Middle East Insider · Issue 077 · Monday, November 9, 2026

Eighteen New Sites, Built to Be Checked

Good afternoon from Palo Alto, the first stop of this week’s four California lunches. This edition is about the Forum’s own work: the 18 research sites, 21 sections and seven language editions it has opened since its first batch of 17 on October 6, grouped by what they let a reader do: open a file, make a case to a government, follow how the press in Tehran and across the region shapes a story, and learn the ground. Every figure below links to the Forum page that holds it, which in turn carries the court opinion, statute, indictment or government notice behind it.

Four California lunches this week on Iran and the new Congress: Palo Alto today, on technology and export controls; San Francisco on Tuesday, on who decides after the war; Los Angeles on Friday, on the midterm map; and San Diego on Monday the 16th, on sea power and the defense bill. Benjamin Baird takes the fight against Islamism and Iran in the new Congress to New York on December 3.

A reader can now check the Forum’s claims in seconds, and the first one to check is $16.30 billion.

Americans hurt by terrorism, and their families, can sue the states that sponsored it, and for a decade the federal district court in Washington has been ruling on what Iran and Syria owe them. The Forum’s new site Held Liable adds up the court’s own figures. Since 2015 the court has awarded $14.87 billion against Iran in 56 judgments. Syria’s share is $1.87 billion in nine. Together that is $16.30 billion in 61 judgments; four of them, worth $440 million, name both states. Each figure is the total the court itself stated, with the ruling behind it linked: 101 damages opinions in 84 cases, and the site says a hand check of every sum against its opinion is under way. The largest single award, $1.96 billion for the bombing of the USS Cole, came in Gunn v. Islamic Republic of Iran on July 29, 2024.

What the site shows next is the part Congress should read. In the public archive of court filings the page searched on October 17, no satisfaction of judgment appears in any of the 84 cases. The search did find such entries in 27 other terrorism suits against those defendants. The archive holds only what its users have pulled from the court’s system, so a missing filing does not by itself mean a judgment went unpaid, and the page says so. The United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund pays claimants in rounds, from forfeitures and penalties, and reports its payments in the aggregate rather than for each judgment. The question the page hands to Congress is how much of $14.87 billion has reached the families of the sailors killed on the Cole and the other Americans whose cases it lists, and how a judgment against a state that does not pay gets collected.

That is the pattern across the 35 sites the Forum has opened since October 6, the 17 of that day and the 18 that followed, the 21 sections it has added to them and the 19 languages its articles now appear in. The pages do not ask the reader to take the Forum’s word. They set out the court opinion, the sanctions notice, the indictment, the statute or the Persian-language article, link it, and let the reader check. One MEF Menu runs across all of them, so a reader can move from the judgments to the plots to the sanctions lists in a click each.

I draw three conclusions. First, the sites are built so that a reader checks the Forum rather than takes its word. The 101 opinions are there for anyone who doubts the $16.30 billion, and the charging papers in all 14 cases for those who question whether 20 people charged in Iran’s plots are still at large. Second, the files set an agenda for the new Congress without the Forum writing one: 212 reports, certifications and other obligations the executive branch owes the legislature under 14 laws, nine of them due by January 15, and public proof of delivery for two of the 212; 12 groups Washington sanctions that Brussels does not; and 20 defendants charged in American courts in Iran’s plots to kill, kidnap, spy on or hack people in the West who have not been caught. Third, the Forum’s articles now run in 19 languages because the argument has to be made where the audiences are: in Hindi and Armenian, in Indonesian and Azerbaijani, and in the Arabic of the columnists who are making it themselves. Next comes MEF Live, a 24-hour television and radio channel on the Middle East and Islamism in the West; its launch will be announced in a later release.

MEF Observer, Iran’s Iraqi Allies Celebrate Democrats but Castigate All Americans as the Enemy (Nov 9): Ali Mahmoud on how the militias read the midterms: “American voters’ rejection of Republicans was not a vote for Iran.”

MEF Observer, When Tel Aviv and Gaza City Promised to Become Sister Cities (Nov 9): Jan Kapusnak: “Barcelona demands sweeping changes from democratic Israel but none from Hamas’s dictatorship in Gaza.”

MEF Observer, After the Mecca Pact, the Badr Agreement Must Be on Washington’s Radar (Nov 8): Anna Mahjar-Barducci: “Washington should monitor the Badr agreement and clarify how the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) applies.”

The files, each with the document behind it

Iran’s Long Arm. The 14 American and British criminal cases since 2011 against people charged in Iran-tied plots to kill, kidnap, attack, spy on or hack dissidents, journalists and officials in the West. Of the 41 people charged, 12 have been convicted, nine await a verdict and 20 remain at large; the FBI lists 16 of them as wanted. Each case links to its charging papers, and 10 of the 14 began in 2022 or later. iran.meforum.org/long-arm

The Iran Ledger. Now adds the Iran-related parties the Treasury Department designates on the weekday they are announced, and checks the British, European Union, Australian and Canadian lists each week; the November 6 entry covers eight parties, the newest of 68 sanctions actions listed since December 30, 2025. Three new series: Nuclear Status, with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s last estimate, as of June 13, 2025, of 9,874.9 kilograms of enriched uranium, 440.9 of them enriched up to 60 percent, and its September 2026 report that it still lacks access to the affected sites; Protests, 227 protests, strikes and rallies in 80 Iranian cities from November 16, 2023 to October 1, 2026, each with the reports behind it; and Iranian State Cyber Operations, 62 cyber and influence operations publicly attributed to Iran, each attribution quoted. iran.meforum.org, iran.meforum.org/nuclear, iran.meforum.org/protests, iran.meforum.org/cyber

Inside Iran’s Arsenal. The foreign-made parts United Nations investigators and American agencies found in Iranian drones and missiles, in debris after attacks and in cargo seized at sea. Twelve documents from 2020 to 2025 describe 93 components; 62 name a maker or origin, and 13 trace to makers in 10 countries outside Iran, Germany most often. Each entry cites its document by page; the latest, a United Nations Panel of Experts report of October 2025, covers warheads, seekers and drone engines. arsenal.meforum.org

Party of God, Inc. Hezbollah laid out the way a company is: its divisions, and the people and firms the American, British and European Union governments tie to it, each with the designation notice, indictment or verdict behind it. The American and British sanctions lists name 316 individuals and entities tied to Hezbollah, 202 people and 114 entities; of 19 people charged in American courts, 10 have been convicted and three are at large. hezbollah.meforum.org

Executive Actions Chronology. 245 sanctions designations, terrorism listings, presidential documents, Entity List rules and arms sale notifications on the Middle East from January 20, 2025 through November 6, 2026; Iran is named in 101 of them. actions.meforum.org

Axis Attacks and Ceasefires. Attacks by Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Kataib Hezbollah, and the seven ceasefires that have governed them since November 2024. Hamas is a party to 74 percent of the 10,465 events the Uppsala Conflict Data Program has documented since January 2023. attacks.meforum.org

Islamist Terrorism Prosecutions. The 108 federal cases, against 173 defendants, that the Justice Department has announced since January 1, 2023, involving ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and plots by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and intelligence ministry. cases.meforum.org

U.S. Strikes. A new section of the Shia Militia Tracker: the 117 events in Iraq, Syria and Yemen since January 20, 2009 in which the Uppsala data names the United States government as a side, set out by administration; 66 fall in President Trump’s second term. militias.meforum.org/strikes

Gulf Sovereign Holdings. About 108 disclosed stakes that state investors of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates hold in Western companies; the largest single position in American securities filings is Mubadala’s $32.93 billion in GlobalFoundries, as of June 30, 2026. statemoney.meforum.org

Through the Institutions. A monthly review of the documents Islamist organizations issue about Western schools, courts, city halls, legislatures and government agencies in the United States, Britain, Germany and other Western states. Of 90 documents issued in October, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued 62, and 26 were about government agencies; so far in November, 15 of 17 are CAIR’s. institutions.meforum.org

Michigan’s Islamist Pulpits. 928 statements from 36 Islamic institutions in 19 Michigan communities, with the public money those institutions received and the acts of public officials toward them: 12 of the 36 received $47.4 million in public money, and 41 officials and public bodies appear in 63 documented acts. A short film, Count Them One by One, accompanies the site. testimony.meforum.org

MEF Research by Name, and Also Known As. For 320 people, groups, organizations and places, the MEF articles, Daily Readout items and Policy Notes that name them; Israel appears in 8,696 articles, more than any other name. Also Known As gathers the 1,401 names American, European and British authorities use for 117 designated organizations, so a reader holding any one name can see whom it belongs to; the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society alone goes by 138. entities.meforum.org, entities.meforum.org/aka

What Changed This Week. A new section of the Influence Tracker that compares each week’s copies of four federal files with the copies before them, the Justice Department’s foreign-agent list, the Internal Revenue Service’s list of groups that lost their tax exemption, the Department of Education’s Section 117 file of foreign gifts to colleges and the Treasury Department’s sanctions lists, and sets out what was added, changed or ended; the current bulletin covers the week to October 17. influence.meforum.org/this-week

MEF Datasets. Five datasets from three of the Forum’s research tools as spreadsheet files, each with a codebook and user guide, from the Shia Militia Tracker’s 8,112 dated events to the sanctions status of 1,014 Iran-related profiles in five jurisdictions. products.meforum.org/datasets

What the executive branch owes Congress, and what the law allows

Owed to Congress. The 212 reports, certifications, briefings and other obligations that 14 Middle East laws enacted from 1996 to 2026 lay on the executive branch, with the statutory text beside each deadline. Nine fall due by January 15, 2027, among them a report on contributions to Iran’s ballistic missile program and one on coordinating sanctions with the European Union. Public proof of delivery has surfaced for two of the 212. bills.meforum.org/owed

Middle East Legislation in Congress. 249 House and Senate measures on Iran, Qatar, Turkey, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Muslim Brotherhood and more; 213 remain in committee, and 24 have passed at least one chamber. bills.meforum.org

Legal Levers. A section of MEF Policy Notes that explains eight American legal remedies, from terrorist designation and debarment to enforcement of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act and state contracting bans: what each statute allows, who decides, the deadlines and how past cases ended. Of 60 documented precedents, eight ended with the action revoked, set aside or not sustained, most recently the August 2026 revocation of the Specially Designated Global Terrorist designation of al-Nusrah Front, also known as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. notes.meforum.org/levers

Briefing Agendas. The Policy Notes in reading order by theme, with their findings, oversight questions and cited bills, and the note PDFs bound into one file for a briefing book. notes.meforum.org/agendas

Sanctions Comparator, and Who Lists Whom. 6,651 Middle East sanctions targets on the American, United Nations, European Union, British and Canadian lists side by side: 4,404 appear only on the Treasury Department’s list, and 81 on all five. Who Lists Whom shows how the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom treat 38 Middle East groups and state bodies. Washington sanctions 12 of the 38 that Brussels does not, and 11 of those 12, among them Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata’ib Hizballah and the Fatemiyoun Division, appear on none of the other three lists. sanctions.meforum.org, sanctions.meforum.org/who-lists-whom

State Laws. A layer of the Campus Watch Map covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia: 18 require public colleges or universities to report foreign gifts or contracts, and 37 have a statute or governor’s order against the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign aimed at Israel. campusmap.meforum.org/state-laws

Title VI on Campus. Federal action on antisemitism at 36 colleges and universities from April 2023 to September 2026, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Five signed agreements with the United States government in that span: Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Northwestern and Lincoln Memorial; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced a sixth on October 19, after the page’s cutoff. Another 17 hold a Department of Education civil-rights resolution, and the House of Representatives called the leaders of 13 to testify. Each of the 87 entries links to its document. campusmap.meforum.org/title-vi

How the region says it, and how a claim travels

The Reformers. Arab columnists who take on political Islam, the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iran-backed militias, each passage in the writer’s own Arabic beside a machine translation into English, with a link to the full column. From September 16 to November 9, 29 of 34 writers in Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Ahram and Al-Bayan took on the Houthis or political Islam, in 126 passages. reformers.meforum.org

Two Irans. What Iran’s state outlets say beside what Iranians outside the state say on the same topics, with the day’s market figures. The November 8 edition, the 33rd, drew on 288 state items and 284 non-state items and opened on the dollar at 2,649,000 rial on the free market. iran.meforum.org/two-irans

On Camera. A section of the MEF Press Readout that times each quoted line to the second so it can be checked against the video. Its first set compares three September addresses to the United Nations General Debate: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan named Iran once and Mahmoud Abbas not at all, while Benjamin Netanyahu named it 19 times by the automatic captions of the United Nations broadcast, a figure the page marks as not yet checked by hand. readout.meforum.org/on-camera

How the Gulf Says It. The set phrases Gulf news agencies and foreign ministries use for Israel, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the United States. Qatar News Agency now writes “Iranian attacks” in 12 of 24 English statements on Iran, up from one of 14 in 2025, and in 10 of 26 Arabic statements, up from one of 18. readout.meforum.org/gulf

How Stories Travel, and the country pages. A claim followed from the first outlet where the Forum’s monitors find it to the outlets and languages that carry it next, across 108 outlets in eight languages; and country pages for 22 countries, Russia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia among them, in which Iran is named in 454 of the 888 items tagged so far. readout.meforum.org/stories, readout.meforum.org/countries

The Roman Report. The day’s Middle East headlines on one page in four editions a day, at midnight, 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. Eastern, and sooner when major news breaks, drawn from the feeds of 64 publishers and the Press Readout’s translations of the regional press, each headline in the publisher’s own words and linked to the original; today’s noon edition carried 53. I edit it. report.meforum.org

Nineteen languages. The Forum’s translations now appear in 19 languages. Greek, Hindi, Portuguese and Indonesian editions were added on October 23, and Armenian, Azerbaijani and Amharic on November 2. Each edition is updated daily, and the English original is the text of reference.

The guides, the polls, the quizzes and the Forum’s own past

Daniel Pipes on Islamism. A guide of 13 chapters through the Forum founder’s writing, interviews and broadcasts on Islam, Muslims and Islamism from 1978 to 2026: 2,317 items, among them 778 articles, 896 blog posts and 359 interviews, talks and broadcasts, each summarized and linked to the original. pipes.meforum.org

MEF Event Library. 893 Forum events, webinars and interviews from 2017 to 2026, 732 of them with full transcripts. events.meforum.org

U.S. Opinion on the Middle East. 423 toplines on 58 questions about Israel, the Palestinians, Gaza, Iran and American policy, from Gallup, Pew, Quinnipiac and AP-NORC. polls.meforum.org

MEF Quizzes. Three quizzes, 30 questions in all, on Iran’s regime, Islamism in the West and how Hamas is funded, each with its sources. quiz.meforum.org

Interactive Editions. Timelines of 57 dated events across Iran’s nuclear program, the war since October 7, 2023, the Houthi Red Sea campaign and American maximum pressure on Iran, and a weekly Data Snapshot; this week’s shows Iran-backed militia events at their peak of 155 in March 2026. interactives.meforum.org

Israel Vote 2026. The final results of the October 27 Knesset election: Likud won 27 of 120 seats, and the five parties of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government hold 53, eight short of a majority. israelvote.meforum.org

People charged in American and British courts since 2011 in Iran-tied plots to kill, kidnap, attack, spy on or hack dissidents, journalists and officials in the West who remain at large, of the 41 defendants in 14 cases. The FBI lists 16 of them as wanted; 12 of the 41 have been convicted and nine await a verdict, by the Forum’s site Iran’s Long Arm.

Corrections Desk. Nothing to correct from Friday’s edition or Sunday’s Long View; errors in this one go to [email protected].

If you know a congressional staffer, a reporter or a researcher who needs a fact about Iran, Hezbollah or the Islamist organizations in the West, forward this; the pages were built for them.

Reply with the one file you want the Forum to build next.