UN Secretary-General António Guterres, standing alongside top officials in New York on Friday, underscored the essential need to bolster the UN agency assisting Palestine refugees (UNRWA) across the Middle East amid continued attacks on its mandate, staff, premises and operations.
Latest Developments
Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraq-based Iranian proxy militia, threatened Saudi Arabia in a statement on July 13 for enabling the “the battle against the Palestinians.” Following previous threats to Riyadh, the group criticized via Telegram the “malicious role of Saudi Arabia’s rulers in harnessing their land routes to perpetuate the momentum of the battle against the Palestinians.”
Who Disbanded Iraq’s Army and De-Baathified Its Bureaucracy?
The history of Iraq was already being rewritten by L. Paul Bremer on his flight into Baghdad. It was May 2003, and Bremer, an experienced former ambassador and bureaucratic player—he’d served as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s chief of staff—was just weeks into his new role as presidential envoy to the freshly liberated country. After a flurry of briefings in Washington and a final Oval Office meeting with President George W. Bush, “Jerry,” as everyone called Bremer, had flown into Qatar and on to Kuwait and then Iraq. Bremer’s diplomatic career had taken him to most Middle Eastern capitals, but this was the first time he’d ever seen Baghdad. He had spent the previous two weeks trying to learn as much as he could about the country he would now rule.
INTRODUCTION
At a time when there is widespread anxiety around the world about the fate of democracy but not enough debate on the future of autocracy, Turkey presents an interesting case for scholars and policy-makers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spent two decades in power taking steps to build his neman rule. 2023 was the year when many thought it would finally come to an end. The government’s poor response to the devastating earthquake in February 2023 and Turkey’s mounting economic problems strengthened popular discontent with Erdoğan’s rule. Yet he still managed to win another term as president in the May 2023 elections thanks to the disarray among the six-party opposition coalition and its uninspiring candidate.
An incident in the central Anatolian city of Kayseri last week sparked a wave of anti-Syrian attacks across Turkey, just as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s normalisation efforts with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reach a pivotal point.
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of ISIS’ capture of a third of Iraqi and Syrian territory and genocide against the Ezidis (Yazidis) and other communities. Supported by the U.S.-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Iraq declared military victory over the terrorist group in December 2017 and has significantly reduced and controlled the threat ever since. Significant progress has also been made in the recovery and stabilization process, with the successful return to their areas of origin of some five million of the six million Iraqis internally displaced by the conflict and the rebuilding of many of the regions that the conflict devastated.
In a clear challenge to regime hardliners, Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist and cardiac surgeon, won Iran’s snap presidential election on July 5. The elections were called after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash on May 19. The runoff had been considered a tight race, but Pezeshkian won decisively with almost three million more votes than Saeed Jalili, a hardliner and former nuclear negotiator. Due to take office in August, Pezeshkian, a former deputy speaker of parliament and health minister, will take power as Iran’s government faces legitimacy challenges amid an economic crisis. Beyond these domestic challenges, Iran’s new president will have to navigate the evolving regional fallout from the war in Gaza.
As expected, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a majority in the UK General Election on 4 July, marking the collapse of the Conservative Party after 14 years in government.
Labour’s majority in parliament, with 411 seats out of 650, means the party will have significant influence over parliamentary decisions going forward.
On several occasions, Iranian officials have revealed that the Iranian regime was involved in the planning and execution of Hamas’s “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” the October 7, 2023 invasion and massacres in southern Israel in which over 1,200 Israelis were killed and over 240 were taken hostage. Statements by these officials contradict the regime’s official stance, as expressed by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on October 10, 2023, that Iran was not involved in the attack.[1]
Hezbollah’s news outlet Al-Manar reports that commander Mohammad Nehmeh Nasser has been killed.
A senior Hezbollah commander was killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon Wednesday as fears of an all-out war grow between the two sides.