Iran is increasingly worried over Azerbaijani and Turkish geopolitical gains in the region as calls for “Greater Azerbaijan” push a hot button in Tehran.
Tensions are rising between Iran and Azerbaijan over Baku’s plans for a land connection to its exclave of Nakhchivan via Armenian territory, threatening to undermine Turkish-Iranian ties as well.
Fears are rising in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast over a potential military incursion by Turkey.
Turkey launched airstrikes on Syria’s majority-Kurdish region on Saturday night in apparent retaliation for a bombing that struck a crowded market in Istanbul last week.
Syrian Kurdish officials reported strikes in the areas of Kobani, Derik, Darbasiyah and Ayn Issa, key cities along the border between Syria’s northeastern autonomous region and Turkey.
As the dust settles from airstrikes on Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq, Turkey is threatening a wider operation in the region.
For months Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to “come suddenly in the night” for Kurdish militants on Turkey’s southern border. On Saturday night, scores of F-16 fighter jets and drones did exactly that.
Hamas leaders [who have relocated to Doha]… are using Qatar as a base for calling for the destruction of Israel. Yet this does not seem to bother the rulers of Qatar or its allies in the West, including the US.
This is the same Qatar whose leaders claim that they condemn all acts of terrorism and violent extremism.
It is disquieting, to say the least, that a county that hosts the leadership of a Palestinian group that carried out thousands of terror attacks against Israel is talking about Qatar’s desire to help eliminate terrorism and extremism.
Human Rights Watch recently released a disturbing report detailing the involuntary deportation of hundreds of Syrian refugees from Turkey back into the proverbial lion’s den of Assad’s Syria.
For those who continue to chronicle the Syrian genocide unleashed by Assad, Iran and Russia on the Syrian people after a popular revolution against the Baathist tyrant in 2011, this news is sadly unsurprising.
New military reinforcements reached on Monday to the city of Daraa, south Syria, in preparation for a military campaign by local gunmen against Islamic State Organization (ISIS).
The military reinforcements included dozens of vehicles loaded with machine guns and members affiliated with the Syrian government’s military intelligence.
During a meeting with the Syrian Foreign Minister held on Wednesday in Tehran, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi stressed the need to fully implement agreements between Iran and Syria.
Raisi said that Syria, following several years of crisis, is in a position today that enables it to enter its strategic relations with Iran into new fields by focusing on economic cooperation, according to The Islamic Republic News Agency.
Following violent fighting between opposition groups in Afrin in October, Turkey has begun reorganizing the National army factions. In this context, leaders of Syrian National Army factions held a meeting in Turkey on Wednesday to unite the ranks under one command.
Turkey carried out airstrikes against what it said are bases for armed Kurdish groups in northern Syria and Iraq, claiming that they were used as a base for attacks on Turkey, including the explosion at a popular pedestrian mall in downtown Istanbul last weekend that left six dead and dozens wounded. The main suspect in the bombing, a Syrian national identified as Alham Albashir, was arrested soon after the explosion.
The president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mohammad Eslami, condemned a draft resolution proposed by the United States, Britain, France and Germany that was passed late last week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors, that calls on Iran to cooperate with the IAEA’s investigators regarding the alleged “traces of uranium” at a number of its undeclared nuclear sites.