Eight years after the revolution, Tunisians seem to be swinging between disenchantment and anti-establishment backlash.
If there is one Iranian military figure that can be considered an international celebrity of sorts, it is General Qassem Soleimani. He is the head of the Quds Force, the arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that operates outside of Iran’s borders. This week, he gave his first ever lengthy public interview, focusing on Iran’s role in the 2006 war between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel.
As ISIS’s territorial “state” was simultaneously rolled back and then defeated, an international consensus increasingly emerged that claimed Syria’s war was “winding down.” There is no doubt that the geographic scope and intensity of conflict is not what it was at the height of hostilities in 2014 and 2015, but it is certainly not finished either.
On Sept. 14, the news that Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities had been attacked and damaged came as a shock. And yet, in the not too distant future, this attack will likely be regarded as a tactical mistake. Tehran has miscalculated the timing of such a spectacular attack and it’s unclear whether Iran will get another opportunity to strike such a surprise blow again.
After five years of indecisive war, there is a clear desire on the part of the international community to bring the conflict in Yemen to an end, and the recent UN-endorsed Houthi initiative seems predicated on the assumption that ending the fighting between Riyadh and the Houthis would achieve this. A closer look at the situation, however, suggests this assumption is flawed.
The Saudis made their first cautious moves to disentangle themselves from Yemen but remain far from any settlement. In response to an earlier announcement of a unilateral ceasefire by the Houthis on the fifth anniversary of their entrance into Sanaa, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman said that a settlement in Yemen would be far easier if the Houthis abandoned their Iranian backers. His comments come after the Saudis announced a partial ceasefire covering some areas in Yemen, but Saudi planes attacked Houthi positions in northern Yemen along the border as if to emphasize that it is only a partial ceasefire.
In its final report, the congressionally-mandated Syria Study Group (SSG) provided a bleak but wholly realistic assessment of the state of the crisis in Syria. When it comes to policy prescriptions, however, the SSG falls short. Despite clearly identifying the “means and ends” gap as one of two core problems with U.S. policy in Syria, the “recommendations” suggested by the SSG differ little, if at all, from those already in place.
The crux of today’s Libya problem in international foreign policy lies in an underappreciated UN misstep in the most important international treaty concerning Libya, the 2015 Skhirat Agreement, and the decision to vest sovereignty in the heads of independent and semi-independent sub-state institutions like the Central Bank of Libya. The negative implications of this decision must now be addressed and it is time to move onto something new, after Skhirat.
In the end, it all fell apart rather quickly. Instead of a long-awaited announcement about the details of a U.S.-Afghan Taliban peace deal, on Sept. 7 President Donald Trump tweeted that the talks were off, adding shortly afterwards that the Afghan peace process was “dead.” Only days earlier, Washington’s special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, had announced a draft agreement had been reached after nine rounds of gruelling negotiations.
Riyadh has military options for retaliating against Iran. The Trump administration needs to persuade Saudi leaders not to use them.
The Sept. 14 attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing plant has put Pakistan in a place it never wanted to be: possibly forced to choose between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The Trump administration is reportedly considering launching another cyber attack against Iran to deter it from further aggression in the region.
Largely overlooked in international policymaking toward Libya’s current conflict is the role of corruption as a key driver of violence, as opposed to merely its byproduct. The high-level debate on Libya at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in late September and the proposed follow-on international conference to be hosted by Germany in October or November are the perfect opportunities to correct this oversight.
Without better infrastructure for using U.S.-made weapons systems, the Arab countries will keep coming up short.
At a trilateral summit in Ankara earlier this week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sat back and ate treats as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the world that efforts to topple the Assad regime have failed. The scene was a stark reminder of how far Turkey’s Syria policy has shifted.