Former governor of Libya’s central bank named to head NOC
TRIPOLI, Libya
The Tripoli-based government of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh on Tuesday appointed a new chairman of Libya’s state oil company.
“Farhat Omar Bengdara was appointed chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC), replacing Mustafa Sanalla,” Oil Ministry spokesman Ahmad Jumaa told Anadolu Agency.
Syria’s Kurdish-led forces alleged Maher al-Aghal was also affiliated with Turkey-backed opposition group Ahrar al-Sharqiya.
A US drone strike on Tuesday killed the leader of the Islamic State group in Syria, the US military announced today.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that Russia highly valued cooperation with Saudi Arabia within the framework of OPEC+ group of world’s leading oil producers.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it hoped President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia would not be used to try to foster anti-Russian relations, just as the United States seeks to convince Riyadh to boost oil production amid soaring prices.
Iran is trying to showcase that it can work with countries that want to unseat the US as a global hegemonic power.
US President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia will include some discussions on the Iranian threat.
While G20 foreign ministers were meeting in Bali, Indonesia, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, threatened further escalation in his war against Ukraine, announcing to the world that “by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet”. What he meant became quickly clear when a missile attack hit an apartment building in Chasiv Yar in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, killing 33 people. Further indiscriminate attacks followed against Kharkiv in northern Ukraine and Mykolaiv in the south.
The political left is floundering over what to say about the war in Ukraine.
Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro supports Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has been his ally since 2018.
Some radicals have denounced high-profile American socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders for backing the United States. Fightback, the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency, supports neither Ukraine nor Russia, declaring this a “reactionary war on both sides.”
In the summer of 2014, as his followers were ravaging the cities of northern Iraq, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi convened a secret meeting with a weapons expert whose unusual skills the terrorist chief was anxious to acquire.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, has served to accentuate ongoing differences between the United States and Europe on the one hand and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) on the other. This has, to some extent, benefited Russia’s relations with the MENA region at the expense of the United States and Europe. But the impact of the Russian invasion may eventually prove harmful to Russia’s influence in the MENA region.
Eleven years ago, as popular uprisings erupted across the Middle East and North Africa, Europeans imagined themselves as partners of choice for democratic and economic transitions that would create pathways to sustainable stability. This dream failed catastrophically. The region was overwhelmed by instability and conflict, and Europe, in turn, by waves of refugees and deadly terrorism. Through it all the European bloc found itself marginalized, crowded out by the more assertive interventions of regional and non-regional actors.
When
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Where
Hybrid Conference
Zoom &
Middle East Institute
1763 N St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20036