Orientul Mijlociu

In addition to increasing the level of enriched uranium to near nuclear-weapons grade; helping to fund and plan a genocidal war against Israel; attacking US troops in Syria and Iraq with its militias more than 100 times in just the last two months to try to force the US out of the region, and incontinently bogus-trialing, torturing (even children) and executing its own citizens, the Iranian regime has also been orchestrating the assassinations of individuals, particularly those considered opponents to the ruling mullahs’ clerical establishment.

From October 8 to this writing, Hezbollah fired over 1,000 different types of weapons, including rockets, anti-tank missiles, UAVs, mortars, and anti-aircraft missiles. At least a third of the weapons fired fell into Lebanese territory, endangering the Lebanese population living in southern Lebanon.

Israeli forces and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have engaged in increasingly heavy exchanges of cross-border fire since early October, in the biggest escalation on the frontier since the Iran-backed group and Israel fought a war in 2006.

Hezbollah, one of the most heavily-armed, non-state groups in the world, is the most formidable of Iran’s allies in its “Axis of Resistance”, which includes Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Iraqi militias and others.

A PKK terrorist who was plotting an attack against Türkiye was eliminated in Iraq, sources said Thursday.

The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) had found that Sadık Şeyh Ahmet, a PKK/KCK terrorist, was operating in the rural areas of Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah and Penjwen regions, said the sources on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to media.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iran-backed joint operations group of Iraqi militias, released a series of statements and video footage claiming rocket and drone attacks on U.S. military personnel in Syria and Iraq, as well as on Israeli sites in the days that followed.

On December 28, 2023, the Syrian opposition Eye of Euphrates website reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) trained militias in Albukamal, Syria, to use Iran-made drones.[1] The training exercises came as Iran-backed militias have also dispersed various weapons systems throughout Deir Al-Zour Governorate.

A December 29, 2023 article by the pro-Hizbullah Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar[1] claimed that Yemen’s Iran-backed Ansar Allah Movement (the Houthis) has formulated “a new comprehensive military deterrence plan” to confront threats to “Yemen’s maritime sovereignty” posed by U.S. actions in the Red Sea and Bab-el-Mandeb. Quoting “Yemeni military sources,” Al-Akhbar stated that an “exceptional meeting” of senior Houthi military and security officials held on the evening of December 27 in the Red Sea port of Al-Hudaydah[2] discussed “several response options to the American mobilization, Washington’s efforts to militarize the Red Sea, and the movement of the tools of the [United Arab] Emirates on the western coast,” after the Houthis received direct and indirect threats from America. The meeting, the first of its kind since the beginning of the Yemen war in 2015, contained “more than one message of challenge to America and its allies in the region and inside [Yemen],” aiming to escalate the Houthi operations against “Israeli ships” by “tightening the naval blockade on Israel” and taking measures against American ships, following the deployment of U.S. warships to protect Israeli shipping.

In the aftermath of the devastating bombings at the memorial service for Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Kerman, where the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the tragic death of 84 lives and injuries to hundreds of others, concerns about the resurgence of ‘Salafi-Jihadi’ radicalism are once again on the rise. This unsettling turn of events has profound implications for followers of traditional ‘Salafi’ beliefs worldwide, who have historically rejected violence in the name of Islam.

In 2024, 12 percent of “forcibly displaced and stateless people” are expected to be from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, said the United Nations. This displacement will be caused due to war, humanitarian crises, and environmental catastrophes. The number’s recent causes are the civil war in Sudan and the fallout from natural disasters in Turkey, Syria, Morocco, and Libya. This percentage does not include the millions of people in Palestine who have been displaced since 1948.

Color revolutions are political term used to describe turbulent political events: mass street protests and riots in order to achieve a revolutionary change of government. Some revolutionary upheavals are successful and some remain only attempts. However, so far they have taken place in a number of countries at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.