Obsessed with reviving Turks’ imperial days of glory, Erdoğan is turning to Turkey’s east to create a pan-Turkic/Islamist strategic alliance consisting of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan, with part-time, tactical alliances with Iran, Qatar and Bangladesh.
The idea is to bring together three Muslim nations: NATO member Turkey; Azerbaijan with its rich hydrocarbon resources and growing military capabilities; and Pakistan with its nuclear weapons.
The US became increasingly Zionist subverted after Apartheid Israel gained nuclear weapons by 1967. Support for Apartheid Israel (and hence of Apartheid) is now a pillar of US politics, with anti-racist critics of Israeli Apartheid ferociously attacked, side-lined, and falsely defamed as anti-Semitic. However Zionist control and hubris are now blatant: 32 percent or about one third of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists and the remainder are moderate Christian Zionists.
The United States has emerged as a major architect of the new map of the Middle East while continuing its military disengagement. This aims to extricate itself from a military quagmire as much as to recover forces and concentrate them towards a new objective: The Indo-Pacific zone and China. Washington intends to leave the keys of regional security exclusively to local actors.
The EAEU-Iran preferential trade agreement (PTA) implemented on October 27, 2019, offers lower tariffs on 862 commodity types, of which 502 are Iranian exports to the Eurasian Economic Union. This agreement significantly increased the trade volume between Iran and the member countries of the Union. In the period between October 2019 and October 2020, the trade volume grew by more than 84%. Indeed, the trade flows gradually gathered pace and the value of trade between Iran and the members of the EAEU exceeded $1.957 billion in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21 – August 22, 2021), marking 96 per cent growth compared to the same period of the previous year. As the agreement was designed to be in effect for 3 years, it is to expire on October 5, 2022. For this reason, the parties have recently begun technical and expert negotiations to upgrade the PTA to a free trade agreement (FTA). If this happens, the number of items of the agreement will rise to at least 8000, which is sure to set off a massive increase in the volume of trade between Iran and the Union. Although there are various capacities and advantages between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union, there are also problems that need to be taken seriously in the process of upgrading the EAEU-Iran PTA to an FTA. These include:
The Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second largest and hugely influential group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, does not believe that the conflict with Israel is over Jerusalem, settlements, borders, checkpoints or Palestinian prisoners.
Qattati’s article shows that PIJ and its masters in Tehran consider not only Israel as the “enemy,” but the US too. This is the same Iran whose representatives are currently negotiating with the US and other world powers about reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
‘Cubs of Caliphate’ are among 700 boys held in Islamic State prison, as Syrian Kurdish forces keep up the battle to retake control
Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria battled for a fifth day to regain full control of the country’s largest prison for Islamic State (IS) detainees, as coalition aircraft bombed jihadi targets in support of the effort to contain the deadliest violence since the territorial defeat of their so-called “caliphate” in 2019.
Kurdish-led forces said they raided part of a prison seized by Islamic State fighters in northeastern Syria and forced at least 300 of the militants to surrender on Monday.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, said militants were still holed up in other buildings, and plans were underway to clear the rest of the detention complex in Hasaka city.
Following last week’s Abu Dhabi attack, Biden said he will consider reversing the decision. That would be the right move and he should do it immediately.
Biden’s moves were a classic example of the failure of appeasement. Inevitably, the Iranian ayatollahs were not won over by these and other US placations. Instead they have become increasingly hard-nosed, demanding more US compromises in exchange for fewer restrictions on their nuclear weapons project — a typical Iranian regime response to perceived weakness.
Attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to the poverty-stricken people of Yemen appear to have been blocked by the Houthis themselves, as well as by the United States, which has withdrawn support for Saudi Arabia, while giving the Houthis a free pass.
The Houthi strategy, it appears, is to use the dire living situation of the civilians under its control as a shield to get what it wants, such as being removed from the terrorist list and continuing its terror activities without facing any consequences.
Turkey has concluded contracts to sell domestically produced Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) to 16 countries and signed the first export contract for the Bayraktar Akinci UCAVs, the CEO of the Turkish Baykar technology company said on Sunday.