When OPEC+ ministers hold their next monthly meetings on July 14-15, the Saudis are likely to be a strong voice pushing for the continuation of production limits, for both economic and political reasons.
The fourth Brussels Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region concluded last week with a drop in donations for 2020 for those affected by the decade-long war, a result which is disappointing but not surprising.
During three major crises, each happening under a different administration, the U.S.-Gulf partnership failed to effectively address the security concerns of the Gulf states. While no partnership is perfect, such major and persistent breakdowns in coordination among longstanding security partners are uncommon, and can be deadly if left unresolved.
Outside of clerical circles in Iran, the name of Alireza Arafi is hardly well known, but he deserves more attention. His entire career has been shaped by appointments given to him by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In fact, Arafi may even be a candidate to succeed Khamenei when the day comes.
Today’s landscape is dramatically different from that to which we awoke on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s a complex mix of foreign and domestic forces influenced by economic and social conditions that breed extremism which ebbs and flows across physical and cyber space often defined by great power competition. While terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS have innovated and adapted, U.S. counterterrorism strategy has remained unchanged, fighting yesterday’s war while neglecting present day threats as well as those over the near horizon. America is long overdue to update its counterterrorism strategy and, perhaps more importantly, how we measure success.
Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly independent states of the Caspian and Russia are still deeply intertwined in each other’s economies, security, and cultures. Moscow has continued to wield considerable military, political, and economic influence in the region.
With the election of former IRGC commander Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf as speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “Second Phase of the Revolution” is well under way in two of the three branches of government in the Islamic Republic. All eyes have now turned to the presidency, with elections less than one year away.
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On April 2, 2020, the Houthi version of Saba News Agency in Sanaa announced the first coronavirus case in Yemen, but shortly afterwards it retracted the news and the deputy chairman of the agency’s board of directors was fired. Many Yemenis had hoped the Saudi-led coalition’s blockade of the country and its resulting isolation might have helped to prevent an outbreak.
Late on June 25, the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service carried out an operation against Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-backed militia, in the suburbs of Baghdad, detaining militiamen, confiscating mobile Katyusha rocket launchers, and accusing the group of plotting another round of rocket attacks targeting the Green Zone and Baghdad International Airport.
As many as 17,000 people “disappeared” during the Lebanese civil war. From 1975 to 1990, Lebanese factions, Palestinian militias, and the Syrian and Israeli militaries waged war in Lebanon. In that time, they and associated actors — be they Syrian security services, or armed Lebanese gangs using the war to turn a profit — “disappeared” people. Now, 30 years after the war ended, Lebanon has finally created a national commission for the disappeared, and in doing so, has taken a small step toward helping families grapple with the consequences of a conflict that has never, really, ended — certainly not for them.
It is time to end the 41 years of futile hostilities between Iran and the United States of America.
Officials in Tehran have a lot to worry about. But they are particularly irked at the speed by which Asian states have dropped Iran as a trading partner. Iran had hoped that the East would save the country’s economy from the barrage of sanctions enacted by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. In early 2018, at a time when Trump and his team were about to unveil the most punishing sanctions regime ever imposed on a country, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei explicitly urged Tehran to look east for trading partners.
Leaders of Arab Gulf regimes now decry the attempt to implement the vision of the Israeli Right, which aims to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. But it is exactly the policies of the Arab Gulf regimes, through their normalization of ties with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, that directly contributed to the rise of the Israeli Right and made this annexation more likely.
Despite strong religious and cultural ties and a long shared border, Iran has a somewhat complicated relationship with Afghanistan. Since the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan some four decades ago, Iran’s attempts to preserve its interests in conflict-ridden Afghanistan have not received much attention from the outside world, but it remains one of the most important neighboring countries for Tehran’s foreign policy.