Uncertain about the U.S commitment to secure the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is looking to France and others to help fulfill its security requirements.
The UAE and other Gulf states likely see France as leverage to secure additional U.S support, rather than an as a possible replacement for the U.S. security umbrella.
The January visit of Iran’s President Ibrahim Raisi to Moscow aligns Iran and Russia more closely.
The two countries see common interest in countering growing pressure on them from the United States and other western powers.
Iran and Russia are negotiating a long term economic and military accord similar to that between Iran and China.
Violence in Yemen’s Marib governorate is intensifying as warring parties fight to claim control over the strategically important region. According to local authorities, the population of Marib city, which was once less than half a million, has swelled to nearly three million as people are displaced by the fighting. Most who fled their homes are now totally reliant on humanitarian assistance, though it does not always reach them.
With the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic crash dominating the headlines, the civil war in Syria has faded into media obscurity. But there is more bad news there that warrants the world’s attention.
Is Russia’s lucky streak in Syria and Libya finally running out? The Kremlin has gambled big on proxy warfare in both countries, deploying thousands of private military contractors with the so-called Wagner Group to back its favorite strongmen. But after a recent run of misfortunes for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the head of the breakaway Libyan National Army, it is starting to look like Russia may not be able to cash in real wins in the Middle East and North Africa anytime soon.
Even with its physical “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in tatters, the Islamic State is still managing to wage a global insurgency, maintaining an operational presence in at least 20 separate countries. The organization’s global diffusion recently led a group of leading terrorism experts to describe ISIS as an “adhocracy,” better understood as a group of “structurally fluid organizations in which ‘interacting project teams’ work towards a shared purpose and/or identity.” By maintaining this structure, the group’s leaders seek to harness the benefits of a transnational network spanning multiple regions and continents.
“All politics is local,” as the famous saying goes. But in the 21st century, all conflict is global, and organizations like ISIS are well-positioned to leverage the capabilities of its affiliates worldwide.
Abstract: Following a sustained buildup in attacks throughout 2019 and into first half of 2020, the Islamic State’s insurgency in Iraq underwent a steep decline over the last 20 months. A comprehensive analysis of attack metrics shows an insurgency that has deteriorated in both the quality of its operations and overall volume of attack activity, which has fallen to its lowest point since 2003. The Islamic State is increasingly isolated from the population, confined to remote rural backwaters controlled by Iraq’s less effective armed forces and militias, and lacks reach into urban centers. The downtrend in Iraq is likely attributable to stepped-up security operations, pressure on mid- and upper-tier leadership cadres, and the Islamic State’s refocusing on Syria—graphically illustrated by the January 20, 2022, attempted mass breakout by the Islamic State at Syria’s Ghweran prison. The key analytical quandary that emerges from this picture is whether the downtrend marks the onset of an enduring decline for the group, or if the Islamic State is merely lying low while laying the groundwork for its survival as a generational insurgency.
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.