inner circle, it was not entirely unexpected.
In December, for the first time in a decade, US officials had flown to Damascus, where they met with Ahmad Al-Sharaa, the commander of Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, which just two weeks earlier had led the dramatic overthrow of the Bashar Assad regime after 14 years of civil war.
As a result of that meeting, after which the US delegation said it had found Al-Sharaa to be wholly “pragmatic,” the US removed the longstanding $10 million bounty on his head. A month later, Al-Sharaa was appointed president of Syria.
The day after last week’s investment forum in Riyadh, Trump sat down for a face-to-face meeting with Al-Sharaa that produced what might well prove to be one of the most historic photographs in the region’s recent history: the Saudi crown prince, flanked by Trump and Al-Sharaa, standing in front of the flags of the US, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.
The photograph sent a clear message: For the US, and for a region all too often subject to the whims of its largesse and military approbation, all bets were off.
The day before, Trump had more surprises for his delighted audience at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center.

“I have never believed in having permanent enemies,” the president said, and “I am willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world, even if our differences may be very profound, which obviously they are in the case of Iran.”
He praised local leadership for “transcending the ancient conflicts and tired divisions of the past” and criticized “Western interventionists … giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs.”
In a message that will have echoed loudly in Kabul, Baghdad, and even Tehran, he added: “In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
Responding to Trump’s announcements, Sir John Jenkins, a seasoned diplomat who served as British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria, and as consul-general in Jerusalem, told Arab News: “I think this could be a real turning point.
“Post-Arab Spring demographics — lots of young people wanting a better life and better governance but not wanting to get there through ideology or revolution — and Mohammed bin Salman, Trump, and Syria have all come together at a singular time.”
Trump’s speech last week in Riyadh, he said, “was extraordinary, an intellectually coherent argument, and he means it.
“If you can form a cohesive bloc of Sunni states — the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the rest of the GCC, Jordan, Syria and Egypt — which all aim in different ways to increase prosperity and stability instead of the opposite, then you potentially have a bloc that can manage regional stability and contain Iran in a way we haven’t had for decades. And that gives the US the ability to pivot.”

But a lot could still go wrong. “Iran, which is already trying hard to undermine Syria, will continue to play games,” said Jenkins.
“And then there’s Israel itself: Does it want strong and stable Sunni neighbors or not? It should do, but I’m not sure Bezalel Smotrich (Israel’s far-right finance minister, who this month vowed that Gaza would be ‘entirely destroyed’) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (the minister of national security who is pressing for Israel to seize and occupy Gaza) think so. That’s a headache for Israel’s Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu.
“But if you hook all this up to a possible US-Iran deal, which will give Iran incentives not to have sanctions come crashing back down, then there’s something there.”
For Al-Sharaa, even six months ago, the dramatic turnaround in his personal circumstances would have seemed fantastic, and as such is symptomatic of the tectonic upheavals presaged by Trump’s visit to the region.
Almost exactly 12 years ago, on May 16, 2013, the then-leader of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, judged responsible for “multiple suicide attacks throughout Syria” targeting the Assad regime, had been designated as a terrorist by the US Department of State.
Now, as the very public beneficiary of the praise and support of Trump and the Saudi crown prince, Al-Sharaa’s metamorphosis into the symbol of hope for the Syrian people is emblematic of America’s dramatic new approach to the region.
In Doha, the president chose the occasion of a visit to a US military base to make nice with Iran, a country whose negotiators have been quietly meeting in Oman with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, to discuss a nuclear deal.

“I want them to succeed,” said Trump, who in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the US from the original deal, fashioned by President Barack Obama and European allies, and reimposed economic sanctions. Now, he said in Doha last week, “I want them to end up being a great country.”
Iran, he added, “cannot have a nuclear weapon.” But, in a snub to Israel, which has reportedly not only sought US permission to attack Iranian enrichment facilities, but has even asked America to take part, he added: “We are not going to make any nuclear dust in Iran. I think we’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this.”
In fact, Trump’s entire trip appeared to be designed as a snub to Israel, which did not feature on the itinerary.
A week ahead of the trip, Trump had announced a unilateral ceasefire deal with the Houthis in Yemen, who had sided with Hamas after Israel mounted its retaliatory war in Gaza in October 2023.
Under the deal, brokered by Oman and with no Israeli involvement, the US said it would halt its strikes in Yemen in exchange for the Houthis agreeing to stop targeting vessels in the Red Sea.
On May 12, the day before Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia, Hamas released Edan Alexander, the last surviving US citizen held hostage in Gaza, in a deal that came out of direct talks with no Israeli involvement.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump celebrated “a step taken in good faith towards the United States and the efforts of the mediators — Qatar and Egypt — to put an end to this very brutal war.”
Trump, said Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli soldier and a senior teaching fellow in King’s College London’s Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, “threw Netanyahu, in fact Israel, under the bus.
“He totally surprised Netanyahu with a series of Middle Eastern diplomatic initiatives, which, at least from an Israeli perspective, hurt — indeed, humiliate — Israel,” he told Arab News.
“In the past, if one wished to get access to the White House, a good way to do so was to turn to Israel, asking them to open doors in Washington. Not any longer. Netanyahu, hurt and humiliated by Trump, seems to have lost his magic touch.
“Trump despises losers, and he probably regards Netanyahu as a loser, given the Gaza mess and Netanyahu’s failure to achieve Israel’s declared aims.”
It is, Bregman said, Trump’s famously transactional approach to politics that is shifting the dial so dramatically in the Middle East.

“Trump looks at international relations and diplomacy through financial lenses, as business enterprises. For Trump, money talks and the money is not to be found in Israel, which sucks $3 billion dollars a year from the US, but in the Gulf states.
“Trump is serious about America First, and Israel doesn’t serve this aim; the Gulf states do. For now, at least, the center of gravity has moved to the Gulf states, and the Israeli status in the Middle East has weakened dramatically.”
For Ibrahim Al-Marashi, associate professor at California State University, San Marcos, the events of the past week stand in sharp contrast to those during Trump’s first presidency.
“During the first Trump administration, World War Three almost broke out, with aircraft carriers from my native San Diego deployed continuously to the Gulf to deter Iran, the (Houthi) strike on Saudi Aramco, and the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad at the beginning of 2020,” he told Arab News.
“Five years later, the Trump administration seems to be repeating the Nixon-Kissinger realist doctrine: ‘America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.’ In that regard, his administration might forge relations with Iran as Nixon did with China.”
Kelly Petillo, program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, likewise views last week’s events as the beginning of “a new phase of US-Gulf relations.”

Among the remarkable developments is “Israel’s relative sidelining and the fact that Israel does not have the privileged relationship with Trump it thought it had,” she told Arab News. “The US agenda now is wider than unconditional support to Israel, and alignment with GCC partners is also key.
“Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE have clearly become of key strategic importance to the US, with new deals on the horizon and the promise of expanding these relations. The announcements of more commercial ties have been accompanied with political declarations too, which overall represented positive developments for the region.”
Ultimately, said Caroline Rose, a director at the New Lines Institute, “Trump’s visit to the GCC highlighted two of his foreign policy priorities in the Middle East.
“Firstly, he sought to obtain a series of transactional, bilateral cooperation agreements in sectors such as defense, investment and trade,” she told Arab News.

“The second objective was to use the trip as a mechanism that could change conditions for ongoing diplomatic negotiations directly with Iran, between Hamas and Israel, and even Ukraine and Russia.”
It was, of course, no accident that Trump chose the Middle East as the destination for the first formal overseas trip of his second presidency.
“The Trump administration sought to court Gulf states closely to signal to other partners in the region, such as Israel, as well as the EU, that it can develop alternative partnerships to achieve what it wants in peace negotiations.”
Although a strategy to move forward with specific peace negotiations was “notably absent during his trip,” it was clear that “this trip was designed to lay the groundwork for potential momentum and to change some of the power dynamics with traditional US partners abroad, sowing the seeds of goodwill that could alter negotiations in the Trump administration’s favor.”