After decades of political setbacks, Iran’s former Revolutionary Guards commander has returned to the center of power. Is he an incidental beneficiary of war, or have observers underestimated him all along?
Gulf states and their partners are increasingly looking beyond their most immediate interests of containing the war with Iran. While recent talks between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran have kept de-escalation on the agenda, a broader regional security framework and non-aggression pact has also emerged, envisioning a longer-lasting solution to regional conflicts. The talks have yet to produce a settlement, but they reflect a growing recognition that Gulf security cannot depend entirely on Washington. Iran will still be there, and its neighbors will have to find ways of living with it.
Recent elections for the Israeli Knesset and American Congress may make less of a difference in the Middle East than some people think. Elections are significant indicators of national political trends, but do not always translate into changes in national security strategies. That is likely the case now in both nations.
A new academic curriculum introduced by the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s Sana’a University promotes sectarianism and glorifies the Houthis and their foreign allies in Iran, Lebanon and Syria, according to reports published in Al-Arabiya,
Iran’s growing water shortage and other environmental challenges have recently reached crisis point. Water scarcity and air pollution have not only triggered sociopolitical and security problems inside the country but have also caused tension between Iran and its neighbors. With the collapse of ISIS, Iran and Turkey are stepping up competition for the control of water in the region, while a potential effort by Tehran to severely restrict the flow of water into Iraq could create more problems for the war-torn country.
“Iran has shared water [resources] with 12 neighboring countries. Drought can become a source of cooperation or friction,” Major General Yahya-Rahim Safavi, military adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said at the Water Diplomacy and Hydro-politics Conference on Tuesday.
The gravity of Safavi’s statement is best understood against the background of the water crisis in Iran and the country’s existing water disputes with neighboring countries.
Sayed Ali-Asghar Hosseini, an Afghan national living in Iran, says he hopes to quickly recover from injuries he sustained in the Syrian conflict in order to return to the Arab country and take part in the next phase of war against Israel and Saudi Arabia. “Our real war with Israel and the al-Saud family is still there.
Sobh-e Sadeq, a weekly outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), has lashed out at European powers for cooperating with Washington on the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. One of its lead articles on February 26 condemned the “shameless behavior of the European troika” – referring to France, Germany and Britain which are the three signatories of the Iran deal.
The head of a prominent Iranian-backed militia group in Iraq has said that the priority of the next government in Baghdad will be to “expel the American forces from Iraq and terminate the strategic cooperation agreement between the two countries.” Qais al-Khazali, who is the leader of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, also predicted that a coalition of Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) will form the next government after the upcoming parliamentary elections slated for May 12.
Iran has announced that it will allow Iraqi travelers and businesspeople to visit the Iranian cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr without the need for a visa, Iranian and Iraqi media reported. According to the consulate general of Iran in the Iraqi city of Basra, Tehran is waiting for the Iraqi government to approve the new policy and cancel the visa requirement for its citizens planning on traveling to the two Iranian cities.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has dispatched medical practitioners and equipment to Syria and Iraq to treat those injured in combat from its allied forces, a top IRGC general revealed earlier today.
Every resistance group emerging in the region is a “thorn in the eye” of the United States and Israel and the future of the Middle East belongs to Iran and its regional allies, Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, the deputy chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, said today.
Decision-makers in Iran are in a unique position. Years of sanctions, which ostracized the country and crippled its economy, have been lifted, giving way to a deluge of foreign investment in energy, consumer goods and other key economic sectors. These two factors together have already paid political dividends for the leadership in Tehran, which has used the influx of investment to finance its military opposition to the Saudi-led Sunni bloc in Syria and Yemen and to legitimize its status as a critical regional and even global actor.
Afghan authorities in Herat Province today paraded a group of 10 militants who were reportedly trained in Iran to sabotage the inauguration ceremony of the landmark TAPI gas pipeline project in western Afghanistan. Mohammad Ayub Alizai, the head of the extremist group, claimed that he and his colleagues had received all necessary training and equipment to disrupt the ceremony.
The secretary-general of Harakat al-Nujaba, an Iraqi militia group with close ties with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), has said that the group will avenge the blood of Iraqi paramilitary forces recently killed in the Iraqi province of Kirkuk by “cleansing” Iraq of the American presence,
The latest anti-regime protests and internal security problems are more damaging to Iran’s national security than external threats, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, warned today.
The extraterritorial operations Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC-QF) is supposedly a secret special operations unit. Yet, leading commanders of the Quds Force have aggressively been seeking public attention lately.
The oldest peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East, MEI’s flagship journal covers politics, society, and culture in the region.
