On February 22, 2024, the pro-Syrian Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), Al-‘Askari Media, published on Telegram a set of infographic posters titled “The Kamikaze – The Weapon That Will Change Future Wars.” The images inform the group’s fighters on how to avoid being targeted by “kamikaze” drones, also known as suicide drones.[1]
On February 25, 2024, the armed forces of the Yemeni Houthi Ansar Allah movement claimed responsibility for firing several “appropriate naval missiles” at the American ship the MV Torm Thor, and also for a drone attack on American warships in the Red Sea. This claim was made just three days after the group took responsibility for a series of drone and missile attacks on American and British vessels in the Red Sea, and on targets in Israel.[1]
Dozens of people were arrested inside Jordan, as the kingdom ramps up efforts to fight drug smuggling attempts mainly on the border with Syria.
Jordan’s security forces foiled several drug smuggling attempts across the kingdom in the past days, in the latest crackdown against the trade that has flourished in recent years.
If you take a tram out of Vienna and climb to the top of the Leopoldsberg, you can see a series of memorials to the successful defence of Vienna in 1683 against the invading Ottomans. Looking out over the Danube to the East, you can see an awful lot of not very much at all, going on and on and on. It’s from these empty eastern spaces that the threat to Europe always seems somehow to appear. From the Mongols through the Turks to the Slavs, it’s always the same basic fear. Civilisation as we know it can’t really be guaranteed east of a line drawn roughly between Berlin and Vienna. Beyond lies barbarism, changing in its details, but always a menace that has to be met with military force. It’s not an accident that the medieval Teutonic Knights, who fought the heathens in what is now Poland and the Baltic States, were role-models for extreme nationalists in Germany, including the Nazis. And they served right up to the present day as inspiration for extreme right-wing nationalists in Europe as a whole, some of whom are probably not coming back from Ukraine. And it’s probably not a coincidence either, that the great economic threats to Europe—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China—are all in the East.
Living through the Cold War wasn’t without its moments of anxiety, and even fear: there were times when you went to bed wondering if you would wake up a radioactive crisp in the morning. Yet for all the angst and the serial crises, there was actually something quite comforting about those days: the moral certainty with which the West felt able to view the world. After all, generally speaking, standards of living in the West were higher, there was more political freedom, and there were no fences keeping people in. (Indeed, few even of the fiercest critics of western policy ever seriously thought of going to live in the Soviet Union.)
Reinventing a Cold War Strategy for the Contest With China
Few words are more closely associated with the late Henry Kissinger than “détente.” The term was first used in diplomacy in the early 1900s, when the French ambassador to Germany tried—and failed—to better his country’s deteriorating relationship with Berlin, and in 1912, when British diplomats attempted the same thing. But détente became internationally famous only in the late 1960s and 1970s, when Kissinger, first as U.S. national security adviser and then also as U.S. secretary of state, pioneered what would become his signature policy: the easing of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Introduction
On the eve of the election in Iran for the Majlis, set for March 1, 2024, and the concurrent election for the Assembly of Experts, several reformist organizations have, as in years past, announced that they are boycotting both elections. The announcement comes despite the Iranian regime’s pressure on the public to turn out to vote.
Fatah Official Yasser Abu Sido said on a February 23, 2024 show on Sada Al-Balad TV (Egypt), that while he is not a “fan of Hitler,” the Holocaust was committed for “obvious reasons.” Abu Sido also said that “the Jews and global Zionism” planned to take control of Germany. He added that they started to bring Germany down in terms of the economy and moral values. Abu Sido continued to say that the Jews distorted the Torah.
Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating members of a smuggling network that helps fund Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and the Houthis in Yemen. Led by Iran-based Houthi financier Sa’id al-Jamal, this network generates tens of millions of dollars in revenue from the sale of commodities, like Iranian petroleum, a significant portion of which is then directed through a complex network of intermediaries and exchange houses in multiple countries to the Houthis in Yemen.
Latest Developments
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28 called for mass turnout in Iran’s elections on March 1. Yet even government polling indicates that the majority of Iranians will boycott the contest for Iran’s 290-seat parliament, formally known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a body tasked with selecting the country’s next supreme leader. This contest will mark the first nationwide elections since the anti-regime protests, known as the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, that rocked the country from 2022 to 2023, which were triggered by the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly.