Resolving the Detainee Dilemma II

When
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Where
Hybrid Conference
Zoom &
Middle East Institute
1763 N St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20036
When
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Where
Hybrid Conference
Zoom &
Middle East Institute
1763 N St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20036
Introduction
As it does every year, the Iranian regime marked Qods (Jerusalem) Day, established by the father of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1979 as the last Friday of Ramadan; this year, it fell on April 29, 2022. Iran considers Qods Day a symbol of the destruction of Israel, aka the Little Satan. Beyond regime calls for the Israel’s destruction, whether through armed confrontation by the Islamic resistance or through a referendum among Palestinians worldwide (though not Jews, not even those in Israel), two trends are evident in this year’s Qods Day statements by regime officials:
For the past year, the news and editorial commentary of the Washington Post has favored a more aggressive posture on the part of the United States and the Pentagon. The Post favors a U.S. naval presence in the Black Sea to break the Russian blockade against Ukraine as well as a more aggressive U.S. posture in the Indo-Pacific to challenge China. The twin notions of challenging Russia and China in their “home waters” conjures up images of daunting challenges that lead to increased defense spending and international tensions. And now the Post has added another adversarial challenge: the Middle East.
Syria’s Kurdish-led forces alleged Maher al-Aghal was also affiliated with Turkey-backed opposition group Ahrar al-Sharqiya.
A US drone strike on Tuesday killed the leader of the Islamic State group in Syria, the US military announced today.
Turkey and Turkmenistan are working on a gas deal that will likely extend to Europe in a bid to reduce Western dependency on Russian gas.
With fears mounting that Russia may cut off gas supplies to Europe, Turkey is working on plans to bring in gas from Turkmenistan and has started transiting gas to neighboring Bulgaria, which has already had its supplies of Russian gas cut.
The Turkish, Iranian and Russian leaders are set to meet in Tehran next week amid lingering Turkish threats against Syrian Kurdish groups. Putin and Erdogan will separately discuss the Ukrainian grain crisis.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are set to meet in Tehran next week, with Ukrainian grain exports and a potential Turkish operation in Syria likely to top the agenda.
The White House on Monday said it believes Russia is turning to Iran to provide it with “hundreds” of unmanned aerial vehicles, including weapons-capable drones, for use in its ongoing war in Ukraine.
Iran has already been striking the US in the region in dozens of rocket and drone attacks over the past year.
Reports over the weekend said that Iran was upping its rhetoric against any sort of US-backed air defense pact that might link Israel and several Arab countries together. Ostensibly, such cooperation would be defensive, but Iran and its proxies are currently the only real threat to the region.
Dressed in their distinctive black uniforms, fours soldiers of Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Services last week revisited the scenes of their bloody battles against ISIS in Mosul, the northern city the elite force played a key role in liberating five years ago.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said its forces had neutralized a “terrorist cell” in Salmas near the Turkish border.
The IRGC issued a statement announcing that its ground forces tasked with protecting the border triangle with Turkey and the Kurdistan region of Iraq “neutralized a terrorist cell after intelligence monitoring.”