If Turkish efforts to stop the regime’s advance on Saraqeb fail, the humanitarian crisis will escalate uncontrollably.
The escalating tensions between Turkey and Russia over Idlib did not come as a surprise to many outside the Turkish capital.
While proclamations of ISIS’s defeat were certainly premature, international policy and attention on countering terrorism in Syria has since declined — as if to suggest that the job is done. In fact, as 2020 sets in, the world seems to be getting counter-terrorism all wrong in Syria, in three interlinked ways.
Iran and the U.S. were on a collision course as soon as President Donald Trump arrived at the White House in January 2017.
By any objective standard, the Lebanese protest movement has failed. This is not necessarily an indictment against it. Rather, it’s a reality one cannot and should not ignore. The responsible thing to do now is to try to understand why it has fallen flat, despite more than 100 days of demonstrations in various regions of the country including the capital, Beirut.
First, a word of solace. In the annals of history, the Lebanese are in good company as most uprisings and revolutions failed to attain their goals. And even when they did, success either didn’t last long or was completely reversed due to counterrevolutions and other spoilers, both foreign and domestic.
Over the past several weeks geopolitical experts have been talking a lot about what the surprise U.S. drone attack on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the IRGC – Quds Force, on Jan. 3 means for the Middle East and relations between the major powers. What has received considerably less attention, however, is what Soleimani’s killing means for the South Caucasus, a region whose small size belies its strategic importance.
How did the Islamic Republic of Iran’s dominant narratives over labor evolve since the 1979 revolution? What paved the way to neoliberal discourses, particularly since the 1990s? Which processes and legal measures made workers precarious? What role did workers play, and along which lines did they develop their trajectories of resistance? These questions are at the core of this article, which explores the above-mentioned issues from two different vantage points: a top-down approach, which looks at official narratives, as well as the legal strategies that contribute to the precarization of workers; and a bottom-up perspective, which seeks to understand workers’ practices of resistance and counter-hegemonic actions.
Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was on Israel’s “most wanted” list for more than a decade. Israeli intelligence identified him as a looming threat early in his career, and with time he outperformed even the graver threat predictions, as he systematically built the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force into a formidable regional stealth operation. Soleimani was a highly sophisticated executioner of Iran’s long-term strategy, which can be described as an effort to build a “double crescent.”
As neighboring regions, the South Caucasus and the Middle East are inextricably intertwined — so much so that the former is sometimes even considered part of the Greater Middle East. While geographical proximity is the strongest driver of interconnectivity between the two regions, geopolitics, business ties, and energy interests also link countries from the South Caucasus and the Middle East and form the basis for important bilateral and regional relationships.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Force, on Jan. 3, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the U.S. of Iran’s “harsh revenge.” There has been much speculation around the timing, location, and the type (or form) of Iran’s promised revenge. Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou takes a closer look at the impact of the widely discussed strategy of blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
On Jan. 5, shortly after Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in Iraq by an American drone strike, Tehran announced that it would no longer remain committed to the enrichment restrictions laid out under the 2015 nuclear deal. Even though European diplomats have rushed to assuage Iranian concerns about the possible resumption of international sanctions, Tehran perceives this as an extension of the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign and is very unlikely to back down or substantially change its defiant behavior — domestically promoted as a counterpolicy of “maximum resistance” — even if punitive UNSC resolutions against it are reinstated.
The U.S. assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani came as a seismic shock to the Middle East, not least to the embattled political system in Damascus that has reaped the benefits of Iran’s military involvement across the region. While his death will be a severe blow, it will not necessarily translate into a decline in Iran’s influence or military presence in Syria. Soleimani’s army of militias and supporters will outlast him, possibly by decades.
Although Moscow continues to reap the benefits of its Syrian campaign, it is increasingly faced with diminishing returns. Despite its greater geopolitical involvement in the country, the Kremlin has so far failed to extract major economic dividends and may soon face increased competition from Tehran. With Syria’s future clouded in uncertainty and the unresolved issue of the Idlib region hanging like the sword of Damocles over any potential political settlement, Russia is now trying to bring the Libyan conflict into the equation as well.
On Dec. 2, a series of public statements from Emirati and Syrian officials brought widespread attention to the UAE’s rapprochement with Syria. In a video circulated by Russian state media outlet RT, the UAE’s charge d’affaires in Syria, Abdul-Hakim Naimi, praised the “wise leadership” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and hailed the Syria-UAE relationship as “solid, distinct, and strong.” Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad responded enthusiastically to Naimi’s comments by praising the UAE for standing by the Syrian government in its war against terrorism.
Following the recent escalation in U.S.-Iran tensions, the threat of Iranian cyberattacks is likely to intensify in the near to medium term. There are three possible fronts where Iran might look to carry out cyber operations: targeting the energy infrastructure of America’s Gulf allies; deploying malware against U.S. private sector companies; and launching disinformation campaigns that would aim to influence public opinion in both the Middle East and the U.S.