As the Russian military build-up on the Ukrainian border continues, talks were held throughout the last week directly between US and Russia, followed by the Russia-NATO and Russia-OSCE dialogue. Now, Moscow says, it is waiting for answers on its various demands regarding the security architecture in Europe, before deciding its future course of action.
The United States has emerged as a major architect of the new map of the Middle East while continuing its military disengagement. This aims to extricate itself from a military quagmire as much as to recover forces and concentrate them towards a new objective: The Indo-Pacific zone and China. Washington intends to leave the keys of regional security exclusively to local actors.
The EAEU-Iran preferential trade agreement (PTA) implemented on October 27, 2019, offers lower tariffs on 862 commodity types, of which 502 are Iranian exports to the Eurasian Economic Union. This agreement significantly increased the trade volume between Iran and the member countries of the Union. In the period between October 2019 and October 2020, the trade volume grew by more than 84%. Indeed, the trade flows gradually gathered pace and the value of trade between Iran and the members of the EAEU exceeded $1.957 billion in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21 – August 22, 2021), marking 96 per cent growth compared to the same period of the previous year. As the agreement was designed to be in effect for 3 years, it is to expire on October 5, 2022. For this reason, the parties have recently begun technical and expert negotiations to upgrade the PTA to a free trade agreement (FTA). If this happens, the number of items of the agreement will rise to at least 8000, which is sure to set off a massive increase in the volume of trade between Iran and the Union. Although there are various capacities and advantages between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union, there are also problems that need to be taken seriously in the process of upgrading the EAEU-Iran PTA to an FTA. These include:
The Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second largest and hugely influential group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, does not believe that the conflict with Israel is over Jerusalem, settlements, borders, checkpoints or Palestinian prisoners.
Qattati’s article shows that PIJ and its masters in Tehran consider not only Israel as the “enemy,” but the US too. This is the same Iran whose representatives are currently negotiating with the US and other world powers about reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
‘Cubs of Caliphate’ are among 700 boys held in Islamic State prison, as Syrian Kurdish forces keep up the battle to retake control
Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria battled for a fifth day to regain full control of the country’s largest prison for Islamic State (IS) detainees, as coalition aircraft bombed jihadi targets in support of the effort to contain the deadliest violence since the territorial defeat of their so-called “caliphate” in 2019.
Kurdish-led forces said they raided part of a prison seized by Islamic State fighters in northeastern Syria and forced at least 300 of the militants to surrender on Monday.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, said militants were still holed up in other buildings, and plans were underway to clear the rest of the detention complex in Hasaka city.
Following last week’s Abu Dhabi attack, Biden said he will consider reversing the decision. That would be the right move and he should do it immediately.
Biden’s moves were a classic example of the failure of appeasement. Inevitably, the Iranian ayatollahs were not won over by these and other US placations. Instead they have become increasingly hard-nosed, demanding more US compromises in exchange for fewer restrictions on their nuclear weapons project — a typical Iranian regime response to perceived weakness.
Uncertainty continues to surround the whereabouts of President Roch Kaboré after the Burkinabe leader was deposed in a coup over the weekend. A former prime minister and one-time president of the National Assembly, Kaboré had been in power since 2015, the second civilian to hold the country’s highest office following the collapse of Blaise Compaore’s twenty-seven-year dictatorship and his flight into exile in October 2014. But now, even as the overall situation in the country remains fluid, it seems safe to say that the military is back in the saddle in Burkina Faso. The Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (MPSR)-led takeover makes the poor West African country the fourth in the region to fall under the military’s jackboots in less than two years. Mali reopened the floodgates in August 2020 (again in May 2021), with Chad and Guinea following suit in April and September 2021, respectively.
It should not be surprising that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin believes he can invade Ukraine, a sovereign neighboring nation, and claim it as an historic part of his empire. After all, there is a shameful European history to reflect upon, combined with the most recent actions of the United States under the current White House.
In 1938, Western democracies were more than willing to hand over a free and stable central European nation to Hitler. The Czechs found themselves abandoned and served up on a plate to the Third Reich as Hitler threatened war if the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia was not annexed by Germany. The reason for his demand was that it was territory long populated by many ethnic Germans. (And this may sound disturbingly familiar if you follow Putin’s logic why Ukraine is his, given that part of its diverse population is Russian.)
The pro-Serbian and pro-Russian Democratic Front (DF) would like to be part of the new government Dritan Abazović, the civic movement URA leader, is trying to form, Andrija Mandić, one of the party’s leaders told Serbian agency Tanjug.
Mandić has one condition, however.