By analyzing stalagmites in a cave in northern Oman, a team of scientists have found evidence of a severe draught that struck the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula in the beginning of the 6th century CE. Reading the data they collected in the context of the historical record, they concluded that lack of rainfall contributed to the demise of the Jewish kingdom of Himyar that once dominated the region, thus creating a geopolitical vacuum that facilitated the rise of Islam. Ariel David writes:

The Himyarite kingdom was founded in the late 2nd century BCE in today’s Yemen. It gradually extended its control over most of southern Arabia by conquering neighboring states, including Saba (or Sheba), the ancient kingdom whose queen of biblical fame supposedly visited King Solomon. During the 4th century CE, the Himyarite elite abandoned its ancestral polytheistic beliefs and converted to Judaism, followed by an unknown percentage of the broader population.

The choice of Judaism as a state religion may have been a way to maintain neutrality among various rival regional powers: the Christians of the Byzantine empire and of the kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia, as well as the Zoroastrians of the Persian empire. All these powers eyed the lucrative spice trade of Arabia that enriched Himyar and they eventually played a part in the kingdom’s demise.

Until the 6th century, Himyar managed to fend off foreign encroachment, but around 525 it suddenly fell to an invading Ethiopian force. . . . With Himyar definitely out of the geopolitical picture, the Byzantine and Persian empires were now free to vie for influence over southern Arabia and its rich trade in myrrh and frankincense. But very quickly these two powers would also cripple each other in a long and bloody conflict that lasted from 602 to 628.

With the economic turmoil and political fragmentation of the period it was only a matter of time until the tribes of Arabia united under a new leadership, which they ultimately found in the prophet Mohammad and his successors from the 620s onward.

For many years, Lebanon has been a de-facto satellite of Tehran, which exerts control via its local proxy militia, Hizballah. The problem with the U.S. policy toward the country, according to Tony Badran, is that it pretends this is not the case, and continues to support the government in Beirut as if it were a bulwark against, rather than a pawn of, the Islamic Republic:

So obsessed is the Biden administration with the dubious art of using taxpayer dollars to underwrite the Lebanese pseudo-state run by the terrorist group Hizballah that it has spent its two years in office coming up with legally questionable schemes to pay the salaries of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), setting new precedents in the abuse of U.S. foreign security-assistance programs. In January, the administration rolled out its program to provide direct salary payments, in cash, to both the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Internal Security Forces (ISF).

The scale of U.S. financing of Lebanon’s Hizballah-dominated military apparatus cannot be understated: around 100,000 Lebanese are now getting cash stipends courtesy of the American taxpayer to spend in Hizballah-land. . . . This is hardly an accident. For U.S. policymakers, synergy between the LAF/ISF and Hizballah is baked into their policy, which is predicated on fostering and building up a common anti-Israel posture that joins Lebanon’s so-called “state institutions” with the country’s dominant terror group.

The implicit meaning of the U.S. bureaucratic mantra that U.S. assistance aims to “undermine Hizballah’s narrative that its weapons are necessary to defend Lebanon” is precisely that the LAF/ISF and the Lebanese terror group are jointly competing to achieve the same goals—namely, defending Lebanon from Israel.