Analysis

The leader of an Iraqi militia group with close ties to Iran traveled to Lebanon this week to voice solidarity with Hezbollah and pledged to stand with the “axis of resistance” in any future wars with Israel. Akram al-Kaabi, the head of Harakat al-Nujaba, made the remarks to reporters in southern Beirut after visiting the tomb of late Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was allegedly killed by Israel. “We, at the axis of resistance, will mobilize forces against Israel at any place.

This essay examines the humanitarian negotiation of protection in the Syrian refugee response. Focusing on the case of Lebanon, the essay presents three examples of how the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has negotiated refugee protection: by avoiding the refugee label, by establishing the contested notion of “protection space,” and by suspending refugee registration at the request of the Lebanese government.

The latest evidence of the evolving nature of the war in Syria was on display Saturday, Feb. 10, when Israel mounted what a senior Israeli officer called “the biggest and most significant attack the air force has conducted against Syrian air defenses” since the 1982 Lebanon war. The unprecedented encounter was precipitated by the intrusion of an Iranian drone into Israeli airspace and led to the downing of a top-of-the-line Israeli F-16 by Syrian air defenses.

Iraqi Interior Minister Qasim al-Araji announced yesterday that the country is planning on opening the al-Qaim-Abu Kamal border crossing between Iraq and Syria, Iranian and Iraqi media reported.  Al-Araji, who is a senior member of Iran-backed Badr Organization, added that his ministry has obtained permission from Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Chief of Staff of the Iraqi military, General Othman Al-Ghanimi, to reopen the strategic border crossing.

Harakat al-Nujaba, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia group fighting in Iraq and Syria, announced that it stands with Syria against the Israeli “aggression and cowardly massacre” in the Arab country. Hashem al-Mousawi, the group’s spokesman, said Israel is unable to attack Syria and the “axis of resistance” – a term used for the alliance of Iran and its regional proxies.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Charles Lister, Bilal Y. Saab, Eran Etzion, Gonul Tol, Paul Salem, and Randa Slim provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the Syrian-Iranian downing of an Israeli fighter jet, the critical crossroads of U.S. and Turkey relations, Rex Tillerson’s upcoming visit to Lebanon, and Iraqi reconstruction plans.

A senior aide to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has rejected the prospect of renegotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers in July 2015. “We have honored our commitments, and the JCPOA is not open to renegotiation and review under any circumstances,” Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister who now holds several senior positions, told reporters.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said today that Iran is the most powerful country in the Middle East and will defy international pressure on defense capabilities, particularly its missile program. “The repeated defeats of America, the Zionist regime [Israel] and the European and regional allies of Washington and Tel Aviv in proxy wars and Takfiri terrorism – which have turned out to be contrary to their expectations – are a reminder of the undeniable fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the undisputable No.

The commander of Khatam al-Anbia Construction Headquarters, a conglomerate of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), has

Some Iranian citizens who had joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Afghanistan have tried to enter Iran to conduct terrorist attacks,

A series of devastating terror attacks orchestrated by the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network in the past two weeks have unnerved both the United States and Afghanistan. Visibly upset over the lack of success of his recently announced strategy on Afghanistan, President Donald Trump has declared that “We don’t want to talk to the Taliban.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, you will visit Ankara this weekend and next week to address what is now a crisis between the United States and Turkey. We are on a collision course over dramatically opposing goals. The United States is determined to eliminate ISIS as a threat in Syria and prevent its return. Turkey is determined to block any coalition of Kurdish forces from having a viable military presence on its borders. Over the past few years, each country has tried—and failed—to persuade the other to support its strategy.

On Wednesday, the Bahraini Foreign Ministry announced that the country’s security forces have arrested four members of a “terrorist cell” involved in a bomb attack on an oil pipeline and claimed that the suspects had received training in Iran by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

In a telephone conversation earlier today, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the latest developments in the Syrian conflict. According to Iranian and Turkish media outlets, the two leaders agreed to continue to cooperate to tackle regional security and terrorism problems.

A senior official of Harakat al-Nujaba, an Iranian-supported militia group fighting in Iraq and Syria, issued a threat against the US military in Iraq and called on Washington to pull out its troops from the country, the Iranian media reported. “We will never forget the atrocities of the United States in our country and we still have not settled a score with America,” Nasr al-Shamri, an executive director of the group said in a live interview with Al-Furat TV in Iraq.