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What to Know about Pope Leo XIV's Trip to Türkiye and Lebanon, the First of his Pontificate

FILE PHOTO: A woman stands next to a poster depicting Pope Leo XIV at De La Croix Psychiatric Hospital in Jal el-Dib, Lebanon November 19, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A woman stands next to a poster depicting Pope Leo XIV at De La Croix Psychiatric Hospital in Jal el-Dib, Lebanon November 19, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo
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What to Know about Pope Leo XIV's Trip to Türkiye and Lebanon, the First of his Pontificate

FILE PHOTO: A woman stands next to a poster depicting Pope Leo XIV at De La Croix Psychiatric Hospital in Jal el-Dib, Lebanon November 19, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A woman stands next to a poster depicting Pope Leo XIV at De La Croix Psychiatric Hospital in Jal el-Dib, Lebanon November 19, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo

Pope Leo XIV’s first foreign trip, to Türkiye and Lebanon, will be packed with opportunities to advance relations with two of the Catholic Church’s top priorities: Orthodox Christians and Muslims.

It will also give history’s first American pope the spotlight to speak in broader terms about peace in the Middle East in languages much of the world can understand: He’ll speak exclusively in English while in Türkiye, and a combination of English and French in Lebanon, in a departure from the Vatican’s traditional lingua franca of Italian.

Security will be tight, especially after Israel fired a strike in Beirut to target Hezbollah, just days before Leo arrives.

Here’s a look at some of the expected highlights of the Nov. 27-Dec. 2 visit to two countries that the late Pope Francis had intended to visit but couldn't as his health deteriorated.

Lebanon and Türkiye are frequent pope destinations

Both Türkiye and Lebanon have received multiple popes, starting with Pope Paul VI, the first pontiff to travel internationally, in a sign of their importance to the Holy See.

For the Vatican, Lebanon and its tradition of religious tolerance in the Middle East is a bulwark for Christians in the region, even more so after years of conflict and war that have shrunk Christian communities that date from the time of the Apostles.

Türkiye, for its part, is home to the ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church, and so is a crucial relationship to nurture in the centuries-long quest for Christian unity.

Türkiye is a rare country that, with Leo’s visit, can boast of having been visited by the five popes of the modern globe-trotting papacy: Paul VI in 1967, John Paul II in 1979 in one of the first trips of his pontificate, Benedict XVI in 2006 and Francis in 2014.

Paul VI also visited Lebanon during a stopover en route to India in 1964, John Paul II visited Lebanon in 1997 and Benedict XVI in 2012, in the final foreign trip of his pontificate. Francis had tried for years to go, but the country’s instability and then Francis’ poor health precluded a visit.

Orthodox relations

Leo's main reason for traveling to Türkiye, the first stop, is to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council.

Leo will pray with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, at the site of the 325 AD gathering, today’s Iznik in northwestern Türkiye, and sign a joint declaration in a visible sign of Christian unity.

Eastern and Western churches were united until the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope.

The Rev. Paolo Pugliese, superior of the Capuchin Catholic friars in Türkiye, said the commemoration of the Council of Nicaea – which gave birth to the creed still recited by Christians today – would send a powerful message of unity.

“What better occasion than Nicaea to find again our common identity,” he said.

Interfaith dialogue and the plight of Palestinians

Leo will also visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and preside over an interfaith meeting in both Istanbul and in Beirut.

Security is expected to be tight, as the regional conflicts have not abated. Israel fired an airstrike on Lebanon’s capital on Sunday that killed Hezbollah’s chief of staff and four others.

Leo said this week such attacks were “always a concern,” but he appealed for all to pursue dialogue, not violence.

Monsignor César Essayan, the apostolic vicar of Beirut for Latin rite Catholics, said Lebanon was the safest place in the region for Leo to visit and a perfect place for him to speak about peace.

“He couldn’t go to Gaza. It’s useless to go to Israel now. It’s too difficult in Syria. This is the only country,” he said of Lebanon. “And here offers him the singularity and this vocation that will allow him to go with a very strong message (of peace) for the whole world.”

The Beirut port blast

The highlight of the Lebanese visit will come on Leo’s last day, Dec. 2, when he spends time in silent prayer at the site of the Aug. 4, 2020, Beirut port blast.

The explosion tore through the Lebanese capital, killing at least 218 people, wounding more than 6,000 and devastating large swaths of Beirut.

Lebanese citizens were enraged by the blast, which appeared to be the result of government negligence, coming on top of an economic crisis spurred by decades of corruption and financial crimes. But an investigation has repeatedly stalled, and five years on, no official has been convicted.

Another important moment will come when Leo meets with young Lebanese. He is expected to give them words of encouragement, amid the decades-long flight of Lebanese abroad, while also acknowledging their disillusionment over the failures of generations before them.

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Securing Iran’s Enriched Uranium by Force Would Be Risky and Complex, Experts Say

This image from an Airbus Defense and Space's Pléiades Neo satellite shows a truck in the upper left-hand corner that analysts believe was carrying highly enriched uranium to a tunnel in the compound of the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, in Isfahan, Iran, June 9, 2025. (Airbus Defense and Space© via AP)
This image from an Airbus Defense and Space's Pléiades Neo satellite shows a truck in the upper left-hand corner that analysts believe was carrying highly enriched uranium to a tunnel in the compound of the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, in Isfahan, Iran, June 9, 2025. (Airbus Defense and Space© via AP)
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Securing Iran’s Enriched Uranium by Force Would Be Risky and Complex, Experts Say

This image from an Airbus Defense and Space's Pléiades Neo satellite shows a truck in the upper left-hand corner that analysts believe was carrying highly enriched uranium to a tunnel in the compound of the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, in Isfahan, Iran, June 9, 2025. (Airbus Defense and Space© via AP)
This image from an Airbus Defense and Space's Pléiades Neo satellite shows a truck in the upper left-hand corner that analysts believe was carrying highly enriched uranium to a tunnel in the compound of the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, in Isfahan, Iran, June 9, 2025. (Airbus Defense and Space© via AP)

Should the US decide to send in military forces to secure Iran’s uranium stockpile, it would be a complex, risky and lengthy operation, fraught with radiation and chemical dangers, according to experts and former government officials.

US President Donald Trump has offered shifting reasons for the war in Iran but has consistently said a primary objective is ensuring the country will "never have a nuclear weapon." Less clear is how far he is willing to go to seize Iran’s nuclear material.

Given the risks of inserting as many as 1,000 specially trained forces into a war zone to remove the stockpile, another option would be a negotiated settlement with Iran that would allow the material to be surrendered and secured without using force.

Iran has 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog agency.

That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told The Associated Press last year. He added it doesn’t mean Iran has such a weapon.

Iran long has insisted its program is peaceful, but the IAEA and Western nations say Tehran had an organized nuclear weapons program up until 2003.

Nuclear material is probably stored in tunnels

IAEA inspectors have not been able to verify the near weapons-grade uranium since June 2025, when Israeli and American strikes greatly weakened Iran’s air defenses, military leadership and nuclear program. The lack of inspections has made it difficult to know exactly where it is located.

Grossi has said that the IAEA believes a stockpile of roughly 200 kilograms (about 440 pounds) of highly enriched uranium is stored in tunnels at Iran’s nuclear complex outside of Isfahan. The site was mainly known for producing the uranium gas that is fed into centrifuges to be spun and purified.

Additional quantities are believed to be at the Natanz nuclear site and lesser amounts may be stored at a facility in Fordo, he has said.

It's unclear whether additional quantities could be elsewhere.

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a House hearing March 19 that the US intelligence community has "high confidence" that it knows the location of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpiles.

Radiation and chemical risks

Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium fits into canisters each weighing about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) when full. The material is in the form of uranium hexafluoride gas. Estimates on the number of canisters range from 26 to about twice that number, depending on how full each cylinder is.

The canisters carrying the highly enriched uranium are "pretty robust" and are designed for storage and transport, said David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq and founder of the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

But he warned that "safety issues become paramount" should the canisters be damaged — for example, due to airstrikes — allowing moisture to get inside.

In such a scenario, there would be a hazard from fluorine, a highly toxic chemical that is corrosive to skin, eyes and lungs. Anyone entering the tunnels seeking to retrieve the canisters "would have to wear hazmat suits," Albright said.

It also would be necessary to maintain distance between the various canisters in order to avoid a self-sustaining critical nuclear reaction that would lead to "a large amount of radiation," he said.

To avoid such a radiological accident, the canisters would have to be placed in containers that create space between them during transport, he said.

Albright said that the preferred option for dealing with the uranium would be to remove it from Iran in special military planes and then "downblend" it — mix it with lower-enriched materials to bring it to levels suitable for civilian use.

Downblending the material inside Iran probably is not feasible, given that the infrastructure needed for the process may not be intact due to the war, he added.

Darya Dolzikova, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, agreed.

Downblending the material inside Iran is "probably not the most likely option just because it’s a very complicated and long process that requires specialized equipment," she said.

Risks for ground forces

Securing Iran's nuclear material with ground troops would be a "very complex and high-risk military operation," said Christine E. Wormuth, who was secretary of the Army under former US President Joe Biden.

That's because the material is probably at multiple sites and the undertaking would "probably take casualties," added Wormuth, now president and CEO of the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative.

The scale and scope of an operation at Isfahan alone would easily require 1,000 military personnel, she said.

Given that tunnel entrances are probably buried under rubble, it would be necessary for helicopters to fly in heavy equipment, such as excavators, and US forces might even have to build an airstrip nearby to land all the equipment and troops, Wormuth said.

She said special forces, including perhaps the 75th Ranger Regiment, would have to work "in tandem" with nuclear experts who would look underground for the canisters, adding that the special forces would likely set up a security perimeter in case of potential attacks.

Wormuth said the Nuclear Disablement Teams under the 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives Command would be one possible unit that could be employed in such an operation.

"The Iranians have thought this through, I’m sure, and are going to try to make it as difficult as possible to do this in an expeditious way," she said. "So I would imagine it will be a pretty painstaking effort to go underground, get oriented, try to discern ... which ones are the real canisters, which ones may be decoys, to try to avoid booby traps."

A negotiated solution

The best option would be "to have an agreement with the (Iranian) government to remove all of that material," said Scott Roecker, former director of the Office of Nuclear Material Removal at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within the US Department of Energy.

A similar mission occurred in 1994 when the US, in partnership with the government of Kazakhstan, secretly transported 600 kilograms (about 1,322 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet republic in an operation dubbed "Project Sapphire." The material was left over from the USSR's nuclear program.

Roecker, now vice president for the Nuclear Materials Security Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said the Department of Energy's Mobile Packaging Unit was built from the experience in Kazakhstan. It has safely removed nuclear material from several countries, including from Georgia in 1998 and from Iraq in 2004, 2007 and 2008.

The unit consists of technical experts and specialized equipment that can be deployed anywhere to safely remove nuclear material, and Roecker said it would be ideally positioned to remove the uranium under a negotiated deal with Iran. Tehran remains suspicious of Washington, which under Trump withdrew from a nuclear agreement and has twice attacked during high-level negotiations.

Under a negotiated solution, IAEA inspectors also could be part of a mission. "We are considering these options, of course," the IAEA's Grossi said March 22 on CBS' "Face the Nation" when asked about such a scenario.

Iran has "a contractual obligation to allow inspectors in," he added. "Of course, there’s common sense. Nothing can happen while bombs are falling."

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Lebanese Displaced by War Fill Beirut’s Streets, Upending City Life

Members of a family who fled Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon warm themselves by a bonfire next to tents used as shelters in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP)
Members of a family who fled Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon warm themselves by a bonfire next to tents used as shelters in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP)
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Lebanese Displaced by War Fill Beirut’s Streets, Upending City Life

Members of a family who fled Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon warm themselves by a bonfire next to tents used as shelters in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP)
Members of a family who fled Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon warm themselves by a bonfire next to tents used as shelters in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP)

Beirut is bursting.

It's been a month since Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel after the US-Israeli attack on its patron, Iran, triggering Israeli bombardment of Lebanon and a ground invasion. Since then, more than 1 million people from southern and eastern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs have fled. Many have crammed into the ever-tighter spaces of the country's capital where the bombs have not yet fallen.

Israel's attacks and evacuation orders — unprecedented in scope, covering what humanitarian agencies estimate to be 15% of this tiny country — have emptied villages in south Lebanon and pushed almost the entire population of the southern suburbs into Beirut, shifting the city's center of gravity, reshaping its geography and stirring fears about its future.

A huge tent encampment has sprouted up in the grassy field between a yacht club and nightlife venue, transforming the Beirut waterfront. Some families squat in storefronts, live in mosques and sleep in the cars they drove here, double- and triple-parking convoys on thoroughfares. Others huddle in tents pulled together from sheets of tarp along the curving coastal corniche or around Horsh Beirut, a park of pine trees on the outskirts of an area of the southern suburbs known as Dahieh.

"It's horrid because we feel this tension, that we're not wanted here," said Nour Hussein, who settled at the waterfront in early March after fleeing the first Israeli airstrikes on Dahieh. She watched a stream of well-to-do joggers navigate a maze of tents and soiled mattresses, her three youngest children clambering onto her lap.

"We don’t want to be here," she said. "We have nothing here and nowhere to go."

Experts say this displacement is unprecedented

Waves of displacement have upended this city before, most recently during the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war. But experts struggle to recall such a dramatic exodus — about 20% of the country’s population, according to government statements — hitting Beirut so fast.

"The scale and intensity of this is just unprecedented," said Dalal Harb, the spokesperson for the United Nations refugee agency in Lebanon. She said the figure of 1 million displaced is almost certainly an undercount because it misses anyone who has not formally registered as displaced with the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The government has converted hundreds of public schools into shelters and pitched tents for displaced families beneath the bleachers of the city's main sports stadium. Charities have scrambled to help, with one refashioning an abandoned slaughterhouse destroyed in Beirut's 2020 port explosion into a dormitory for almost 1,000 displaced people.

But urban researchers note a staggering number of people on the streets compared with past conflicts, making it difficult for ordinary residents to block out the war and the misery it has wrought.

"This is relatively new, that you have so many people spending time in these open spaces, who are very vulnerable, living in very precarious conditions," said Mona Harb, a professor of urban studies at the American University of Beirut. "You have to confront this visually when you’re coming and going to work, to school ... and there are strong, mixed feelings associated with this presence that’s unregulated."

Families say they’ve struggled to find space at government-run shelters in Beirut and would rather brave the elements than travel north to cities where they might find better accommodations but where they have no relatives or connections.

"The further away we go, the more we'll lose hope about finding our way back," said Hawraa Balha, 42, when asked why her family of four was squeezing into the small car they drove from the devastated southern border village of Duhaira rather than sleeping in an available shelter further north. "We don't want to move again."

Residents of the suburbs of Dahieh have largely opted to remain in Beirut. That way, every so often, they can retrieve belongings and check whether their homes are still standing, albeit in furtive dashes under the threat of bombardment. Hussein said her kids grew so desperate for a shower after nearly a month without a bathroom that they rushed home to wash up last week despite the incessant buzz of Israeli drones.

Lebanon's sectarian balance is at risk

The prospect of hundreds of thousands of Shiites on the move has inflamed Lebanese sensitivities about the country’s fragile sectarian balance. Ever since its bloody 15-year civil war, Lebanon has relied on a power-sharing agreement to accommodate the interests of Christians, Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims, the country's largest religious groups, which make up roughly equal shares of the population.

"It's generating anxieties in Beirut, where the bulk of the displacement is, that this may cause a significant transformation in the demographic balance within the country, or within certain spaces and cities," said Maha Yahya, director of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center.

Each day that passes, more tents appear at the waterfront settlement. Children have started to complain of skin rashes. Heavy rainfall recently flooded the grassy lot and seeped into tents, leaving a trail of soggy clothes and sore throats. A fight broke out last week as volunteers arrived to distribute donations.

"We're not used to living like this — we had a house, we had normal lives," said Lina Shamis, 51, warming herself by a fire at the foot of a billboard advertising luxury watches. She, her three adult daughters and their small children set up camp here after heeding Israeli evacuation orders for Dahieh in a panic, carrying almost nothing with them.

"Now the kids are out of school and hungry, and our neighborhood is gone," she said. "All I feel is despair."

With Israel thrusting deeper into Lebanon and threatening to seize Lebanese territory as far as the Litani, a river 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of the Israeli border, the situation of displaced people in Beirut "will be even worse than what we’re seeing now," warned Harb, from the UN refugee agency.

"The needs will continue to increase," she said. "It's an imminent humanitarian catastrophe."

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Siege of Balad Base May Prelude ‘Doomsday’ Scenario in Iraq

A US military handout image shows the Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2011.
A US military handout image shows the Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2011.
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Siege of Balad Base May Prelude ‘Doomsday’ Scenario in Iraq

A US military handout image shows the Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2011.
A US military handout image shows the Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2011.

An American contractor responsible for operating Iraq’s F-16 fighter jets has withdrawn its staff from an Iraqi air base after attacks by Iran-aligned factions, leaving Baghdad racing to find replacements before its most advanced aircraft risks becoming “scrap,” officials and sources said.

The attacks cap years of what sources describe as “infiltration and espionage attempts” targeting US technology acquired by Iraq about a decade ago, culminating in what they called a “doomsday scenario” to seize Iraqi military assets.

The Iraqi government had tried to persuade staff from V2X to remain at Balad Air Base despite repeated strikes. A senior Iraqi official said that although the attacks caused no major damage, “the company’s employees insisted on leaving for their own safety.”

According to a foreign contractor, security personnel and employees, the evacuation followed an intense wave of drone attacks and was carried out during a temporary truce to secure what one source described as a “high-risk flight.”

Since the outbreak of war involving the US-Israeli war on Iran, the Balad Air Base has come under attack from three directions, most of which failed to cause significant damage, sources said.

During the first term of President Donald Trump, Iran-aligned groups forced a previous American contractor to leave the same base after the US strike that killed Qassem Soleimani in January 2020.

Dozens of staff from Sallyport were reported to have departed after deadly attacks.

The pattern now appears to be repeating with V2X during Trump’s second term, but in a broader regional war.

Drone attacks strain operations

The first attack in the current escalation occurred on March 2, the third day of the war. Subsequent strikes followed a pattern, often between midnight and early dawn, sometimes involving paired drones.

Local residents filmed smoke rising near the base. A nearby farmer told Asharq Al-Awsat that most drones fell within or just outside the perimeter, close to the security fence.

A security source said around 10 attacks were recorded in the first month of the war, causing no casualties or damage, including to the F-16 fleet.

But the attacks disrupted daily operations. “We had to stay in fortified rooms for hours,” one contractor said, adding that foreign staff feared a repeat of the 2012 US consulate attack in Libya.

Iraqi staff downplayed the threat, saying operations continued as normal.

Evacuation under truce

Baghdad’s efforts to retain the American team failed. The official said the logistical support program for the F-16s was essential to keeping Iraq’s fighter squadron operational, but the staff chose to leave.

Sources said dozens of foreign personnel were evacuated overnight aboard a military C-130 aircraft to a neighboring country, in coordination with the US military. The operation was timed with a brief truce in the final week of March.

Some advisers had already withdrawn in late February, citing early warnings of rising risks.

V2X did not respond to requests for comment. A New York Stock Exchange filing shows its contract was renewed in June 2025 with an initial value of $118 million.

The base now lacks a specialized team to operate Iraq’s F-16s, and the government lacks the funds to maintain them, the Iraqi official said.

Aircraft at risk

Retired Colonel Salam Asaad said the aircraft would likely become inoperable without American expertise. “Local crews lack the experience to manage such a strategic system,” he said.

He added that the jets delivered to Iraq had been modified, with the United States removing some systems and not equipping them with long-range missiles.

Even during the war against ISIS, Iraqi F-16s relied on coalition aircraft to strike targets, he said.

Although the US Central Command has pointed to improved Iraqi self-sufficiency in recent years, the combination of technical dependence and sustained attacks has exposed vulnerabilities.

The attacks on Balad are part of a broader campaign since early March targeting US and Iraqi facilities. A source close to armed factions said the initial goal was to pressure US forces, but “when they withdrew, the targets expanded.”

The source said Iran’s Revolutionary Guards sought to isolate adversaries from the F-16 fleet and prevent its use during the conflict.

A former Iraqi official involved in procurement said Iran-aligned groups had long shown a strong interest in the aircraft, suggesting Tehran was uneasy with Iraq possessing such capabilities because it would view it as a threat.

‘Doomsday scenario’

An Iraqi official said a prolonged intelligence struggle had taken place between the US and Iranian sides over access to the aircraft’s systems, with armed groups repeatedly attempting to gather sensitive information.

Figures within Iraq’s ruling pro-Iran Coordination Framework warned of a potential “coup against what remains of the state.”

One figure said that after the war, factions could move toward a “doomsday scenario,” consolidating control over state military assets with political backing and institutional presence.

On March 30, head of the IRGC’s Quds Force Esmail Qaani said the “resistance’s joint operations room” had contributed to shaping a new regional order.

A former Iraqi official said earlier attempts by armed groups to penetrate military infrastructure had failed, but could now be seen as “a long rehearsal,” with Iraq being exposed to the Iranians during the war.