The Cradle is an online magazine focusing on West Asia/Middle East-related topics. It was deprecated in the 2024 RfC due to a history of publishing conspiracy theories and wide referencing of other deprecated sources while doing so. Editors consider The Cradle to have a poor reputation for fact-checking.
Thecradle seems like a fine source, even MBFC doesn’t actually have arguments against it other than “left leaning”.
“Balanced” is some bullshit American view of media that isn’t related to factuallity.
For what it’s worth, English Wikipedia editors reached a consensus to deprecate (ban) it for unrealiability last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_424#RFC:_The_Cradle
The following notes are present: