When it was signed four years ago, the Iran nuclear deal was widely perceived as a diplomatic triumph, a move that would help reintegrate Iran into the global economy and restore its relations with the West. Things haven’t quite turned out that way, however.
Although some of the groups involved have exclusively Iraqi roots, the “mobilization” as a whole could be regarded as Iran’s Trojan army in Iraq.
From its first days, the Khomeinist regime in Tehran regarded most Arab nations as artificial states created by colonial powers around an army of natives they had created as a means of controlling the population. Thus, revolutionary Iran had to disband or at least weaken those armies by creating Arab revolutionary armies loyal to the ayatollah.
Despite these attacks, and attempted attacks, the EU, despite its ceaseless moral sanctimony, continues to soften its tone toward Iran, presumably out of a zeal for doing business even with a country designated the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
“There are Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on planet Earth! We must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help. We will lacerate and tear them to pieces.” — Fathi Hammad, Hamas senior leader, at a rally near the Gaza-Israel border, July 14, 2019.
In a short statement released earlier today via Telegram, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) responded to a recent documentary produced by Qatar’s Al Jazeera news channel.
The report, considered the most important indicator of internal security in Germany, draws a bleak picture and raises questions about the government’s apparent passivity in face of mounting threats…. Meanwhile, the Erdoğan-aligned Islamist movement Millî Görüş (Turkish for “National Vision”), which has around 10,000 members in Germany, is the second-largest Islamist group in the country (the Salafist movement is now the largest Islamist grouping in Germany). Millî Görüş is strongly opposed to Muslim integration into European society.
The Lebanese authorities’ measures against Palestinians again highlight the discrimination Palestinians have long been facing in this Arab country. “Palestinians in Lebanon,” according to a 2017 report by the Associated Press, “suffer discrimination in nearly every aspect of daily life…” Lebanese law restricts Palestinians’ ability to work in several professions, including law, medicine and engineering, and bars them from receiving social security benefits. In 2001, the Lebanese parliament also passed a law prohibiting Palestinians from owning property.
As the American-sponsored “Peace to Prosperity” workshop in Bahrain came to a close at the end of June, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continued his lobbying efforts to denounce the U.S. peace plan and the Manama summit. During a press conference held with his Chilean counterpart in Ramallah, the octogenarian leader reiterated the importance of a political solution prior to the implementation of regional economic projects like those proposed in the White House’s plan. Abbas’ simultaneous emphasis on Palestinian national rights and bilateral relations with Chile in the context of the Manama conference was by no means a coincidence. With the increased influence of right-wing populism and evangelicalism, Abbas has seen the region’s historic commitment to the Palestinian cause wane. These internal changes, along with a pivot toward Washington, have, in turn, aided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in making further inroads on the South American continent.
Yet, while Iran shows no sign of scaling down its aggressive stance towards the US and its allies in the region, Europe continues to cling to the wreckage of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to give the nuclear deal its proper name, in the misguided belief that the deal remains the best means of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has been decimated by eight years of civil war. Defections, deaths, and a lack of funding have gutted its ranks while heavy losses of armored vehicles have significantly reduced the mechanized capabilities of what was once the sixth-largest armor fleet in the world.1 The inability of Damascus to fully deploy its official army led to the rise of paramilitary militias and an influx of pro-regime foreign fighters. Furthermore, the way in which the SAA units were deployed, by “task-organizing” divisions into reliably loyal units of approximately one brigade, led to the disintegration of brigade-division administrative ties.