United States President Joe Biden is expected to announce on Wednesday a complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by September 11, thereby postponing the May 1 deadline set by his predecessor Donald Trump early last year during negotiations with the insurgent Taliban group.
Iran on Tuesday announced it would begin to immediately enrich uranium to 60% purity, in what Iranian President Hasan Rouhani said on Wednesday during a televised Cabinet meeting is a response to recent sabotage efforts against Tehran’s central nuclear facility in Natanz, blamed on Israel. The move comes just prior to the second round of talks in Vienna between Iran and world powers, aimed at resuscitating the gutted 2015 nuclear deal. The United States, with which Iran held “constructive” indirect negotiations in the Austrian capital last week, condemned Tuesday’s announcement, calling it a “provocative” step. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, reached between Tehran and the P5+1 world powers, put a cap of 3.67% on the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment. Yet after former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the pact in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions, Iran eventually began breaching parts of the agreement. Last year, Tehran began enriching its uranium up to 4.5%, and in January moved up to 20% enrichment. A fissile purity of 90% is required to assemble a nuclear bomb.
In early May, a high-speed boat pulled alongside the Rio Mitong, a Panama-flagged cargo vessel, just off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. Using ladders to board the ship, a group of assailants kidnapped two crew members, taking them back to the shore, where they subsequently held them for ransom. Another ship was reportedly attacked that same night, elsewhere in the Gulf of Guinea.
These attacks are just two among many recent incidents in this vast and strategically significant body of water, where armed robbery, piracy and kidnappings at sea have escalated in recent years. Though piracy overall has decreased globally, the Gulf of Guinea—which borders more than 3,700 miles of West African coast, between Guinea and Angola—now accounts for 90 percent of maritime kidnappings in the world, according to the International Maritime Bureau. The IMB sounded the alarm and called for international cooperation after tracking an “unprecedented rise” in kidnappings in the region in 2019, up 50 percent from the previous year.
Late last month, Japan and Malaysia concluded a weeklong joint coast guard exercise focused on combating piracy in Southeast Asia. Despite a recent decline, piracy is still a threat across the region and cooperation between states—including some, like Japan, that are outside the region—is seen as an important mechanism for mitigating it. In an email interview, Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, a foreign affairs and security analyst on Asia-Pacific issues and a former lecturer at the School of Social Sciences at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, discusses the state of piracy in Southeast Asia and what kinds of multilateral responses have emerged to counter it.
After a steep reduction, piracy seems to be on the rise again off the coast of Somalia, with “five or six” incidents occurring in the past two months, according to U.S. military officials. These have included the hijacking of a Comoros-flagged tanker that was later released, as well as the seizing of a fishing trawler and the brief boarding of a cargo ship. In an email interview, John Steed, regional manager for the Horn of Africa at Oceans Beyond Piracy, explains the recent surge and the factors giving rise to it.
Following Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s approval last month of a new naval base to be built on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, official Kremlin statements have billed the facility as a logistics center that will be defensive in nature—for principal use as a resupply station for Russian warships. In spite of these assurances, Russian media outlets have touted the base as Moscow’s gateway to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, widening the reach of its naval forces. The basing agreement’s terms, which were released on Dec. 8, appear to support this latter view: In exchange for military aid, Sudan will allow Russia to maintain its facility in Port Sudan for at least 25 years, allowing it to bolster its influence in key maritime theaters.
On July 24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined thousands of worshippers in the streets around the historic Hagia Sophia in Istanbul for a doubly symbolic moment. Surrounded by a swarm of politicians, soldiers, security forces and imams, the Turkish leader made his way into the giant, former Byzantine cathedral through doors once hammered open by conquering Ottoman soldiers in 1453. Inside, he read out the namaz, or Muslim prayer, formally turning the 1,500-year-old building back into a mosque.
In doing so, Erdogan was turning the page on nine decades of recent history, during which this extraordinary structure and UNESCO World Heritage Site had been a globally recognized symbol of secular Turkey. Indeed, since 1934, Hagia Sophia had been neither a cathedral nor a mosque, but a secular museum, established as such by the very founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Yet Erdogan was not only challenging Ataturk’s vision of a secular state that day. By choosing July 24 to hold the reopening ceremony, Erdogan was also challenging the entire foundation of modern Turkey’s international status.
Ukraine’s defense minister said on Wednesday that Russia is potentially preparing Crimea for storing nuclear weapons.
Ukraine’s defense minister said on Wednesday that Russia is potentially preparing Crimea for storing nuclear weapons and warned that Moscow could attack Ukraine to ensure water supplies for the annexed peninsula.
Halevy should know something about difficult situations. Since arriving as a teenager to Israel in the year of its birth, 1948, he’s been involved in some of the country’s most earthshaking events.
Like the rest of Israel, Efraim Halevy has spent most of the last year with his wife Hadassah in their Tel Aviv home while sitting out the coronavirus pandemic.
In February, India and Pakistan announced the resumption of a 2003 cease-fire along their fiercely disputed border — representing a first step toward easing tensions between the nuclear rivals. Soon after, leaders in both countries made forward-looking statements, sparking optimism for rapprochement. While bilateral progress has proven short-lived in the past, and longstanding political and security obstacles remain, could these developments open space to address the underlying drivers of conflict?