According to Western security officials, the high level meetings between senior members of the Houthi terrorist organisation and Iran illustrate the close coordination that is taking place between Iran and the Houthis over the rebel group’s terrorist operations.
On February 17, 2022, Syrian jihadi cleric Abu Yahya Al-Shami, a fierce critic of Syrian jihadi group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) which largely controls Syria’s Idlib, published[1] a post on Telegram accusing it of expelling several foreign jihadis from the city. Al-Shami provided a list of 24 foreign jihadis of different nationalities, including Tunisians, Moroccans, an Egyptian, an Algerian, an Indian, and even some French citizens.
Turkey is increasingly relying on airpower in its fight against the PKK. New parties have been drawn into the conflict as it spreads to new theatres in Iraq and Syria, which, for now at least, complicates potential efforts to settle things down.
The administration, however, then made an astonishing announcement: that it is unfreezing $29 billion to the Iranian regime, despite that Iran is still, according to the State Department, an officially designated state sponsor of terrorism.
Hamas leaders are not sitting among their people in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. It is easier and safer for them to call on the Palestinians to send their children to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel while they are relaxing in the comfort of their hotel rooms, villas and gyms in the Qatari capital of Doha. The Hamas leaders are not going to send their own sons and daughters to engage in the jihad against Israel.
Iraq’s federal court has ordered the Iraqi Kurdistan government to deliver all of the oil it produces to Baghdad, dismissing an oil and gas law regulating the oil industry in the autonomous region as unconstitutional.
I’ve previously written concerning [Yemen, The War That Should Have Never Been And How To Achieve Peace: Countercurrents: 13/02/2022] the fact the War in Yemen should never have occurred in the first place and the what and how required to achieve peace; either by dividing Yemen in two, North and South Yemen as per the pre-1990 borders, or under a Unity Government. However, seeing as that even today, this idea of peace is fleeting away due to the unwarranted missile and bomb strikes upon Houthis in North Yemen, specifically the continual destruction of civilian targets and assets by the Saudi and UAE military.
Turkey and Israel are not only seeking to repair their fractured bilateral relations, but see cooperation opportunities in Central Asia, said James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Middle East Institute in Singapore.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is still insisting on false economic premises, including a theory that higher interest rates cause inflation; a policy stance that has led to sharp losses for the lira, said Güven Sak, a former member of the Monetary Policy Council of the Central Bank of Turkey.
The High Price of Regional Dominance
Few countries have maintained clearer or more consistent aspirations over the last four decades than the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since 1979, when Islamic revolutionaries transformed the country from an U.S.-allied monarchy into an ardently anti-American theocracy, Iran has sought to expel the United States from the Middle East, replace Israel with Palestine, and remake the region in its image. Unlike U.S. strategy toward Iran and the greater Middle East, which has shifted markedly with different administrations, Iranian strategy toward the United States and the Middle East has exhibited remarkable continuity. Tehran has not achieved any of its lofty ambitions, but it has made progress toward them—and it is feeling emboldened by its recent successes.