Orientul Mijlociu

A system set up to channel dollars from Iraqi oil sales to importers has been exploited by money launderers and militant groups for years. An OCCRP investigation shows how the fraud works in practice.

Key Findings

• Al-Huda, an Iraqi bank whose owner was sanctioned after a drone attack on U.S. forces, allegedly exploited the dollar auction to obtain billions of dollars.
• Files from an Iraqi parliamentary investigation show how Al-Huda and two other banks used apparently fake documents to manipulate the process.
• Over 99 percent of the money obtained by one bank in a single month in 2012 was cleared based on documents that appeared fraudulent.
• The dollar auction has been used to fund U.S. adversaries including Iran-backed militias, the Islamic State, and Syria’s Assad regime, experts say.
• At least $28 million was sent to a company the U.S. says handled funds for a Revolutionary Guard member later sanctioned for financing Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah spoke for the second time in seven days on August 6, commemorating one week since the assassination of the group’s military commander Fuad Shukr by Israel on July 30. Uncharacteristically calm, Nasrallah devoted much of his speech to covering the Lebanese group’s weaknesses exposed by the assassination and promising to avenge the fallen commander. Like his speech on August 1, this address by Nasrallah also contained hints regarding the form of Hezbollah’s anticipated revenge attack.

On October 1, 2024, the IRGC fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and Hassan Nasrallah and a senior IRGC officer in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. Most of the missiles were intercepted by the Israeli Air Force and air defense forces, in collaboration with the United States and other countries. After the attack, senior Iranian officials stressed that the attack was carried out as part of their legitimate rights and that Iran did not want further escalation. However, they threatened a powerful response to an Israeli attack against them.

A Palestinian man holds the body of a relative killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024 [AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana]

One year after the start of the Gaza genocide, Israel, with the support of US imperialism, is only intensifying its extermination and ethnic cleansing of the civilian population of Gaza.

It’s killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. And its future lies in its past. We break it down.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced many millions of people and has its roots in a colonial act carried out more than a century ago.

With Israel declaring war on the Gaza Strip after an unprecedented attack by the armed Palestinian group Hamas on Saturday, the world’s eyes are again sharply focused on what might come next.

What is the Dahiya Doctrine?

The Dahiya Doctrine is an Israeli military doctrine that calls for the use of massive, disproportionate force and the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.

The New Arab looks into the accusations that Israel has used depleted uranium, as well as what the substance is and why it’s so dangerous.

Israel has been accused of using bombs containing depleted uranium in its bombardment of Lebanon.

“The extent of destruction and the penetration of buildings and ground by dozens of meters is evidence of the use of bombs containing depleted uranium, which has tremendous penetrating power,” the Syndicate of Chemists in Lebanon (SCL) said in a statement released on Monday.

Repeating its strategy of the 2006 summer war, Israel has already flattened wide areas in Beirut’s southern suburbs and elsewhere in Lebanon

Swathes of Beirut’s southern suburbs have been reduced to rubble because of the Israeli military’s near-daily bombardment of the area.

Iran appeared to be taking preparations in anticipation of a potential Israeli strike on its oil facilities, despite US warnings to Israel regarding this.

Iran is anticipating an Israeli attack after it launched ballistic missiles against Israel earlier this month, and appears to be taking steps in preparation for this, notably at its oil facilities.