Nothing lasts forever. Hezbollah's self-proclaimed "Era of Victories"—which the group inaugurated after the May 2000 Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon—appears to have run its course. Its new Secretary-General Naim Qassem just confessed in a televised address that Hezbollah's lifeline through Syria is now gone, thanks to the downfall of the Assad regime.

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Last month, the autocratic Gulf state of Qatar handed out anti-corruption awards in partnership with the United Nations. The entire exercise was gaslighting in the extreme.

It took chutzpah for the regime in Doha to issue one of five Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani Anti-Corruption Excellence awards for the "Safeguarding Sports from Corruption," named for the country's autocratic leader. The safeguard award was granted jointly this year to two experts in sports law. The legal experts may well have earned their recognition. But it is now well-documented that Qatar bribed its way to hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

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The Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has collapsed. Sunni rebels, backed by Turkey and Qatar, completed their lightning offensive last night after just a few short days of fighting. Assad's whereabouts are unknown.

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A photo of outgoing President Joe Biden made the rounds over the Thanksgiving holiday. The octogenarian lame-duck president was spotted leaving a Nantucket bookstore carrying a copy of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017, a book released in 2020 by Columbia University professor emeritus Rashid Khalidi.

Khalidi was once best known in academic circles for his 1997 book, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. In it, Khalidi largely refrained from the vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric for which he later became well-known.

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Hamas chief and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar is dead. In contrast with the recent series of strikes that culminated in the death of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, this was not one of those signature Israeli pinpoint operations driven by intelligence. It was dumb luck that a handful of young Israeli soldiers on patrol stumbled upon the most wanted man in Gaza. Regardless, the momentum of this war has unmistakably shifted.

And now it's crucial to capitalize on this shift in momentum. That's not likely to happen through garden variety calls for diplomacy by the Biden administration. The proper move for the White House is to play hardball—and not with Israel, for a change. Rather, it's with Qatar.

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