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Joshua Koontz is a Boren scholar with BAs in International relations and Middle East Studies from the University of Kentucky and an MA in Strategic Studies from Johns Hopkins SAIS. He spent two academic years in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, has worked as a research consultant for The American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project and as a Yemen Analyst at the Navanti Group consulting firm. He specializes in Yemen and tracking AQAP, ISIS, and other jihadi accounts on conventional and unconventional social media outlets.
On February 27, a Saudi coalition aircraft killed a senior Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.) officer, known only by the nom de guerre “The Afghan,” in Yemen’s northwestern region of Sa’ada, which borders the Kingdom.
Following the Houthi takeover of Sana’a, Iran expanded its academic and cultural exchange programs in Yemen’s education sector. Iran initiated these programs in response to a Saudi-financed program to increase the number of Salafi mosques and madrassas in northern Yemen in the 1990s.
