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What to Know about Israel's Ground Invasion in Southern Lebanon

A picture taken from northern Israel along the border with southern Lebanon shows smoke billowing above south Lebanon during Israeli bombardment on October 4, 2024. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)
A picture taken from northern Israel along the border with southern Lebanon shows smoke billowing above south Lebanon during Israeli bombardment on October 4, 2024. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)
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What to Know about Israel's Ground Invasion in Southern Lebanon

A picture taken from northern Israel along the border with southern Lebanon shows smoke billowing above south Lebanon during Israeli bombardment on October 4, 2024. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)
A picture taken from northern Israel along the border with southern Lebanon shows smoke billowing above south Lebanon during Israeli bombardment on October 4, 2024. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)

Israel’s ground invasion in Lebanon stretched into its second week, as the Hezbollah militant group fired hundreds of rockets deep into Israel — with no end in sight to the escalating conflict.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon — mostly in airstrikes — and over a million displaced since the fighting intensified in mid-September. At least 15 Israeli soldiers and two civilians have been killed since the ground operation began, and more than 60,000 people have been displaced from towns along the border for more than a year.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, attacked southern Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza. Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost every day since, coming close to a full-fledged war on several occasions but stepping back from the brink until this month, The Associated Press said.
Here’s what to know about the current ground incursion in southern Lebanon:
What is the aim of the Israeli military’s ground invasion? The Israeli military began what they called a “limited, localized and targeted ground raids” in southern Lebanon on Oct. 1. The same day, the military said that it had carried out dozens of secretive cross-border operations to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure over the past year. The aim, Israel says, is to allow its displaced residents to return home.
A military official said that thousands of Israeli troops are currently operating along the roughly 100-kilometer-long (62-mile) border, clearing the area just along the border to try to remove the launch pads where Hezbollah fires rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles into Israeli towns, as well as infrastructure they say would allow for an Oct. 7-style invasion of Israel.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the military’s strategy, said the troops haven’t ventured deep inside Lebanon so far, and have conducted operations from distances of a few hundred meters (yards) up to 2 to 3 kilometers (1.5 to 2 miles) into Lebanese territory.
The Israeli military has shared videos of what it says are underground tunnels chiseled into rock used by Hezbollah. The tunnels are used to store weapons and stage attacks. One tunnel stretched from Lebanon into Israeli territory, according to the military.
The goal is not to destroy Hezbollah, and the army is aware that this will not remove the threat of longer-range rockets and missiles, the official said.
Elijah Magnier, a Brussels-based military and counterterrorism analyst, said Israeli forces haven’t seized any ground positions yet.
“They need to go in, harass, test and come out,” Magnier said. In order to hold ground positions, Israel would need tanks to come in and take high critical ground overlooking territory, he said. He estimates it would require clearing some 10 kilometers of Hezbollah presence, which is still a long way off.
It is not clear how long the operation will last or how long Israel will maintain a presence in these towns. The official said the hope is that this can lead to a diplomatic arrangement pushing Hezbollah away from the border. But the plans could change. A previous Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, initially intended to push back Palestinian militants, turned into an 18-year occupation.
What is Hezbollah’s strategy? Hezbollah officials, including assassinated leader Hassan Nasrallah, have conceded that the Israeli military has the superior air force and intelligence. But Hezbollah has the advantage in direct confrontations on Lebanese turf.
Hezbollah forces have better equipment and training compared to Hamas, which Israel has been battling for more than a year in Gaza. Hezbollah forces gained experience in wars in Syria and Iraq. Lebanon’s terrain is also more rugged and challenging than the Palestinian enclave, which is mostly flat and sandy.
Hezbollah’s strategy, led by its elite Radwan Forces, has been drawing in and ambushing incoming Israeli troops, detonating explosive devices or firing rockets at them, and firing artillery and rockets at Israeli border towns. Although Hezbollah has lost many of its top officials and commanders in recent weeks, militants have continued to fire rockets deeper into Israel, including heavy barrages on the city of Haifa.
Former Lebanese Army General Hassan Jouni said that he assessed Israel is still conducting reconnaissance ahead of its main attack, but that it had already suffered heavy losses in the smaller operations. Jouni said Hezbollah had dug many tunnels in the south and were well equipped with weapons caches and ammunition.
“The land always works in the favor of those who own it,” he said.
How does this compare to the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah? Israel and Hezbollah last went to war in 2006, a 34-day conflict that ended with the United Nations Resolution 1701, which was supposed to push Hezbollah further north and keep the border region exclusively under the control of the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers.
Israeli leaders say they want Lebanon to implement the resolution. Hezbollah says Israel hasn’t held up its part of the treaty and will stop firing rockets when there is a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s searing air campaign in southern Lebanon and Beirut in recent weeks is similar to the 2006 war, though this time, better intelligence has enabled Israel to kill several of Hezbollah’s top leadership.
“The Air Force is better and is using all kinds of methods to penetrate deeper into the ground, like dropping bomb after bomb after bomb,” said Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September by dropping more than 80 bombs on an apartment complex built over an underground compound in quick succession.
In the 2006 war, Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon after 10 days of airstrikes before withdrawing them about four weeks later. Troops attempted to reach the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) north of the border, but suffered heavy losses before a ceasefire ended the operation and the war.
Could there be a diplomatic solution? Hezbollah’s acting leader signaled Tuesday that the group is open to a cease-fire. Guzansky believes Israeli troops will stay on the ground in southern Lebanon until there is an internationally enforced diplomatic solution that’s stronger than the current UN peacekeeping force. If Israeli troops retreat, he said, they risk the same situation as 2006, where Hezbollah simply rearmed and resumed operations.
But former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was Israel’s leader during the 2006 war, said that war served as a lesson that immediate diplomacy, rather than military force, is the only way to keep the border quiet.
“Why not try and make a deal now rather than to fight for half a year?” he asked in an interview with The Associated Press. “You lose how many soldiers, kill how many innocent people? And then in the end we’ll make a deal which may have been made in advance.”

 

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Features

Atef Najib in Court: Reconstructing the Story of the ‘First Spark’ in Syria’s Uprising

Atef Najib at the Damascus courthouse on April 26, 2026. (Reuters)
Atef Najib at the Damascus courthouse on April 26, 2026. (Reuters)
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Atef Najib in Court: Reconstructing the Story of the ‘First Spark’ in Syria’s Uprising

Atef Najib at the Damascus courthouse on April 26, 2026. (Reuters)
Atef Najib at the Damascus courthouse on April 26, 2026. (Reuters)

The arrest of schoolchildren in the southern Syrian city of Daraa in March 2011 is widely regarded as the spark that ignited the Syrian uprising. What began as a local incident evolved into nationwide protests and, eventually, a devastating civil war.

Fifteen years later, the case has resurfaced as Syrian authorities pursue accountability for abuses committed under Bashar al-Assad's regime, placing former Daraa Political Security Department chief Atef Najib at the center of one of the conflict’s defining episodes.

As transitional justice efforts gather pace under President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government, the “Daraa children case” has become a key test of whether Syria’s judicial institutions can confront the legacy of arbitrary detention, systematic torture, and repression.

Asharq Al-Awsat interviewed two of the children detained at the time, now adults, whose testimonies revisit the events behind the slogan, “It’s your turn, Doctor”—a reference to Assad—that was scrawled by children on a school wall and became synonymous with the uprising’s beginning.

Fifteen years later, they said that the central question is no longer who wrote the slogan, but how it became the pretext for mass arrests and the torture of children.

Their accounts reconstruct the sequence of events while reinforcing the broader conclusion that what happened inside Syria’s security branches transformed a local incident into a turning point in the country’s history.

Naif Abazeed: Childhood in the interrogation cells

Naif Abazeed was 13 when he was arrested. His name has long been associated with writing the famous phrase, but he firmly rejects that claim.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that the only graffiti he ever wrote was his own name and that of a friend on a wall at Daraa al-Balad Preparatory School in 2009.

He also disputed the widely circulated account placing the graffiti at Al-Arbaeen School, saying others appropriated his story while changing the location and timeline.

Abazeed said he never met Atef Najib. Instead, he identifies then-Col. Louay al-Ali as the officer who interrogated and tortured him.

While his testimony shifts attention to al-Ali’s direct role during the investigation, it does not absolve Najib. Rather, it distinguishes between the officer who conducted the interrogations and the security chief who commanded the apparatus responsible for the children’s detention.

Under international law, command responsibility extends beyond those who personally commit abuses to include superiors who knew, or should have known, about the violations and failed to prevent or punish them.

One of the children, now an adult, seen at the Al-Arbaeen School. (Getty Images)

Arrested at school

Abazeed recalled security officers arriving at his school after police had searched his home earlier that morning.

Al-Ali introduced himself as an education official investigating graffiti supposedly bearing the student’s name alongside that of a girlfriend.

Instead, the interrogation centered on the phrase, “It’s your turn, Doctor,” which had already been erased.

The boy was told he would be questioned briefly. Instead, he was taken to a Political Security Branch detention facility, where he said he was confronted with instruments of torture, beaten with cables and sticks, suspended, and forced into the “tire” stress position.

“I told them I had written nothing except my name in 2009,” he said. “The officer insisted I had written something else.”

Unable to withstand the abuse, Abazeed said he eventually confessed to something he had not done. He added that he only learned after his release that another student had actually written the phrase.

He also recounted being handed paper and ordered to write down everything that had appeared on the school walls. When the phrase was missing, the interrogator allegedly dictated it word by word while continuing to beat him until he repeated it in full. Only then did he understand that “Doctor” referred to President Bashar al-Assad.

The interrogation did not end there. Abazeed revealed that he was pressured to identify accomplices and, under torture, named classmates and neighbors, drawing more children into the investigation.

Demonstrators hold posters on the day Atef Najib, a brigadier general and former head of the Political Security Department in Daraa during Syria's ousted President Bashar al-Assad's rule, who is accused of committing war crimes, attends a trial session at the Palace of Justice, in Damascus, Syria, April 26, 2026. (Reuters)

Another victim’s testimony

Samer Ali al-Sayasneh, another child detained in 2011 after being accused of burning a police kiosk near Al-Arbaeen School, has also testified against Najib in court.

He holds Najib fully responsible for the escalation in Daraa, from arbitrary arrests to orders that led to the deadly shootings at Omari Mosque and a nearby gas station.

According to al-Sayasneh, no security branch would have acted without Najib’s authorization, making any attempt to exonerate him implausible.

The legal case

Lawyer Noha al-Masri told Asharq Al-Awsat that prosecutors are relying primarily on Syrian law, including Law No. 16 of 2022, provisions of the Syrian Penal Code, and Legislative Decree No. 20 of 2013.

She said the abuses committed in Daraa in March 2011 could also meet the international definition of crimes against humanity because they formed part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians.

Al-Masri stressed that criminal responsibility extends beyond direct perpetrators to those who planned, ordered, supervised, or knowingly allowed the abuses to occur, reflecting the established principle of command responsibility under international humanitarian law.

She added that victims’ testimony, videos, medical reports, and official documents together could provide the foundation for one of the most significant trials in modern Syrian history - one likely to shape future accountability cases.

Syrian law also allows victims to seek compensation for the physical, psychological, material, and moral harm they suffered.

Strengthening the evidentiary record, she underlined, depends on corroborating witness testimony with videos, official documents, and medical and human rights reports.

Features

Israel Struck an Iranian Steel Facility. Was it a Valid Military Target?

This video grab taken on April 3, 2026, from undated UGC images shared on social media on April 1, 2026, shows thick plumes of smoke rising following airstrikes in Baharestan, in Iran's central Isfahan province. (Photo by various sources / AFP)
This video grab taken on April 3, 2026, from undated UGC images shared on social media on April 1, 2026, shows thick plumes of smoke rising following airstrikes in Baharestan, in Iran's central Isfahan province. (Photo by various sources / AFP)
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Israel Struck an Iranian Steel Facility. Was it a Valid Military Target?

This video grab taken on April 3, 2026, from undated UGC images shared on social media on April 1, 2026, shows thick plumes of smoke rising following airstrikes in Baharestan, in Iran's central Isfahan province. (Photo by various sources / AFP)
This video grab taken on April 3, 2026, from undated UGC images shared on social media on April 1, 2026, shows thick plumes of smoke rising following airstrikes in Baharestan, in Iran's central Isfahan province. (Photo by various sources / AFP)

Washington: Yeganeh Torbati

Over the course of the Iran war, US and Israeli warplanes hit missile depots and launchers, security forces’ headquarters and air defense systems.

Yet not all of the targets during the six-week campaign were traditional military sites.

On March 27, and again a few days later, Israeli airstrikes pounded a vast steel complex just outside Isfahan called Mobarakeh Steel, and another one in the southwest of the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that his country’s strikes had slashed Iran’s steel production capacity and eliminated revenue for the powerful Revolutionary Guards, whose repression underpins the Iranian government.

Companies like Mobarakeh illustrate the complexities inherent to Iran’s economy. While Iran’s clerical leadership and security forces are deeply enmeshed in the country’s most profitable and important businesses, those same companies are vital to the livelihoods of millions of ordinary Iranians, regardless of whether they have deep ideological allegiance to the government.

The attacks shut down major parts of the Isfahan plant for weeks, idling over 20,000 workers and choking off the supply of steel to domestic manufacturers. “I felt like my own home had been destroyed,” said Mostafa, a former employee, who asked to speak on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by the government.

The United States and Iran have lurched between peace talks and exchanges of fire in recent weeks. Their negotiations were expected to cover the economic benefits Iran might receive in return for long-term limits on its nuclear program.

The interim ceasefire agreement, signed last month, could result in as much as $300 billion for Iran’s reconstruction and economic development. But that now seems a distant prospect, after Trump said this week that he believed the temporary truce was “over.”

If any investment does flow to Iran, companies like Mobarakeh will undoubtedly come into focus because of their importance to Iran’s economy, as well as their affiliation with Iran’s most powerful security forces.

Trump has frequently threatened to attack Iranian infrastructure, and if war restarts, there will be scrutiny over any such strikes.

On Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the United States of striking a railway bridge that connected the country with Turkmenistan.

A spokesman for US Central Command confirmed that the United States struck the railway bridge, describing it as military logistics infrastructure that enabled a flow of weapons and other military supplies to key areas.

Mobarakeh has provided revenue to an investment fund belonging to a state-run militia, the Basij, which answers to the Guards, according to the US Treasury.

A 2021 report by Iran’s Parliament identified the investment fund as a major shareholder of Mobarakeh.

Recent financial statements from Mobarakeh show that its shareholders include an investment fund ultimately controlled by Iran’s supreme leader.

Although the statements do not show a link to the Guards, they often obscure their ownership through proxy investors.

In justifying the strikes on steel facilities, Netanyahu said they would deprive the regime “of both financial resources and the ability to produce many weapons.”

Mobarakeh executives did not respond to a request for comment, and it is unclear if the steel produced at Mobarakeh was used in making Iran’s weapon systems.

“Mobarakeh Steel products might not be directly used in missile production, but the company is most probably engaged in research and development of modern high-strength steel alloys for future large-scale production,” said Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute and an expert on Iranian military affairs.

He added, “Mobarakeh Steel products, though, are more likely used in producing missile transporter-launcher vehicles.”

International law prohibits strikes on industrial sites that serve civilians, unless the facility makes an effective contribution to military action and striking it confers a definite military advantage, international law experts said.

The dominant international view rejects the idea that generating revenue for military operations is enough to qualify a civilian site as a military target, said Susana SaCouto, director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University’s Washington College of Law.

Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury official, said that while he believed the complex was a legitimate target for sanctions, he doubted that it should have been hit in military strikes.

“These are the Iranian people’s assets, and it’s going to hurt the economy even way beyond the Islamic republic,” he said.

“It does employ many people and pay salaries for many people,” Maleki added. “But at the same time, it’s really just a major source of revenue for a lot of corrupt actors.”

Opaque ownership

Built by an Italian business group, Mobarakeh became operational in 1992 and was a symbol of Iran’s industrial development and rebuilding after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

People with ties to the Revolutionary Guards moved into leadership positions at the plant starting in the late 1990s, two former employees said, declining to be named to avoid repercussions from Iran’s government.

For instance, Mehdi Taj, a former senior Guards commander, served on the complex’s board of directors and held an executive position there in the early 2000s.

Taj is now the director of Iran’s soccer federation, which did not respond to a request for comment.

And a privatization drive carried out in the mid-2000s transferred portions of state-owned companies, like Mobarakeh, to powerful and opaque players such as the Guards and conglomerates that answer to Iran’s clerical leadership.

In 2008, a consortium led by Mehr Eghtesad Iranian Investment Company, an outfit belonging to the Basij, purchased 45% of Mobarakeh’s shares.

As of 2021, Mehr Eghtesad was one of Mobarakeh’s largest shareholders, with a nearly 14% stake, according to a parliamentary report written that year.

The Basij is one of the primary forces that the regime deploys to suppress protests, including the recent nationwide demonstrations in December and January. Those protests arose over discontent with Iran’s currency crisis and perceived economic mismanagement by the government.

Mehr Eghtesad’s owner, a bank, in 2020 merged with another Iranian bank, Bank Sepah, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Mobarakeh earned roughly $1.6 billion in net profit in 2024-2025. The US Treasury said in 2018 that the company “has provided millions of dollars” annually to Mehr Eghtesad.

“Some part of the economy is run through the government, but some larger part of the economy is run through the shadow government or Revolutionary Guards,” said Mahdi Ghodsi, an economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies.

One relatively new shareholder of Mobarakeh, according to documents filed with the Tehran Stock Exchange, is a company belonging to Astan-e Quds-e Razavi, an Iranian foundation that the United States put sanctions on in 2021 for being controlled by Iran’s former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The company owned 1.79% of Mobarakeh as of last year.

Other major owners include several state-owned pension funds. Iran’s pension funds have been struggling for years to make payments to retirees, and the destruction of key sectors of the economy is likely to worsen that problem.

Iranian legislators investigated possible corruption by managers at Mobarakeh in 2021 and blamed many of its issues on the flawed process of privatization, saying it was “now governed by completely opaque ownership alongside entirely state-controlled management.”

A ‘beloved’ company

Interviews with some of the people who used to work at Mobarakeh present another image of the company.

For aspiring engineers growing up in Isfahan, working at Mobarakeh was a “dream job,” said Maryam, who now lives outside Iran. She and some other former employees whom The New York Times spoke to requested that they not be fully identified, for fear of repercussions for speaking publicly.

Some said they felt they were at a prestigious, state-of-the-art company that was contributing to the country and cared about their well-being.

“Even before I was born, my father was working in steel,” said Maziyar Shokrani, who, like his father, worked at Mobarakeh.

Shokrani began working there as a lawyer in the mid-2000s, taking a bus each day to the sprawling plant 40 miles outside Isfahan. “I know my entire life and existence to be from steel,” he said.

Mobarakeh also donated funds to build stadiums and educational institutions and supported poor families in the area surrounding the complex, said Mostafa, the former employee, who now lives outside Iran.

“It was beloved in that region,” Mostafa said. “Any industry that hit a snag, or any group that had a problem, they had some hope that Mobarakeh Steel would arrange for some kind of support.”

The Iranian news outlet Rouydad24 reported in early May that of 27,000 workers, just 2,000 were still working at the plant. Iranian officials have said that Mobarakeh is being rebuilt more quickly than expected, and in early June the company relaunched a furnace that had been damaged in the strikes.

In interviews, former employees had differing views about who was to blame for the strikes on Mobarakeh.

“More of the blame should be cast with the Guards, because it deliberately and consciously took the country’s economy down this path,” said Shokrani, who now lives outside Iran.

In the minds of Iranians, the United States and Israel were closely linked in their conduct of the war, said Abbas Kamranian-Marnani, a mechanical engineer who worked at Mobarakeh or its contractors for a decade and now lives in Europe. “They worked mostly toward the destruction of infrastructure and the destruction of Iran,” he said.

Kamranian-Marnani said strikes like the one on the steel plant had caused Iranians to lose hope in the idea of better relations with the United States.

A senior US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said they did not know of any US role in the steel strikes.

The New York Times

Features

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa: The Emir Who Transformed Qatar

Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa: The Emir Who Transformed Qatar

Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (Asharq Al-Awsat)

With the passing of the Father Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Qatar closes the chapter on one of the Gulf region's most significant political and development success stories of recent decades. His name became synonymous with the most profound transformation in the country's modern history, as Qatar evolved during his reign from a state with a limited international profile into an influential player in regional and global politics, economics, and media.

Sheikh Hamad is widely regarded as one of Qatar's defining leaders and the architect of its modern renaissance. Under his leadership, the country underwent sweeping economic, social, and cultural transformation. During his reign, Qatar's gross domestic product expanded more than twenty-fourfold, while GDP per capita increased nearly sixfold.

Born in Doha in 1952, Sheikh Hamad graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1971. He then joined the armed forces, rising through the military ranks before being appointed Crown Prince and Minister of Defense in 1977. On June 27, 1995, he assumed power, and in June 2013 handed authority to his son, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, in a smooth transfer of power widely regarded as one of the region's rare peaceful successions.

A Strong Economy

Sheikh Hamad's economic strategy centered on harnessing Qatar's vast natural gas wealth to build a strong and diversified economy. During his years in power, the country's GDP grew dramatically, average incomes rose sharply, and exports of liquefied natural gas ushered in a new era in Qatar's history. Following the first LNG shipment in 1996, Qatar became the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas by 2006, generating enormous revenues that financed major investments in infrastructure, education, healthcare, and public services.

Expanding Qatar's International Role

On the international stage, Qatar adopted a far more active foreign policy, positioning itself as a mediator in a number of regional and international conflicts. Among its most prominent diplomatic efforts were its role in Lebanon during the 2006 war and the country's political crisis in 2008.

Qatar also took a leading role in supporting the Palestinian cause, particularly through economic assistance to the Gaza Strip and by providing a platform for negotiations aimed at ending the conflict there. In 2012, Sheikh Hamad became the first Arab leader to visit Gaza after Hamas took control of the territory.

He also forged close strategic ties with the United States. During his reign, Al Udeid Air Base was established in 1996. Qatar financed almost the entire construction of the base, at a cost exceeding $1 billion, as part of a strategy to strengthen its defense capabilities and deepen military cooperation with the United States following the Gulf War. By 2002, it had become one of the most important US. military bases outside the United States.

Qatar also participated in the international conference supporting post-Gaddafi Libya in Paris. During Sheikh Hamad's rule, Doha became a major supporter of the Syrian cause, providing extensive political and humanitarian backing to the Syrian opposition, an approach that continued in subsequent years.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, Qatar pursued a foreign policy built on relative neutrality and open channels with opposing parties, allowing it to serve as a mediator in regional and international disputes. Over time, this approach became one of the country's most effective instruments of soft power, transforming Doha into a permanent venue for negotiations and political dialogue.

Today, the Qatari capital is widely recognized as one of the world's leading hubs for mediation and conflict resolution, a role first established under Sheikh Hamad and later expanded during the reign of Sheikh Tamim.

Soft Power

Just one year after assuming power, Sheikh Hamad launched the Al Jazeera Media Network in 1996. The network quickly became one of the Arab world's most influential media platforms, giving Qatar an outsized voice in regional political discourse. As the Arab world underwent profound political change, Al Jazeera emerged as one of Qatar's most powerful instruments of influence, elevating the country's international profile far beyond its geographic size.

The World Cup

Qatar's hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup was far more than a sporting event. It was a strategic national project and a defining milestone that reshaped the country's standing on the global stage.

By hosting football's biggest tournament, Qatar became both the first Arab nation and the first Middle Eastern country to stage the World Cup, earning unprecedented global visibility across the media, political, and economic spheres while reinforcing its image as a nation capable of organizing events of the highest international caliber.

The tournament also became one of Qatar's most effective soft power tools. Rather than relying solely on traditional forms of influence, Doha used sport to strengthen its international image, showcase its organizational capabilities, and capture the world's attention.

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani leaves behind a lasting legacy in Qatar's modern history. His name is inseparable from the country's transformation from an economy largely dependent on natural resources into a state wielding influence through a diverse set of instruments, including economic strength, global investment, media, diplomacy, and sport.

Many of the defining features of Qatar's current policies remain rooted in the foundations he laid during his years in power, making his legacy one of the Gulf region's most significant political and developmental transformations in recent decades.