Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu said in a statement in parliament on 18 November that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was an arm of US intelligence and reiterated his earlier comments by denouncing Washington for its support for the Kurdish militia.
On 14 November, US occupation troops in Syria looted a new batch of the country’s oil from the al-Jazira region, in coordination with their Kurdish proxy militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
“The American occupation forces took out a new batch of stolen Syrian oil, in 76 tankers, to their bases in northern Iraq, through the illegal Mahmudiyah crossing,” local sources told Syrian media.
On 14 November, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar posted an article that disclosed documents exposing Saudi, Bahraini, Emirati, and US involvement in the Iran riots.
The article recalled a statement by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in 2017 about moving the battle to the Iranian territories to keep the kingdom “safe,” considering that this was the launching point of the strategic endeavor to undermine Iran by striking its internal front.
In what it called retaliation for the deadly Istanbul blast on 13 October, the Turkish military launched over a dozen airstrikes against Kurdish positions in northern Syria in the late hours of 19 November and into the morning of the next day, killing members of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
On the evening of 16 November, two members of Iran’s security forces were killed and at least eight others were injured in the neighborhood of Khane Esfahan in the city of Isfahan. The assailants who carried out the attack reportedly drove by on motorcycles and opened fire on the security forces stationed in the street.
In the past few days, social media has been flooded with unsubstantiated reports alleging that the Islamic Republic of Iran sentenced 15,000 protesters to death in the wake of street protests and violent riots sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.
The misleading allegations largely stem from a 6 November report by the UK-based and Saudi-funded Iran International news outlet regarding a letter signed by a majority of Iranian lawmakers.
On 5 June, 2014, hundreds of ISIS militants launched a lightning assault on Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. As a result of the mass surrender and desertion of the Iraqi forces, ISIS took full control of the city on 10 June, just 5 days later. The group looted banks, freed prisoners, and captured significant amounts of US-supplied military equipment in the process.
But how did Mosul fall so easily? Why did four divisions of the Iraqi army, some 50,000 soldiers, withdraw without a fight in the face of just hundreds of ISIS militants attacking the city?
Throughout the 20th century, it was frequently said by residents of West Asia, “lift up a mullah’s beard, and you’ll see the words ‘Made in England’ written underneath it.”
Such cynicism is understandable, given Britain’s history of covertly co-opting Imams and sheikhs to further its malign interests across the region.
Following Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia in the Second Karabakh War in late 2020, Iran has doubled down on its long-standing diplomatic provocations, economic warfare, and threats of military aggression against Azerbaijan. The qualitative increase in its support for Armenia against Azerbaijan manifests in each of these areas.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham tried to enter the Turkey-backed factions’ stronghold to support Ahrar al-Sham that refused to support the newly formed leadership by some groups within the movement.
Sources in the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) told Al-Monitor that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched an attack at dawn on Nov. 11 on a base affiliated with the Ahrar al-Sham movement in the northern Aleppo countryside, which prompted the Turkish army to intervene and counter HTS’ attempt.