... responsibility to find immediate and long-term solutions to the wicked security dilemmas of that theatre to stanch the recurring cycle of violence and conflict.
Already tense and divided along countless fault-lines, West Asia—from the Levant to the Iranian plateau—has been on high alert following the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the influential Commander of Iran’s Quds Force and Major General of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps in Iraq.
Soleimani’s assassination was the latest ...
Time is working for Washington. Iran also has trump cards
Escalation of the US-Iranian conflict in early January 2020 led to yet another wave of American sanctions against Iran. Washington avoided a military response to Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on US military facilities ...
... country, mainly in Tripoli, unless an agreement is reached among militant groups in addition to Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, the USA and Russia. The impeachment process of US President Donald Trump and the US role in the MENA region would determine the future ... ... in many countries starting from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and the future government in Lebanon, Iraq and Algeria, Turkey and Iran. It is also expected that many MENA capitals will witness protests that would change the balance of power in the region. ...
... Qasem Soleimani. Donald Trump has negated all his previous policies and strategies on the Middle East for he used to criticize Obama and his administration.
The killing of Qasem Soleimani will prove to be a major setback for Trump's elections as thousands of Americans have also come to roads in New York against war hysteria of Trump administration.
Iran's strategic partners will support Iran at this stage when they engineered a new battlefield for the US to engage it for more skirmishes to weak US defense sector and waste its more capital in the region.
On the other side, millions of people moved ...
... Qasem Soleimani
. Was it the recent mob attack on the US Embassy in Bagdad? Was it the continuous pressure on the President by many US allies in the region – from Saudi Arabia to Israel – urging the White House to take more steps to stop the growing Iranian presence in the Middle East? Was it a flood of advice from self-proclaimed experts on Iran in Washington, who argued that elimination of Soleimani would shift the balance of powers in Tehran in favor of ‘reformers’ by depriving ‘hardliners’ ...
... However, the Fatah Alliance (sometimes translated as the Conquest Alliance), a coalition that had been accused of ties with Iran on numerous occasions, finished a close second to the Sadrists, winning almost as many seats in parliament. The Fatah Alliance ... ... forces.
It was more than three months before the new parliament met in early September 2018. The political process stalled as thousands of people took to the streets for rallies and demonstrations, with the biggest protests
taking place
in Basra. The political ...
... These are the questions addressed in the RAND think tank's recent
report
"
Fighting Shadows in the Dark. Understanding and Countering Coercion in Cyberspace
". The authors discuss cyber operations conducted by four states — Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — and try to determine whether those activities amounted to cyber coercion.
Starting with the study findings, we will highlight the following points. Cyber operations intended to coerce are a small subset of overall cyber operations ...
... and what consequences could that have for ISIS and international terrorism as a whole?
Andrey Kortunov, Michel Duclos:
Helping Iran to Make the Right Choice
The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is definitely a further blow to ISIS as it eliminated its operational ... ... eliminate the head, the person that comes after is usually even more of a risk. The main priority now is to resolve the issue for thousands of ISIS fighters and affiliates, as well as wives and children who are in prison camps in North-East Syria and Iraq. This ...
... announced independent payment tool in relations with Iran (INSTEX) has not yet begun functioning even for humanitarian transactions. Without political support from the US, it could quickly wind up on the US Department of Treasury’s SDN list. Trump’s refusal to make exceptions for some European countries (Italy and Greece) in oil trade with Iran was also somewhat humiliating.
In the meantime, Iran made symbolic but unequivocal steps on withdrawing from the JCPOA. It is hard to argue against Tehran’s logic: if the deal is violated by one side and these violations lead to serious if not ...
Sooner or later, the Emerging Situation Will Force the Trump Administration to Make the Difficult Choice between the JCPOA and a New War in the Middle East
In the last few months, the U.S.¬–Iran confrontation has been rapidly and steadily plunging the Middle East into the atmosphere of an impending armed conflict. The main stumbling block for Tehran and Washington is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the two states differed ...
