Orientul Mijlociu

Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating members of a smuggling network that helps fund Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and the Houthis in Yemen. Led by Iran-based Houthi financier Sa’id al-Jamal, this network generates tens of millions of dollars in revenue from the sale of commodities, like Iranian petroleum, a significant portion of which is then directed through a complex network of intermediaries and exchange houses in multiple countries to the Houthis in Yemen.

Latest Developments

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28 called for mass turnout in Iran’s elections on March 1. Yet even government polling indicates that the majority of Iranians will boycott the contest for Iran’s 290-seat parliament, formally known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a body tasked with selecting the country’s next supreme leader. This contest will mark the first nationwide elections since the anti-regime protests, known as the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, that rocked the country from 2022 to 2023, which were triggered by the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly.

WASHINGTON — Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating members of a smuggling network that helps fund Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and the Houthis in Yemen. Led by Iran-based Houthi financier Sa’id al-Jamal, this network generates tens of millions of dollars in revenue from the sale of commodities, like Iranian petroleum, a significant portion of which is then directed through a complex network of intermediaries and exchange houses in multiple countries to the Houthis in Yemen.

Table Of Contents

Introduction

The Two Faces Of Qatar: A Wahhabi/Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Organization In The Guise Of A Modern State

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday announced the creation of an independent panel that will “assess the neutrality of UNRWA” and respond to allegations of “serious breaches”.

The new independent panel focused on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees will be led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, who will work with three European research organisations, the UN said in a statement.

Latest Developments

Hezbollah targeted northern Israel with anti-tank missiles on February 22. “An anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon Thursday morning struck a private home in Yuval, a village in the Upper Galilee,” Israel’s Yediot reported. A second anti-tank missile struck an open area near Kiryat Shmona, a city in northern Israel. There were no injuries reported in the attacks, and Israel responded with artillery fire. Tensions with Hezbollah have increased in recent weeks as the Iranian-backed terrorist group continues to carry out rocket and drone attacks on Israel. Israel evacuated communities along the border with Lebanon in October.

Preliminary reports from MDA on Monday indicated eight wounded in a suspected terror attack in Ra’anana in central Israel. Suspected car-ramming and stabbing attacks are initially reported.

A decade after it was opened, Bulgaria’s biggest asylum centre, in Harmanli, is a crowded, sometimes violent, and – according to many accounts – squalid place, emblematic of the rot at the heart of Europe’s asylum policy.

Introduction

During the first week of September, Iranian speedboats twice harassed U.S. Navy ships in international waters near the Strait of Hormuz. Those boats belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In the same week, news emerged that the IRGC had arrested another dual Iranian-American national during a family visit to the country. The commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, meanwhile, was in Aleppo, in the company of Iraqi Shiite militias currently engaged in the siege of Syria’s second-largest city. Indeed, only a few days earlier, the IRGC announced the formation of a Shiite liberation army composed of Shiite militias that Iran has been nurturing across Mesopotamia and the Levant. That did not stop France’s mobile phone giant, Orange, from beginning talks with Iran’s largest mobile phone operator, Mobile Telecommunication Company of Iran (MCI), over acquiring a stake in the Iranian company. The IRGC controls MCI through a 50-percent-plus-one stake in its parent company, the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI).

The ongoing Gaza crisis has added fuel to the Middle Eastern fire and the prospects are not bright for an early end. Israel bids higher than it can afford. It relies on American support, but there are limits and the American public may, at some stage, say that enough is enough.