The death of the ICC-wanted heir removes a major obstacle to the country’s stalled elections, even as his supporters decry a ‘treacherous’ end for the man who once promised reform – and later, ‘rivers of blood’.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libya’s late longtime ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, was killed Tuesday by gunmen who stormed his home in the western city of Zintan, his French lawyer Marcel Ceccaldi told AFP.
The Middle East has finally arrived at the grim reckoning long barreling toward it: a ruinous collapse of oil revenues that renders government deficits utterly unsustainable.
Among the wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, four are running persistent annual budget deficits that are eroding their sovereign wealth reserves and plunging their finances into terminal decline, condemning their economies to stagnation.
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
Dissent Within the Iranian Regime: Some Iranian officials have continued to leak damning information about the regime’s brutal crackdown to Western media, which indicates that some regime personnel may oppose the regime’s crackdown. The leaks also undermine the regime’s ongoing information operation that seeks to portray the regime and Iranian security forces as victims of “terrorism” and conceal the regime’s use of lethal force.
Internet Access in Iran: The Iranian regime has not restored international internet access, and there continues to be an internal debate within the regime about restoring it. The debate primarily seems to be between regime factions that assess that restoring the internet could cause a resumption of protests and factions that assess that the economic toll of the internet shutdown could cause internal unrest.
Syrian government-SDF conflict: The extension of the Syrian government-Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) ceasefire is enabling the government to deliver humanitarian aid to SDF-controlled areas in northern Syria. The Syrian army established two humanitarian corridors in Kobani and Hasakah City. The Syrian government did not call on civilians in Kobani or Hasakah City to use the corridors to evacuate from these cities, which suggests that government forces do not plan to imminently launch an operation to advance into either city.The US-backed, Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) capitulated to the Syrian government in a ceasefire agreement on January 18.[1] The government compelled the SDF to agree after a combination of government operations and tribal uprisings caused the SDF to withdraw from nearly half of its territory and most of the heavily Arab areas.[2] The ceasefire agreement cedes all of Deir ez Zor and Raqqa provinces to the government, effective immediately.[3] Hasakah Province will integrate into the Syrian state over time.[4] The government will control the ISIS detention facilities and al Hol internally-displaced persons (IDP) camp, which holds many ISIS supporters.[5] The SDF will integrate its military forces into the Syrian Ministry of Defense as individuals — a major concession that SDF leaders have been refusing because it leaves Kurdish areas without a reliable defense force of their own.[6] Kobani will have a security force that is formed from the city’s residents.[7] This ceasefire represents a capitulation by the SDF, which has resisted these long-standing demands of the Syrian government.[8] This is a significant defeat for SDF moderates such as SDF commander Mazloum Abdi and civilian leader Ilham Ahmed, both of whom supported prior ceasefires in Aleppo but were thwarted by hardliners who were close to the PKK.
A minor power outage in San Francisco offered a quiet preview of a strategic vulnerability hiding in plain sight. As traffic signals went dark, dozens of autonomous Waymo vehicles stalled, unable to read the roadway. With hazard lights blinking, they gridlocked intersections and slowed large parts of the city to a crawl until tow trucks arrived.
Amir, a protester at the scene, told TML that, despite state-run media claims, it is inconceivable that a preplanned, three-person armed group could have attacked a police station heavily staffed with armed personnel
A U.S. carrier strike group led by the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln has arrived in the Arabian Sea. Simultaneously, the United States and its allies are deploying combat aircraft and tanker aircraft to the Middle East and deploying additional air defense systems. This concentration of forces is a sure sign of preparations for a military strike against Iran, where the ruling theocratic regime appears to be at its most vulnerable since its inception in 1979. For almost all of January, the country witnessed unprecedented protests against the ayatollahs, culminating in brutal repression that resulted in the deaths of between 3,000 (the minimum confirmed number) and 30,000 or more people. However, none of the options available to U.S. President Donald Trump for military intervention, if implemented solely in the form of an air campaign, guarantees regime change in Iran. And the amassed forces are clearly insufficient for a ground presence (though this is out of the question in the coming days).
Trump’s attempts to improve ties with both Turkey and Saudi Arabia brought about the US lending its endorsement to al-Sharaa’s Islamist regime in Damascus. The result is that al-Sharaa has now set about, at the very least, failing to prevent (here, here and here) wholesale attempts, apparently by his own government’s security forces, to slaughter Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities: Druze, Alawites and Kurds, including America’s presumed allies, the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces Army (SDF), who courageously defeated Syria’s Islamic State terrorists.