Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa said that the country’s authorities have uncovered an Iranian bank that was financing acts of terrorism in the island kingdom.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani met with his Russian and Turkish counterparts today in Ankara for talks over the Syrian conflict.
The countries of the Middle East are using art to remodel their national identities. Billions of dollars have been spent on colossal building efforts and massive acquisition programs in an effort to expand the cultural sector in the Middle East, especially in the Gulf. Art acquisition now appears to be part of a geopolitical strategy by Gulf countries to use their hydrocarbon money to purchase cultural clout and establish themselves as international cultural centers.
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Paul Salem, Bilal Y. Saab, Marvin G. Weinbaum, and Charles Lister provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the latest violence in Gaza, Gulf Shield-1 military drills, the Taliban’s resistance to peace, and the approaching Syria summit in Ankara.
President Donald Trump’s Thursday remarks about an imminent withdrawal of US troops has drawn a great deal of attention in the Iranian press. While some state-run outlets and those affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards welcome Trump’s announcement as a victory for Iran and its regional proxies, others remain skeptical about whether Washington will actually press ahead with such a plan.
Commemorating the 39th anniversary of the March 30, 1979 referendum, which established the Islamic Republic, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) issued a statement warning against foreign threats against “the track record of the Islamic Republic.” The statement cautioned that “the front of Arroga
A senior Iranian military official said today that Tehran would not negotiate over its missile program with Western powers, Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported.
Scores of Iranian Arabs staged anti-government protest rallies in western Khuzestan Province after the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) excluded the Arab community’s cultural identity in a New Year TV show that was ironically supposed to showcase Iran’s diversity. The protesters called the program aired on the state-run TV “insulting” and demanded an apology from the IRIB.
Critics of the Iran nuclear deal have consistently argued that one of its major flaws is that it didn’t address Tehran’s ballistic missile program. Imposing limits on those weapons of terror, opponents of the deal say, is a primary U.S. objective and should have been part of our negotiating strategy with the Iranians from the beginning.
The UN Security Council should hold Iran responsible for disrupting regional and international security and providing ballistic missiles to the Houthi militants in Yemen to attack Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations, the speaker of the Arab Parliament has said.
In a scathing open letter published online, a close aide to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has continued the public feud between the former president’s team and the country’s judicial and military institutions. In the letter addressed to the Judiciary, Hamid Baqaei, a former vice president who was recently arrested on embezzlement charges, questioned the fairness and transparency of the country’s judicial system. He also crossed a regime red line by raising questions about the country’s secretive Quds Force and its chief commander, Major General Qassem Soleimani.
The Criminal Court of Riyadh today sentenced two Saudi citizens on charges of engaging in acts of terrorism and conspiring with Iran and its regional proxies to destabilize Saudi Arabia, the Arab press reported.
