From Sudan to Yemen and Gaza, Middle East wars top the list of conflicts to watch in 2026, report says Submitted by MEE staff on Thu, 01/01/2026 - 17:27 Donald Trump's peacemaking efforts are laudable but rushed and inconclusive, Crisis Group argues A woman looks at a burned car from her balcony in the countryside of Latakia, Syria, on 26 September 2025 (Yamam Al Shaar/Reuters) Off The International Crisis Group has predicted that 2026 is not likely to be less bloody than the year that preceded it, according to a Conflicts to Watch report released on Wednesday. Critical hotspots in the Middle East region including Israel - Palestine , Syria , Yemen , Iran and Sudan are among the 10 areas listed where diplomatic efforts are tenuous at best, and immaterial at worst, the authors said. While the report lauded US President Donald Trump's "unorthodox" peacemaking efforts - such as being willing to sit down with Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa while he was still on the US terror list - Trump has "not calmed the global turmoil he decried on the campaign trail", the authors wrote. "In some cases, he has made it worse," they added. US strikes on fishing boats in the Caribbean that have killed more than 100 people and are designed to threaten Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's hold on power have demonstrated Trump's willingness to depart from the peacemaking rhetoric he used on the campaign trail. Trump "has turned world politics and international crisis management on their heads", in his approach to so-called "peace deals" in the Middle East, the report said, adding that his "lawlessness, revisionism and cavalier use of force risk normalising the idea that war is an OK way for powerful states to get what they want". Israel-Palestine Trump started his term with a ceasefire in Gaza already underway thanks to pressure he applied on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his transition back to the White House. But he did not build on that momentum, and instead allowed Israel to violate the ceasefire by mid-March, which led to the deaths of another 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Gaza genocide: How a lifetime was compressed into a single year Read More » It was not until 10 October that Trump brokered the current fragile ceasefire that he insists has brought permanent peace to the Middle East. But his deal "fudges the thorniest questions... [and] requires sustained tending by Trump's team", the Crisis Group said. "Thus far, it is unclear how far US mediators have gotten," the Crisis Group said. "The best – maybe only – hope of progress lies in Arab and other governments hashing out a vision together and presenting Trump with a way forward he can then impose on Netanyahu," the report added. That task, however, was completed back in July. It is effectively in limbo. For those in Gaza who survived two years of what the United Nations has labelled a genocide, "the year ahead looks bleak", the report said. "Palestine retains the recognition of more than 150 states, a seat at the UN and a right to self-determination that the world continues to affirm. But the capacity to pursue that right is being systematically dismantled." Meanwhile in the occupied West Bank, Israel has only escalated restrictions on movement, economic suffocation, land confiscation and settlement expansion, the report noted. "It has relaxed none of these measures since the ceasefire, with ministers continuing to hint at plans to formally annex portions of the territory." Israel and the US vs. Iran and the Houthis in Yemen Recent reporting by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post revealed that Trump's diplomatic overtures towards Iran early this year were, in fact, a ruse as Netanyahu urged the administration to back his longtime goal of launching air strikes against Iran. The White House was, in fact, in lockstep with Israel, and ultimately launched unprecedented strikes on Iran's nuclear sites in June. In the leadup to that event, the US had launched dozens of attacks against the Houthis in Yemen, whom the Israelis and Americans view as an arm of Iran's regional policy. "If Iran's 'axis of resistance' lies mostly in tatters, the Houthis remain potent," the report said. "Throughout Israel's 2023-2025 assault on Gaza, Houthi drones, ballistic missiles and even missiles carrying cluster warheads targeted Israel and severely disrupted Red Sea commercial shipping," the report said. "Israel's strikes on Yemeni ports, public institutions, power stations and leaders have only done so much to weaken the militant group. Iran appears to have upped arms deliveries," the authors added. Inside Iran, a lasting deal involving inspections on its nuclear energy development in exchange for US sanctions relief "seems like a stretch right now", the Crisis Group maintained. As the New Year was ushered in, however, it was not the Houthis and Israel most active in Yemen, but the US's two Gulf partners, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who were at daggers drawn , backing opposing factions. Saudi Arabia bombed the southern Yemeni port of al-Mukalla on Tuesday, targeting what Riyadh said was a UAE-linked weapons shipment destined for the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC). The flare-up in violence among two US allies underscores how unpredictable the battlefield in Yemen remains. Syria Backed by Turkey, Sharaa has seemingly won over Gulf leaders and even Trump himself, who has described him as "attractive" and a "tough cookie". Despite UN estimates that more than one million Syrian refugees have returned to the country, that there is now more space to criticise the government, and public services are slowly resuming as international sanctions are lifted, "frustration is growing –including among the Sunni Arab majority, which is the new authorities' core constituency – at the power concentrated within a tight circle around Sharaa himself", the Crisis Group said. "Indirect elections held in October to choose a transitional legislature did little to widen representation," the report said. Futhermore, a sectarian massacre that began in March killed as many as 1,500 people, with government forces involved as they deployed former rebels and other armed fighters to quash an insurrection by loyalists of the former President Bashar al-Assad. Sharaa "has been slow to hold anyone accountable, and Alawites fear a repeat", the report assessed. There was then a second outbreak of sectarian attacks in the predominantly Druze region of southern Syria, which Israel used as a pretext to launch air strikes in support of Druze forces in Suweida. This continued Israel's expanding military footprint in the country. Kurdish-led SDF and the Syrian government agree to stop deadly fighting in Aleppo Read More » And there are the Islamic State (IS) remnants. In December, an IS fighter killed two US soldiers and an interpreter during a joint US-Syrian government operation. Washington has since launched multiple air strikes on what it says are IS targets in northern Syria. Finally, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - which still controls much of oil-rich northeastern Syria - agreed to incorporate its governance and military apparatus into Syrian state institutions before the end of the year, but with key details left unresolved, the report said. "The more time passes without progress in talks, the graver the risks. Damascus could attempt to take SDF-held areas by force," it added. Ankara, which views the SDF as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), "is giving Sharaa time to negotiate". "If tensions between Damascus and the SDF spike, or if Ankara comes to see SDF foot dragging as an obstacle to its own peace process with the PKK", then Turkey may send its own forces in. Sudan The United Arab Emirates-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan 'Hemedti' Dagalo, has grown into a paramilitary force that could rival the Sudanese army backed by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the Crisis Group noted. "While the United Arab Emirates denies its involvement, extensive reporting has documented arms flows from the Gulf country to Sudan's battlefields. Abu Dhabi is close to Hemedti and suspicious of the army's ties to Bashir-era Islamists. It seems to believe that backing the RSF will strengthen its foothold in Africa," it said. In October, the RSF overran El Fasher, the army's last redoubt in western Sudan, deepening Sudan's de facto partition, with Darfur and much of Kordofan in the west held by the RSF, and the centre and east controlled by the army. Trump's Africa envoy Massad Boulos has already spent the summer negotiating a truce in conjunction with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, "but those efforts are now stuck, as fighting rages in Kordofan and the army continues to reject the ceasefire proposal", the report said. The Crisis Group argued that only Trump is best positioned to halt the war. Sudan's ambassador to the US, Mohamed Abdalla Idris, previously told Middle East Eye that he would like to see the US president get more personally involved in diplomacy to end Sudan's civil war. He urged the Trump administration to designate the RSF as a terrorist organisation, while making it clear his country would not accept a UAE-affiliated peace deal to end the war, which is now in its third year. Road To Peace News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0