Food security

Crops of wheat and barley in Terbol village on May 10, 2022, in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon.

Analysis

MENA wheat importers face food security risks as Hormuz crisis festers

Home to many of the world's largest wheat importers, the Middle East and North Africa face acute food security risks as the US-Israel-Iran war disrupts global fertilizer flows and pushes up prices.

Samuel Wendel

By Samuel Wendel

In Washington, DC, reporting on regional business and tech

An Iranian grocer sells pistachios imported from Iran at a Persian products shop in the Gulf emirate of Dubai on July 10, 2019. (Photo by Karim SAHIB / AFP) (Photo credit should read KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images)

Pistachios reach highest prices in eight years amid Iran war

Pistachio prices rose to around $4.57 a pound in March, their highest since 2018, according to data company Expana.

Children and families gather to receive free meals shortly before Iftar during the holy month of Ramadan at a displacement camp in central Gaza City, on Feb. 27, 2026.

Iran war deepens Gaza crisis as prices soar, aid falters

Gazans fear that Israel could exploit the wider regional war to reenter Gaza, especially as buffer zones along the border continue to expand and civilians are targeted to keep them away.

Daoud Kuttab

By Daoud Kuttab

In Amman, reporting on Palestinian politics

People walk through a heavily damaged street in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Oct. 12, 2025.

'No meaningful protection': Israel’s new Gaza aid rules raise data, security risks

The guidelines expand Israeli authority to deny NGO registration in the Palestinian territories and visas for foreign aid workers as Gaza continues to reel from two years of war.

Latest News

Interview

UNRWA plans Turkey office to boost Gaza, Syria aid as pledges dip

A boy sits outside the entrance to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) building complex in Gaza City, on Sept. 6, 2025.

Tamara Alrifai

Water 'more precious than gold': Palestinians fleeing Gaza City face perilous journey south

Tents sheltering Palestinians from Gaza City displaced by the Israel-Hamas conflict are pitched by damaged buildings at the Qatari-built Hamad City residential complex, northwestern Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, Sept. 22, 2025.

Exclusive

UK-based oil firm victim of standoff between Damascus, Syria’s Kurds

This picture shows pumpjacks in an oil field and smoke plumes rising in the background, following reported Turkish drone strikes near the town of al-Qahtaniyah in Syria's northeastern Hasakah province, close to the border with Turkey, on Nov. 23, 2022.

Amberin Zaman

By Amberin Zaman

Reporting on geopolitics, minorities, human rights, culture

Yemen: Flash floods injure 10+ in Aden as climate toll mounts

Yemeni boys walk on a flooded road during a rally in solidarity with Palestinians in the Houthi-run capital Sanaa on Aug. 1, 2025.

Nadeen Ayoub

Culture

Meet Nadeen Ayoub, first Palestinian woman to compete for Miss Universe

The 27-year-old beauty queen, crowned Miss Palestine in 2022, will take the stage in Thailand this November, marking the first time Palestine is represented at the global competition since its founding in 1952.

Sudan's army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

Sudan’s army chief meets Trump adviser amid US peace push: Reports

The meeting is just the latest in a series of international attempts at mediating an end to the Sudanese civil war, all of which have failed to yield a lasting agreement.

People carry boxes of relief supplies from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as displaced Palestinians return from an aid distribution center in the central Gaza Strip on May 29, 2025.

After Hamas ban and deadly ambush, Gazans wary of GHF aid jobs

Hamas banned all cooperation with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) weeks after armed men executed several GHF workers in Khan Younis.

JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images

Interview

Israel’s former Germany envoy: Arms embargo 'warning sign' of growing isolation

Berlin’s embargo over the Gaza City offensive signals a rare fracture in one of Israel’s closest strategic partnerships, former Israeli Ambassador Jeremy Issacharoff says.

Jeremy Issacharoff

Jeremy Issacharoff

Former Israeli ambassador to Germany

Peoples waits near a humanitarian aid distribution point at the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on July 20, 2025, amid a deepening food crisis.

Pentagon awaits White House decision to help ramp up Gaza humanitarian aid

The White House has not yet signed off on proposals to have the US military support humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza as the enclave's population faces spreading starvation.

People who fled the Zamzam camp for the internally displaced after it fell under RSF control queue for food rations in a makeshift encampment in an open field near the town of Tawila in Sudan's western Darfur region on April 13, 2025.

UN: Sudanese children 'skin and bones' as 250,000 in El Fasher face starvation

The warnings come as reports claim that Colombian mercenaries have taken control over the nearby Zamzam refugee camp.

Palestinians shove to receive a hot meal at a charity kitchen in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 22, 2025.

'A complete farce': Gaza residents say Israel's aid policy shift has done little as hunger grows

While global media outlets continue to show images of humanitarian aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip, we — residents of this besieged coastal enclave — have yet to feel the tangible affect of these convoys as our children’s stomachs remain empty.

People carrying aid parcels walk along the Salah al-Din road near the Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, used by food-seeking Palestinians to reach an aid distribution point set up by the privately run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF, on June 25, 2025.

Analysis

As US envoys head to Gaza, details scant on Trump's 'food centers'

Despite criticism, the Trump administration is sticking with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as its answer to the growing humanitarian catastrophe.

Elizabeth Hagedorn

By Elizabeth Hagedorn

In Washington, DC, reporting on diplomacy, regional politics, human rights

Florida's Republican state senator, Randy Fine, speaks with the media on April 1, 2025, in Ormond Beach, Florida.

AIPAC denies pulling Randy Fine endorsement after derogatory comments on Gaza starvation

Randy Fine, a Trump- and AIPAC-endorsed Republican representative, sparked backlash for telling Gazans to "starve away" amid a worsening hunger crisis in the strip.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Cholera, hunger plague Sudan’s Darfur region amid RSF siege: What to know

As hunger and health crises worsen in Darfur, Sudan’s political divide is also deepening, with the Rapid Support Forces pushing a parallel government while over 300,000 civilians remain under siege in El Fasher.

TOPSHOT - People walk with sacks of flour delivered after trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered northern Gaza on July 27, 2025 coming from the Zikim border crossing. (Photo by BASHAR TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Analysis

Annexation, siege or transfers: Netanyahu's 3 options as Israel's Gaza quagmire deepens

With world focused on starvation in Gaza, Israel consults with US on options for ending conflict, including annexing parts of the territory to appease extremist ministers.

In Tel Aviv, reporting on national security, Israeli politics, defense

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer attend a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon in Washington, on July 9, 2025.

Israel's Dermer in Washington for Gaza ceasefire, Iran talks: What to know

Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who serves as Israel's chief negotiator in talks with Hamas and on the Iranian file, arrived in Washington to discuss both issues with the Trump administration.