Month: February 2024

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday announced the creation of an independent panel that will “assess the neutrality of UNRWA” and respond to allegations of “serious breaches”.

The new independent panel focused on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees will be led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, who will work with three European research organisations, the UN said in a statement.

Latest Developments

Hezbollah targeted northern Israel with anti-tank missiles on February 22. “An anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon Thursday morning struck a private home in Yuval, a village in the Upper Galilee,” Israel’s Yediot reported. A second anti-tank missile struck an open area near Kiryat Shmona, a city in northern Israel. There were no injuries reported in the attacks, and Israel responded with artillery fire. Tensions with Hezbollah have increased in recent weeks as the Iranian-backed terrorist group continues to carry out rocket and drone attacks on Israel. Israel evacuated communities along the border with Lebanon in October.

Preliminary reports from MDA on Monday indicated eight wounded in a suspected terror attack in Ra’anana in central Israel. Suspected car-ramming and stabbing attacks are initially reported.

A decade after it was opened, Bulgaria’s biggest asylum centre, in Harmanli, is a crowded, sometimes violent, and – according to many accounts – squalid place, emblematic of the rot at the heart of Europe’s asylum policy.

Introduction

During the first week of September, Iranian speedboats twice harassed U.S. Navy ships in international waters near the Strait of Hormuz. Those boats belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In the same week, news emerged that the IRGC had arrested another dual Iranian-American national during a family visit to the country. The commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, meanwhile, was in Aleppo, in the company of Iraqi Shiite militias currently engaged in the siege of Syria’s second-largest city. Indeed, only a few days earlier, the IRGC announced the formation of a Shiite liberation army composed of Shiite militias that Iran has been nurturing across Mesopotamia and the Levant. That did not stop France’s mobile phone giant, Orange, from beginning talks with Iran’s largest mobile phone operator, Mobile Telecommunication Company of Iran (MCI), over acquiring a stake in the Iranian company. The IRGC controls MCI through a 50-percent-plus-one stake in its parent company, the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI).

The ongoing Gaza crisis has added fuel to the Middle Eastern fire and the prospects are not bright for an early end. Israel bids higher than it can afford. It relies on American support, but there are limits and the American public may, at some stage, say that enough is enough.

Imad Abdul Reda Bakri is a Hezbollah financier and Weapon smuggler. He is a major shareholder in vast number of businesses worldwide. Through some of those businesses he used to launder and transfer money to Hezbollah. Since this structure was never touched, we believe he is still doing it today. Part of the weapon shipments he used to smuggle into Africa, were delivered by Bakri to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

According to information acquired by Asharq Al-Awsat, the initiative encompasses a comprehensive restructuring of the constituent forces within the National Army.

Sources within the Syrian opposition have unveiled a strategic plan aimed at revamping the Turkish-backed National Army. This initiative involves consolidating certain units, streamlining manpower, and ultimately enhancing security measures in northern Syria. The overarching goal is to bolster the authority of the Ministry of Defense of the Syrian Interim Government, which has faced persistent criticism for perceived inefficacy.

Ukraine says Russian troops are being trained on the use of Iranian drones at the Shayrat airfield in Syria’s western province of Homs. At the same time, Syria has extended permission for the United Nations to deliver aid to opposition-held areas in the northwest of the country via two Turkish border crossings for another three months.