When Syrian President Ahmad al Sharaa entered Damascus in December 2024 as a victorious rebel, he remarked that Syria was “the world’s leading source of captagon” but “is being purified by the grace of God almighty.” However, despite Sharaa’s words, the captagon industry continues to operate.
Le 23 avril 2025, le tribunal administratif de Lille a décidé que le ministère de l’éducation nationale devait restituer au lycée musulman Averroès son contrat d’association avec l’État. L’établissement, fondé par des personnalités liées initialement à la mouvance des Frères musulmans, avait vu son contrat résilié par le préfet du Nord en décembre 2023. Comment interpréter cette décision de justice, alors qu’Élisabeth Borne, ministre de l’éducation, a décidé de faire appel ?
Un rapport gouvernemental, intitulé « Frères musulmans et islamisme politique en France », présenté lors d’un Conseil de défense, mercredi 21 mai, pointe des menaces graves de la part d’une nébuleuse liée à la confrérie secrète des Frères musulmans, fondée en Égypte en 1928. Le chercheur Franck Frégosi, spécialiste de l’islam français, dénonce une communication politique et une interprétation erronée de ce que représente le « frérisme » dans la France d’aujourd’hui. Entretien.
An unsanctioned oil tanker that is operated by a US-sanctioned entity and has probably illicitly transported oil to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from Iran issued a false distress call in the Strait of Hormuz on May 20.[1] The Panamanian-flagged oil tanker the Themir likely issued a distress call that claimed it had been hijacked.[2] A British maritime security firm said that the distress call occurred 51 nautical miles northwest of Bandar-e Jask, which is consistent with the Themir’s position. The firm confirmed on May 21 that the hijacking call was a false alarm.[3] It remains unclear at the time of writing why the Themir issued the false distress call, but the vessel is linked to Iranian efforts to illicitly transfer oil.[4] The United States sanctioned the Themir’s Malaysia-based owner, IMS Ltd, on February 24 for aiding the Iranian oil export network, as part of US President Donald Trump’s ”maximum pressure” policy.[5]
The Themir’s pattern of behavior suggests it may have conducted a ship-to-ship transfer at some time while off the coast of Iran.[6] Iran and the PRC use ship-to-ship transfers to obfuscate the transportation of PRC purchases of Iranian oil, and ships travel in circular holding patterns when conducting ship-to-ship transfers.[7] The Themir was in a circular holding pattern 51 nautical miles northwest of Bandar-e Jask Port on the southern coast of Iran at the time of the distress call, according to maritime data.[8] The ship and its two sister ships—the Peterpaul and the Chamtang—have regularly sailed between the Gulf of Oman and the PRC.[9] Both the Peterpaul and the Chamtang are sanctioned for illicit transfers of Iranian oil to the PRC.[10] The ships usually enter circular holding patterns in the Gulf of Oman before sailing eastwards to PRC ports. Circular holding patterns can indicate that the ships are executing ship-to-ship transfers.[11] The Themir also previously travelled from the Gulf of Oman to the PRC’s biggest oil offloading port, Shandong Port, in September 2024.[12] The US Treasury Department recently sanctioned refineries in Shandong for importing billions of dollars in Iranian oil.[13] The Themir has also travelled along similar routes as its two sanctioned sister ships from near Bandar-e-Jask Port to eastern PRC through the Gulf of Oman and Malacca Strait five times since January 2024, suggesting that the Themir has previously illicitly transported Iranian oil to the PRC.[14]
The EU has a problem. Leaner, faster, and better-funded players like the UAE—after China and Russia—are expanding their influence in Europe’s immediate neighborhood—not through statements or diplomacy, but through concrete deals, immediate capital injections, and high-visibility development projects.
While the EU speaks in terms of painstaking and slow reforms and benchmarks, others are acting with speed and ambition, reshaping the political and economic landscapes on the ground.
Montenegro is now a case in point, and a telling one.
In March 2025, Prime Minister Milojko Spajić signed a far-reaching agreement on cooperation in tourism and real estate development with the UAE. The Burj Khalifa lit up in the colors of the Montenegrin flag and the prime minister announced a transformative moment for the country’s economy, initially floating a €30–35 billion ($33,8–39,4 billion) investment.
The flagship project would be a massive tourism and infrastructure development at Velika Plaža (Albanian: Plazhi i Madh) in Ulcinj (Albanian: Ulqin)—one of the Adriatic’s last undeveloped stretches of coastline. The deal quickly unraveled under public scrutiny: the numbers were walked back, the terms questioned, and the method—opaque, centralized, and rushed—triggered backlash from citizens, local leaders, and civil society.
The protests that broke out were not just expressions of anger. They were evidence of civic maturity and democratic expectation. People mobilized, not against foreign investment per se, but against its concentration in the hands of a few, against the sidelining of public interest, and against a model of development that leaves them invisible. These voices deserve more than acknowledgment: They deserve a political and financial response.
The EU could have immediately jumped on this civic and political mobilization, but it did not. It is not too late, though it requires an overhaul of the European Commission’s enlargement approach and its relationship with aspirant countries during the candidacy process, as well as how it wields its economic and development power.
Montenegro’s president, Jakov Milatović, has since refused to sign the agreement into law despite parliamentary ratification, citing issues related to transparency, potential environmental impacts, and alignment with the country’s strategic interests. The draft has now been returned to parliament, leaving the project in limbo. But this opens a strategic window of opportunity for the EU to step in, not merely to critique from the sidelines, but to offer meaningful alternatives rooted in democratic processes, environmental protection, and community empowerment.
Velika Plaža is not just any plot of land. It lies at the heart of Ulcinj, a majority-Albanian municipality with deep cultural heritage and a long history of exclusion from national development strategies. The region depends heavily on seasonal tourism, and the area in question—public coastal land—has long served as a shared economic and cultural space. The proposal to transform it into a luxury resort destination, driven by a single preselected foreign investor and negotiated behind closed doors, poses an existential threat not only to local livelihoods, but to the sense of identity and place held by the people who live there. Displacement does not always come at gunpoint; Sometimes, it arrives in the shape of a beachfront villa.
The ecological stakes are no less significant. The Velika Plaža coastline sits at the mouth of the Bojana river delta, a cross-border ecological corridor shared with Albania and home to over half of Montenegro’s bird species. Nearby, the Ulcinj Salina represents one of the most important habitats for migratory birds in the Mediterranean Sea. These are not marginal spaces; They are central to the region’s biodiversity and Montenegro’s EU commitments.
The problem with the UAE deal lies not only in its environmental impact, but in its procedural and structural flaws. The agreement, now circulated in both Montenegrin and English, appears to grant broad exemptions from public procurement rules and to favor a preselected investor. It exemplifies a model of development that prioritizes elite access, speed, and spectacle over transparency, competitive fairness, or public oversight. For a country actively negotiating the closure of Chapter 5 of the EU acquis on public procurement, such a move undermines both legal alignment and political credibility.
This also reinforces a broader regional pattern of so-called corrosive capital: foreign investment that appears beneficial on the surface but which, in practice, weakens institutional resilience, centralizes power, and creates long-term dependencies. These investments are attractive precisely because they are fast and uncomplicated—but they come at the cost of sovereignty.
This is where the EU has an opportunity, not just to push back, but to lead.
Ulcinj could become a pilot site for the EU to demonstrate what meaningful membership looks like—long before formal accession. The EU could actively support alternative models of development there, including investment in ecotourism infrastructure. It could also help pilot participatory urban planning models that involve local residents, municipalities, and civil society, as a demonstration of EU membership in tangible terms.
Such actions would not only reflect European values; They would embody them. Ulcinj is also ideal because it is geographically positioned to serve as a bridge between Montenegro and Albania, the current EU accession frontrunners. Cross-border cooperation on tourism, cultural routes that connect shared heritage sites, and environmental preservation could transform the regulatory reform burden on candidate countries into joint opportunities.
Montenegro does need investment, and for some, the UAE offer may seem like a fast win. But strategic autonomy is not about saying yes to the highest bidder; It is about building legitimacy, resilience, and trust from the ground up. Velika Plaža is not only an ecological treasure, it is a fault line between two futures.
The Montenegrin parliament will hold its final vote on the agreement on May 29. The EU doesn’t need to build a tower in Dubai to compete. It needs to act in its own immediate neighborhood—swiftly, savvily, and visibly—before someone else builds the future in its place.
Ankara is hosting a high-level trilateral summit Sunday, bringing together the foreign ministers of Syria, Turkey, and Jordan to discuss regional security, economic cooperation, and the future of joint counterterrorism efforts.
In a dramatic pivot from years of international isolation, Syria is emerging from the shadows of war and sanctions into a new era of diplomacy, reconstruction, and economic ambition. The recent meeting between Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and former U.S. President Donald Trump, hosted in Riyadh under the auspices of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and attended virtually by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, marks a watershed moment in Syria’s reintegration into the regional and global order.
It would be a betrayal of Hungary’s objective national interests to arm Ukraine since that would indirectly put its co-ethnics in harm’s way due to the increased likelihood of Russian strikes in their country’s historical region that was amputated from it by Stalin as well as directly endanger them too if Kiev decides to violently suppress its Hungarian minority on whatever trumped-up pretext it concocts.
The importance of Robert Fico’s piece is that it represents yet another clearly articulated and impressively pragmatic view of the Ukrainian Conflict from a European leader after Orban’s similar such displays over nearly the past two years.
Dozens of notorious Balkan crime figures have obtained Bosnian passports using stolen identities and insider access. The cost is borne by innocent citizens, whose names then trigger red alerts at the border.
Dozens of violent criminals have fraudulently obtained Bosnian passports in the past decade, taking advantage of an insecure government database to steal the identities of ordinary citizens, a new investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN) has found.