According to the Pentagon, joint operations are still active but at a reduced level
The US-backed Kurdish militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), reaffirmed on 2 December that it has halted all joint “counter-terrorism” operations with Washington’s military coalition in Syria in protest against Ankara’s bombing campaign.
A conflict of interest between Ankara and Washington over Syria will likely see the two drift apart, with Turkiye aligning more closely with Eurasian powers.
The series of airstrikes against Kurdish militants in northern Syria by Turkish jets in the past week come amid heightened concerns over Ankara’s threat to launch a ground operation. Such actions are not without precedent, yet have thus far achieved little in terms of eradicating the security challenges posed by US-backed Kurdish fighters.
The strikes have also worsened northern Syria’s water crisis, as a number of water pumps and desalination plants have been halted
Syrian Oil Minister Bassam Tohme announced on 30 November that the Turkish airstrikes on northern Syria, which began around ten days ago, have severely damaged the country’s energy facilities, including a gas plant, several oil wells, and electricity stations.
Baghdad has recently assured Tehran that it will not allow the IKR to serve as a hub for anti-Iran operations
Iranian media outlet Tabnak published a report on 2 December showing photos of a huge cache of confiscated, Iran-bound weapons which were reportedly seized by Iraqi authorities in the city of Sulaymaniyah, east of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) and not far from the border between Iraq and the Islamic Republic.
Following a drop in trade brought on by US sanctions, New Delhi and Tehran – boosted by their mutual strong relations with Moscow – are set to revamp ties in a new era of Eurasian multipolarity.
“Not a choice, but a necessity.” That’s how Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani stressed the importance of closer strategic and economic ties between Tehran and New Delhi during his visit to India in November.
The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is speeding up its design of a common payment system, which has been closely discussed for nearly a year with the Chinese under the stewardship of Sergey Glazyev, the EAEU’s minister in charge of Integration and Macro-economy.
Hungary didn’t qualify for the Qatar World Cup, but that hasn’t stopped Prime Minister Victor Orban from exploiting the world’s current focus on soccer to signal his Putinesque definition of central European borders as defined by civilization and ethnicity rather than internationally recognized frontiers.
“[Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] soldiers are firing Grads at civilians, hitting residential areas, orphanages, maternity hospitals with ballistic and cruise missiles. Ukraine is our home!”
This is the last social media post by 28-year-old Valeria Hlodan from Odesa.
India and issues relating to the country figure large in the latest US Department of Defense (Pentagon) report to Congress released on Tuesday. It needs to be emphasised that this is a report of a major US department which spends a great deal of money on ensuring the security of the United States (US). The money is appropriated by the US Congress, and therefore, there is often a tendency to overstate threats or to make them sound more immediate than they actually are. At the same time, while the Pentagon may be guilty of overstatement, its assessments are not figments of their imagination, but extrapolations of actual developments on the ground.
A US-led coalition fighting terrorists resumed regular patrols in Kurdish-held areas of northeast Syria on Friday after earlier Turkish airstrikes.
Patrols were reduced following the Turkish strikes that began on Nov. 20 in Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq, in response to a deadly Istanbul bombing that Ankara blamed on Kurdish groups.