... the West in the MENA region, like in many other parts of the world. The evident lack of trust between Moscow and Western capitals might complicate many regional problems, including resurrecting the Iranian JCPOA, maritime security arrangements in the Gulf, deconflicting in Syria, and multilateral mechanisms for dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Russia, alongside China, the U.S., and the EU, approaches the MENA security problems as a zero-sum game, this is likely to further complicate any progress in addressing ...
On December 4, 2019, in Brussels, Belgium, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) organized a seminar on Syria issues and collective security in the Gulf
On December 4, 2019, in Brussels, Belgium, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) organized a seminar on Syria issues and collective security in the Gulf. The event was attended by representatives ...
... backed by Shiite Persian Iranians and the Arab Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Sunni Muslims, in general, do not like Shiites, and that is an understatement; many Sunnis do not even consider Shiites to be Muslims. That is why so much money from rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar is going to fund, train, arm, and equip Sunni jihadist extremists like ISIS to go fight Assad’s regime, and this has been the case for a while now. It is part of the reason why the Syrian Civil War is so deadly, so intractable, and so long; it is about so much more than just Syria when you throw the age-old Sunni-Shiite sectarian rivalries into the mix, which have been red-hot since the Lebanese Civil War, continuing through the ...
... to the Syrian Civil War, 2.) was not even not the among first Western nations formally recognizing the opposition, 3.) has been very lightly involved compared with other major international meddlers in this conflict (e.g. Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, the Gulf states…), and 4.) since the overall post-2003 Iraq mess, for which the U.S. does bear a majority of overall responsibility, was actually at its best levels of security all throughout the first two years of the protests/fighting in Syria, we cannot even begin to argue that the U.S. destabilizing Iraq is one of the major reasons why the Syrian Civil War got so out of control. If anything, the situation in Syria eventually did much more to destabilize Iraq than the other way around....
... summit’s goal was to reconcile the US with its long-time partners in the region, the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The ties that have been weakening during Obama’s presidency have suffered a major blow due to Washington’s reluctance to stand by the Gulf states in Syria and more recently due to America’s decision to engage with Iran. Gulf monarchies are disturbed by the possibility of a real thaw in US-Iran relations as a result of the nuclear deal and see it as a major threat to their interests. The fact ...
... ground are all designed, in no small part, to allow us to limit/lessen our relationship with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf countries financing violent extremists and generally exporting negativity. The idea is that we can limit/reduce the amount ... ... situations like in Egypt, for many years one of the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid, Obama and Americans, as was/is the case in Syria and Iraq, seems to prefer a “don’t do stupid shit” (to quote the president) approach.
Obama has—correctly—realized ...
