Adnani’s demise, if confirmed, would be the biggest single setback to the leadership of isis since the group began its blitzkrieg across the Middle East, redrawing a century-old map in its wake. 

No Iranian politician has been as controversial abroad or as polarizing at home as Ahmadinejad. After only two years as Tehran’s mayor, he won the Presidency in an upset victory, in 2005, against an array of better-known politicians. 

Since the 2011 uprising in Syria devolved into a civil war, the country has disintegrated into four zones. One zone falls under the control of President Bashar al-Assad and his regime; it stretches along the Mediterranean coast in the west, from the southern border with Israel and Jordan to the northern one with Turkey. 

For fifteen years, the National Museum of Beirut was one of the most dangerous places in the world’s most violent city. It was in the middle of the deadly Green Line, which divided more than a dozen warring militias. It marked one of only five crossing points between the Muslim west and the Christian east. 

The loss of Dabiq, in Syria, and the launching of the largest offensive ever conducted against isis, in Iraq, led Obama Administration officials to predict that isis is finally being broken. “This is more than just the latest military result against this barbaric group,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement.