@markmackinnon.bsky.social
Senior International Correspondent for The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper. Now based in London, after stops in Moscow, Beijing and the Middle East. Author of The New Cold War (the book, not the thing). Add me to your top-secret group chats!
Twenty years after the suburbs of Beirut were first devastated, the “Dahiya Doctrine” - which some call collective punishment - has become a feature of Israel’s wars in Gaza and elsewhere.
Now it’s come back “home,” as
Dahiya is the casualty of another Israel-Hezbollah war.
My report
The man who rammed his truck into a Michigan synagogue on Thursday had four family members who were killed in an airstrike in Lebanon the week before, a Lebanese official and a Michigan imam said.
Ha! Now I can say that I've been cited in a prominent medical journal...
Seems weird that Canadian officials have way more to say about shots fired at the US consulate in Toronto than they do about a Canadian air base being hit by Iranian missile strike.
"A spreading sense of chaos and danger" - me podcasting on what it's like to be in Lebanon as the region-wide war continues to get more violent.
The Canadian section of an air base in Kuwait was damaged by an Iranian missile strike on March 1. No one was injured.
www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...
A priest who got killed after refusing Israeli orders to leave his town in #Lebanon : My piece
www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...
The US Department of Defense said they “had nothing to provide” when asked if they had reached any agreement with Iraq to utilize their airspace for cruise missiles targeting a third country.
www.bellingcat.com/news/middle-...
Israel is planning to create a south Lebanon “buffer zone” like the Yellow Line in destroyed Gaza, minister says.
My report from Beirut
Russia complaining about the collapse of international law is like Elon Musk complaining about the spread of disinformation…
Interesting target, to say the least...
Can't say for sure, but the timing of what I heard coincided with this: x.com/jabha_islami...
I went to get some diesel yesterday, and the woman behind the counter told me I'd been clever to fill up while there's still something in the pumps, since the Strait wouldn't be opening any time soon. I've never received geopolitical advice in a petrol station before.
Great reporting in the classic foreign correspondent mold…
Biggest boom yet in central Beirut. Just before 8 am here on a Monday…
Gunfire crackled in the nearby Dahiya, an Israeli drone buzzed overhead, and Lebanon’s Middle East airlines kept flying.
My report from Beirut on “the most badass airline on the planet”
🔴🇱🇧 Over half a million people (517,000) have been displaced in #Lebanon over the past week in the latest conflict b/w Israel and Hezbollah, the government said
The number is likely higher as the government data comes from the amount of people who registered on their platform
I'm out of words here
March 8, 2026 - Tehran at sunrise today. But the sun is hidden behind a sky filled with smoke. After a night of intensive strikes on oil facilities, thick black clouds now hang over the city, turning morning into something that feels like night.
To be fair, after arriving late for the last two World Wars, America is trying its hardest to be bang on time for the next one.
Majority consensus reached on Iran's next supreme leader, Mehr news reports reut.rs/3Ng58Sa
For four decades, the Israeli military has sought to find out what happened to airman Ron Arad, who disappeared in Lebanon in 1986.
On Saturday, the latest chapter in that hunt was a chaotic firefight in the Bekaa Valley that left 41 Lebanese dead.
My report from Beirut
Ukraine used 700 Patriot missiles in four winter months. The Middle East burned through 800 in three days. "Americans won't be able to provide enough for everyone," EU defense chief Kubilius says, urging Europe to fast-track its own missile production.
www.euronews.com/my-europe/20...
“For Khamenei, being assassinated in this way, in the middle of Ramadan, it actually has given him…a bigger position as a symbol within the Shia faith than what he could have done by staying alive,” said Maryam al-Khawaja, an exiled Bahraini human-rights activist…“They have given him the best gift.”
In the eyes of many Shia Muslims, the US-Israeli war on Iran feels a lot like a war on their religion.
"When they killed Khamenei, it’s like they killed our pope."
My report from Beirut
www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...
In Lebanon, Hezbollah is facing unprecedented criticism - even from its own Shia supporters - over its decision to take the country into another devastating war with Israel.
“Everyone is asking why Hezbollah did this.”
My report from Beirut
Loud explosion audible in central Beirut just now.
Modern warfare - calls warning people to leave the Dahiya are coming from a presumably spoofed Danish number.
Families who got similar calls in Sidon on Tuesday were called from a phony Kazakhstan number...
Current scene looking over the Dahiya after Israel ordered an evacuation of the entire southern suburbs of Beirut. Note the epic traffic jam trying to get out, and people gathering on foot in the parking lot of the soccer stadium.
Gunfire is Hezbollah fighters warning people to keep moving…
Mass panic around me at an IDP centre as people who fled here from the southern suburbs get ready to flee again…