Assistant Defense Secretary Celeste Wallander met with Iraqi leaders last week to reaffirm the U.S. partnership with the nation, and to underscore the U.S. commitment to supporting Iraq in the defeat-ISIS mission.
İtalya’da erken genel seçimlerin ilk sonucu şaşırtıcı değil. Faşist lider Mussolini’nin ardılı olarak kabul edilen İtalya’nın Kardeşleri Partisi (Fdl) lideri Meloni oyların yüzde 26’sını aldı. İçinde bulunduğu aşırı sağ ittifak yüzde 44 civarında oy aldı, hükümeti çok büyük olasılıkla bu yelpaze kuracak.
Fdl 2018’de aldığı yüzde 4.4 oyu, altı kat artırdı.
An Embattled Regime Faces Mass Protests—and an Ailing Supreme Leader
Early this month, the Iranian rumor mill cranked into overdrive amid reports that Iran’s 83-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who survived prostate cancer surgery in 2014, was again gravely ill. On September 16, the New York Times reported that emergency bowel surgery had left Khamenei bedridden and too frail to sit upright, citing four anonymous sources said to be “familiar with his health situation.” In the wilder corners of Persian-language social media, claims that Khamenei was on his deathbed gave way to speculation that he had already died. As has happened for more than a decade, such rumors quickly morphed into feverish conjecture about how Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the body of 88 Islamic jurists who choose the supreme leader, would select Khamenei’s successor and lively debate over the relative merits of the clerics jockeying for the role.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been named the kingdom’s prime minister, a position traditionally held by the king. Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is first in line to succeed his father as king, who announced the new position on Tuesday in a royal decree.
Two people were killed and eight were wounded on Tuesday by Turkish artillery targeting homes and workshops controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the countryside of Syria’s northern province of Hasakah, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported. SDF retaliated by shelling villages controlled by Turkish troops and Turkish-allied rebel forces in Hasakah, the London-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Iranian Majles member Masoud Pezeshkian, who has previously served as Iran’s Minister of Health, said in a September 19, 2022 show on IRINN TV (Iran) that he is sorry over the recent death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman who recently died after being beaten and arrested by Iran’s morality police for wearing her hijab “improperly.” He said that Iran’s laws are meant to make people more chaste and modest, but instead the Iranian regime should adopt different methods if its behavior is making Iranians hate Islam. He blamed himself, the Iranian government, the mosques, the religious scholars, and Iran’s broadcasting authority for the current situation in Iran, and he argued that it is impossible to make people religious by force. Amini’s death has sparked widespread protests in Iran (see MEMRI TV Clips No. 9833 and No. 9837).
“We will fight, we will die, we will take Iran back” and “Mullahs must get lost,” Iranian demonstrators keep chanting.[1] On September 23, in response to the regime’s cutting off mobile Internet, the State Department tried to take some measures to help the protestors, issuing a “General License” that would allow a general category of services and hardware not to be under sanctions.[2] After the announcement, Elon Musk immediately tweeted: “Activating Starlink.”[3]
The leader of Lebanese Hezbollah is threatening to attack an Israeli gas project off the Lebanon-Israel coast if it becomes operational before their sea border is agreed upon.
Hezbollah’s threats demonstrate the ability of the Iran-backed party to influence Lebanon’s national security decisions.
For more than a year, the Iranian population has taken to the streets to ask for more rights and more jobs. However, it seems that the West became aware only now of the existence of demonstrations in Iran against the dictatorial regime. The Iranians have tried in every possible way to communicate to the West that the regime of the ayatollahs does not represent them. This became clear with the elections of June 2021, in which the real winner was not the current ultra-conservative president Ebrahim Raisi, but “the boycott.” The Iranians had in fact chosen not to go to vote, in order not to give legitimacy to the government.[1]
The renewed agreement entails further steps to reform peshmerga forces as Pentagon aims to prepare Iraq’s forces for long-term self-sufficiency.
The United States renewed its agreement with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Wednesday to continue providing security support in the wake of the war against the Islamic State (IS).