UK defense minister Grant Shapps has predicted a global conflict between the West and Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, within five years. Shapps has called on Britain’s allies to increase their military spending in response to this so-called “existential threat.”
In-depth: Armenian lawyers and the diaspora community in Jerusalem are uniting their efforts to push back against secretive Israeli land deals.
Yerevan, Armenia – There are mounting concerns in Armenia regarding a controversial land lease agreement in East Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter, with many fearing the issue goes well beyond just a commercial deal.
Israeli forces raided foreign exchange and money transfer agencies in Ramallah and other cities in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, seizing millions of dollars suspected of being intended to fund the Islamist group Hamas, the military said.
Iran has launched strikes against targets in three allied countries – Syria, Iraq and Pakistan – in two days. Pakistan responded with a missile attack on Iranian territory. So why did Iran do it, and why did it happen now?
Everything suggests Iran’s military, the Revolutionary Guards, were under pressure to act from Islamic hardliners inside the country.
Iran said it targeted a “Mossad spy headquarters” as “revenge” after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that killed dozens in Tehran.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Tuesday it destroyed an Israeli spy headquarters in a series of airstrikes near the U.S. consulate in Erbil, Iraq, and the attack killed a wealthy Kurdish businessman and other civilians.
Iran launched missile strikes on three different countries this week – Iraq, Syria and Pakistan – while proxy militant groups it backs continue to target US and Western interests and fight Israel, stoking fears of conflict that could engulf the Middle East and spread to other regions.
Why did Iran conduct strikes on Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria?
On the evening of Monday, January 15, Iran targeted sites in Syria and Iraq with 24 ballistic missiles from southern and western Iran, with a range exceeding 1,200 kilometers.
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that it launched four “Khaibar Shekan” (Khaibar Breaker) missiles towards what it described as an “Islamic State organization headquarters” in Idlib.
Turkey said it had destroyed 23 targets in overnight air strikes on Kurdish militants in northern Iraq and Syria, a further escalation of conflict south of its border.
The attacks were the latest by Turkey since nine Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq on Friday.
The impression that Iran regards Pakistan as a serious security threat on par with the Israeli spy base in Iraq and ISIS ones in Syria that it also struck in sequence. With all three taking place as the latest Israeli-Hamas war escalates into a regional proxy war between Israel-US and Iran, the innuendo is that Pakistan is aligned with them against Tehran, which could turn the whole Global South against Islamabad.
Tehran’s top diplomat said on Wednesday that his country’s armed forces targeted an “Iranian terrorist group” in Pakistan the day before, after Islamabad said the strike killed two children.
“On Pakistan, none of the nationals of the friendly and brotherly country of Pakistan were targeted by Iranian missiles and drones,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.