Eastern Mediterranean gas discoveries, progress, and what to watch in 2023
The challenge of developing export strategies for the offshore natural gas resources concentrated in the Eastern Mediterranean predates the Russo-Ukrainian war. Yet over the course of 2022, Europe’s intensifying energy crisis created a new and more immediate incentive to solve those export challenges, despite a great deal of work still to be done.
For the past ten years, Italy and Morocco have been two of the most economically dynamic countries in the Mediterranean basin. Morocco’s rise as a manufacturing and distribution hub for companies seeking to nearshore operations close to mature European end-markets, as well as emerging African end-markets, has created new potential synergies for a deeper Italy-Morocco commercial partnership.
Iran and cryptocurrency: Opportunities and obstacles for the regime
While cryptocurrency may offer Iran the opportunity to bypass sanctions and boost trade, it is by no means a panacea for such outcomes and comes with a host of obstacles, such as price volatility, economic uncertainty, energy consumption, and evolving regulation.
What role will China play in Ukraine’s post-war transformation?
Cost estimates for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction already exceed many hundreds of billions of dollars. Given the Western world’s slowing economic prospects, Ukrainian elites admit that China looks increasingly likely to have a role in helping finance and rebuild Ukrainian infrastructure. But Chinese involvement comes with economic and security risks.
What the United Nations’ 6th Climate Assessment tells us about the Mediterranean’s climate future
The latest U.N. IPCC report details the alarming changes that Mediterranean countries will experience in the coming decades due to climate change, highlighting three critical areas — warming and droughts, declining ecosystems, as well as socioeconomic and public health risks.
As terrorist groups expand in the Sahel, is Algeria the missing link?
Over the past two years, the steady expansion of terrorist and fundamentalist threats in the Sahel has not gotten the attention it deserves. Algeria’s regional diplomatic clout, military might, and experience in fighting terrorism could help Sahelian states ward off an imminent political and security collapse.
On Nov. 30, the Islamic State announced that its leader, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, had been killed in battle and that his successor, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurayshi, was now in place. Hours later, the United States military’s Central Command confirmed the death of Abu al-Hassan, adding that it had occurred in Daraa, in southern Syria, in mid-October at the hands of “the Free Syrian Army.”
Morocco and Israel: Economic Opportunities, Military Incentives, and Moral Hazards
The December 2020 Moroccan-Israeli normalization deal has evolved from a vehicle enabling Morocco to gain long-sought U.S. recognition of its claims on Western Sahara to a broader strategic partnership with Israel. But the relationship further strains relations with neighboring rival Algeria.
أطلقت المجموعات المحلية في مدينة درعا البلد ، وهي مجموعات عسكرية كانت تتبع للجيش السوري الحر، و بقيت في المحافظة بعد توقيع أتفاقية المصالحة مع النظام السوري برعاية روسية في يوليو / تموز عام 2018، عملية عسكرية واسعة على مجموعات هفو _ الحرفوش في أحياء طريق السد والمخيم داخل درعا البلد.
On Oct. 31, local units previously affiliated with the FSA launched a large-scale military operation against the al-Hafo-Harfoush group in the southern Syrian city of Daraa al-Balad. The operation followed a suicide bombing targeting the house of Ghassan al-Akram Abazid, a former FSA leader, that left four dead and several others wounded, on Oct. 28, in Daraa al-Balad. The attack was only the latest in a string of similar operations in southern Syria conducted by the group over the past year targeting military factions affiliated with the opposition.
Sudan is geostrategically important to U.S. interests in both Africa and the Middle East. The country’s military rulers, Lt.-Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy Lt.-Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as “Hemedti”), are banking on that fact as they seek to press the Biden administration to focus its Sudan policy on stability, rather than supporting calls for democracy.
