The framers of the 2020-21 budget were confronted with a long list of conflicting objectives.
Mainly at issue for the country is the difficult choice of whether to prioritize saving lives or saving the economy for a Pakistan that can ill afford to ignore either.
Frantic efforts are being made to clear the way for intra-Afghan talks, the logical next step forward in the implementation of the February U.S.-Taliban deal.
The U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue that will be launched this week provides an opportunity for the two sides to put their relations, as Iraqi President Dr. Barham Salih said last April, “in the right context.”
The Taliban’s military and diplomatic strategies are intended to work in tandem, one leveraging the other. Each has as its ultimate goal the Taliban’s recovery of an emirate lost in 2001.
The impact of COVID-19 on Iran-linked forces in Syria has provided Russia with an opportunity to expand its influence through its proxy forces, particularly in eastern Syria, as Iranian and pro-Iranian forces redeploy elsewhere in the country.
Since 2017, Iran has seen several waves of protests rooted in political, social, and, most importantly, economic grievances. In light of COVID and the post-pandemic fallout, there is every indication that unrest will continue to grow, and even accelerate. Until now, the regime’s coercive apparatus has had both the capacity and the willingness of its members to successfully suppress anti-regime unrest. But has COVID-19 changed this balance? What impact, if any, has the pandemic had on the regime’s security capacity?
Quickly attributing or blaming a country for a cyber incident without technical analysis, proof, and government officials willing to go on record only inflames an already tense situation.
The spread of the virus, unease about a cease-fire, peace talks, and the American withdrawal leave the Afghan people gripped with a heightened sense of uncertainty.
Iran is currently facing an incredibly unlucky alignment of pressure sources that are interrelated and will force the regime to engage in risky or experimental behavior, most likely in 2020. The COVID-19 epidemic simply exacerbates the combined challenges of a regime squeezed by an international sanctions network and a restive population reaching a breaking point with economic hardship. A continued acceptance of the status quo is untenable; thus, the regime will likely begin to undertake various initiatives in the coming months, more likely military than diplomatic in nature, that could force the United States to ease the isolation of the country.
Far from his native Tehran in bucolic West Vancouver, Parviz Tanavoli, the 83-year-old “father of modern Iranian sculpture,” contemplates the fate of his homeland. “My heart breaks when I see what is happening in Iran now,” says the renowned artist, who divides his time between a life of relative obscurity on Canada’s Pacific coast, and Tehran, where he is referred to simply as “Master Tanavoli.”
In Khamenei’s mind, the total neutralization of the ‘moderate’ camp is the best legacy he can leave behind.
The growing U.S. strategic reliance on India has fomented closer bilateral ties between China and Pakistan, straining the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.
The lifting of lockdown restrictions could lead to a spike in cases for which the country is ill prepared.
There was no other way to end the political logjam in conflict-ridden Afghanistan than to make current President Ashraf Ghani and the outgoing Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah agree to share power. The deal announced on May 17 has been widely welcomed by the international community because the political tensions between the two rivals were viewed as one of the major hurdles to the advancement of an intra-Afghan reconciliation process. The political jockeying in Kabul is far from the only impediment to reconciliation though and there are deeper obstacles to the peace process.