Orientul Mijlociu

A generation of fighters who died by the sword

In some ways it is a tragedy that these men turned their fire and anger against Israel and the US.

There was a time when Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, his No. 2, Imad Mughniyeh, and IRGC Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani would sit together and feel safe. They were leading the “resistance” against Israel, and the Jewish state would soon be defeated, or so they believed. These men had come through the fire of the 1980s, the civil war in Lebanon or the Iran-Iraq War, and they knew the privations of the past.

‘Tehran has become Mossad’s street corner’

Iranians tweet about the killing with surprise and also highlighting the abilities of those who allegedly killed him.

Iranians responded with awe and surprise as key Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was gunned down east of Tehran. Farsi social media was full of tweets about the surprising shooting of one of the key men behind the nuclear program in Iran.

Who is the Iranian scientist killed in Tehran?

Iran denies Fakhrizadeh was involved in any such undertaking and that it ever tried to weaponise uranium enrichment for nuclear energy.

Prominent Iranian military scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in an attack outside Tehran on Friday, was widely seen by Western intelligence as the mastermind of clandestine Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran denies Fakhrizadeh was involved in any such undertaking and that it ever tried to weaponise uranium enrichment for nuclear energy. But he is widely thought to have headed what the UN atomic watchdog and US intelligence services believe was a coordinated nuclear arms program that was halted in 2003.

EU: New Pact on Migration and Asylum

The question at the core of the internal EU conflict over migration in Europe is not practical but political: whether the EU should take any migrants at all. On that question, the European Commission and the Central and Eastern European countries could not be further apart.

The proposed system invariably gives rise to multiple questions about the practical viability of the proposed system. Will frontline states become efficient at screening migrants? Will the planned increased border control work? How, exactly, are widespread, years-long people-smuggling and human trafficking by gangs who profit immensely from it, going to be stopped?

Assassination of Iranian Nuclear Scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi—Assassins’ Motives beyond Iran.

Short analysis by:
Ejaz Hussain,
London.

The assassination of Dr Fakhrizadeh on Friday 27 November is not just ‘another’ incident—it’s causality is greater than it’s aftermath. Having followed closely the roadmap to JCPOA (October 2015), course of negotiations in Switzerland and Austria, and post-JCPOA developments—the compass of my anschauung of this highly planned killing is much wider than the prism of the world media.

Erdogan, le sultan voyou

Les invectives à répétition dont le président turc Erdogan abreuve Emmanuel Macron ont sans doute une visée politique: faire de la Turquie une puissance mondiale et de lui-même un nouveau calife. Elles sont aussi le reflet de son caractère profond, celui d’un homme élevé à la fois à l’école islamique et à l’école de la rue.