At the end of a media briefing in New York last month, senior US official Tom Barrack slid in a reference to Washington controlling one of the most fraught pieces of land in the South Caucasus.
“They’re arguing over 32km of road, but this is no joke,” Mr Barrack said. “So what happens is America comes in and says, ‘OK, we’ll take it over. Give us the 32km of road on a 100-year lease, and you can all share it’.”
The US Treasury Department added Kataib Imam Ali (the “Imam Ali Brigades”) to the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists on June 12, 2025. Kataib Imam Ali is one of the many Iraqi militias that are part of Iran’s network of proxies in Iraq and the broader Middle East. The Treasury Department has not yet issued a statement expanding on the designation.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — The dead body of 2 1/2-year-old Ro’a Mashi lay on the table in Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, her arms and rib cage skeletal, her eyes sunken in her skull. Doctors say she had no preexisting conditions and wasted away over months as her family struggled to find food and treatment.
Her family showed The Associated Press a photo of Ro’a’s body at the hospital, and it was confirmed by the doctor who received her remains. Several days after she died, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday told local media, “There is no hunger. There was no hunger. There was a shortage, and there was certainly no policy of starvation.”
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A bill aimed at further legitimizing pro-Iran armed factions has sparked controversy in Iraq. While the United States has voiced opposition to the move, two lawmakers affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, told Rudaw they reject Washington’s interference.
After the war, the Iranians made a strategic decision to continue supporting Hezbollah and to invest renewed resources in its strengthening and reconstruction efforts. Iranian “advisors” from the Revolutionary Guards arrived in Lebanon and are currently working closely with Hezbollah operatives as part of the organization’s renewed force buildup. Mainly in military aspects, but also in civilian aspects.
The Qatari New Arab reported on July 17 that Esmail Ghaani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), met with Tehran’s Iraqi proxies in Baghdad earlier this week. Ghaani reportedly warned the militia commanders that an Israeli attack against them in Iraq is “imminent,” while also instructing them to stay vigilant against an Israeli intelligence penetration.
Iranian leaders face fundamental questions about their strategy and military priorities in the aftermath of the Israel-Iran war. They failed to deter US and Israeli strikes or to defend their airspace, giving Israeli forces the freedom to strike a wide range of critical targets across Iran. Iranian missile forces failed to penetrate Israeli air defenses at any significant scale, preventing Iran from imposing a serious cost on Israel for its strike campaign. These events represent a complete failure of Iranian security policy, which has long focused on deterring and defending against a conventional attack by the United States and Israel. Iranian leaders must now rethink their military approach fundamentally, which could change how they wield the forces at their disposal. They could, among other things, reconsider the division of responsibilities between their two military institutions: the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the conventional military known as the Artesh. Tehran has traditionally assigned its most critical missions to the IRGC but could increasingly look to the Artesh in the months and years ahead, especially given how poorly the IRGC fared in the recent fighting. This report examines the order of battle of the Artesh Ground Forces to inform the public discourse ahead of any major changes to Iranian security policy.
With Iran’s regional influence in steep decline, Turkey is aggressively positioning itself to fill the vacuum and assert dominance across the eastern Mediterranean and the broader Middle East. This ambition is clearly evidenced by Ankara’s rapid military buildup, its expanding engagement with African states such as Libya and Somalia, and its assertive military activity in Syria, all of which exploit Tehran’s retreat from the regional stage.
A recent article published in The Hill celebrated the revival of the Monroe Doctrine under Donald Trump by suggesting that U.S. pressure is displacing China from Latin America. But this view misreads both the nature of U.S. influence and the political and economic dynamics shaping the region. What we are seeing is nothing short of coercion by an empire attempting to secure its declining grip on a hemisphere that is increasingly multipolar and pragmatic in its economic policies.