The Limited Options for Managing the Iranian Nuclear Question

While persuading Iran to roll back its nuclear programme at this stage may be difficult, the US and its allies can and should seek to reinforce Tehran’s perception that a decision to weaponise the programme would increase Iranian isolation and insecurity.

In recent months, unsettling rhetoric from senior Iranian individuals over the country’s nuclear programme – alongside continued Iranian advancements in this area and escalating tensions in the Middle East – has highlighted the urgency of finding a resolution to the now decades-old Iranian nuclear question. The options available to the US and its partners for inducing a roll-back of Iran’s programme are limited, given that economic threats and incentives, as well as security assurances, will be difficult to make meaningful and credible. However, Iran still appears to perceive some benefit from maintaining a threshold nuclear programme rather than developing a nuclear weapons capability. The US and its partners should leverage remaining carrots and sticks to reinforce this assumption, making clear to Tehran that it would be worse off with a nuclear weapons capability than its current threshold nuclear status.

Video Shows Perpetrator Of Crossbow Attack Near Israeli Embassy In Belgrade Swearing Allegiance To Islamic State (ISIS) Caliph, Threatening To Kill ‘Jews’ And ‘Crusaders’ Everywhere

On the morning of Saturday, June 29, 2024, a man injured a policeman after shooting him in the neck with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. The officer returned fire, killing the assailant, who was named as Milos Zujovic, a native of the Serbian town of Mladenovac born in 1999. Zujovic had converted to Islam and began calling himself Salah Al-Din. The Israeli embassy was closed at the time of the attack and none of its employees were harmed.[1]

How Israel’s war on Gaza is testing Turkey and Azerbaijan’s ties

Analysis: While Turkey has halted all trade with Israel amid the Gaza war, Azerbaijan continues to supply Tel Aviv with oil.

Amid global attention on pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the world, notably on US university campuses, another significant boycott campaign has been brewing in Turkey, albeit against Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel.

Securing Lebanon to Prevent aLarger Hezbollah-Israel War andWider Escalation

As tensions between Israel and Hezbollah escalate, the specter of a full-scale war, with the potential to draw in the United States and Iran, demands the US’ immediate attention. The Biden-Harris Administration has tasked, in response, White House Senior Advisor Amos Hochstein with the responsibility of mediating efforts to de-escalate the conflict and bring stability to the Lebanon-Israel border.

Attacking Lebanon will prove to be strategic suicide for Israel

Like a wounded animal, vicious but aimless, Israel is lashing out at Lebanon. But, as Emad Moussa writes, Hezbollah won’t be deterred by wider regional war.

The prospect of an all-out war between Israel and Lebanon reached new heights on July 3 after the Israeli army assassinated senior Hezbollah commander, Taleb Abdullah, outside Tyre.

‘Disappeared, buried, detained’: The horrors of Gaza’s missing children

In-depth: Over 20,000 children in Gaza are lost, detained, disappeared, or buried in mass graves or under rubble amid Israel’s relentless war.

A report published by British aid group Save the Children last week found that up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing in Gaza, with at least 17,000 thought to be unaccompanied or separated from their parents and some 4,000 likely trapped beneath the rubble of their homes, schools, and hospitals.

Can Starmer Save Britain?

Why Labour’s Sweeping Victory May Not Reverse the Country’s Decline

Although the polls had been predicting it for many months, the result of the United Kingdom’s July 4 general election was nonetheless stunning. This was the worst performance in the 190-year history of the Conservative Party. It lost almost half its share of the vote and 250 parliamentary seats. One former prime minister (Liz Truss), nine cabinet ministers (including the secretaries of defense, education, and justice), and other prominent Conservative figureheads were unceremoniously ejected from the House of Commons by their constituents. This was a tidal wave of anger washing over not just outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak but also the last 14 years of Tory rule, and it made landfall with a deafening roar.

Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM)

This report analyzes the operations and organizational structure of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat
al-Islam wal-Muslimin ( JNIM) in the Sahel region of Africa, focusing on the group’s engagement with illicit economies and tactical use of economic warfare. Specifically, the report emphasizes the central role of illicit economies in JNIM’s governance strategies, and in financing and resourcing the group’s armed struggle. It also tracks how JNIM has evolved organizationally, with these internal changes dictating shifts
in its involvement in regional illicit economies. These political and organizational changes, and the group’s highly strategic engagement with illicit economies, have underpinned JNIM’s expansion into new geographies, its retention of influence in areas of control, and its resilience to disruption.

The true President of America’s Fifth Republic Obama, not Biden, is the nation’s new Lincoln

The fireworks in America this Fourth of July will be fuelled by the country’s imminent election, in which a convicted felon faces off against a doddering old man who is too senile to know that he isn’t really the President. The country’s elite would be glad if this were hyperbole; unfortunately for them, it is not. But Joe Biden’s fitness for office is no longer the big question that the American press is afraid to ask. After three years of near-total silence, they suddenly can’t stop asking it.

War Fatigue in Central Europe is Spreading

Attitudes on the war paint a complex picture where existential security threats are twisted by domestic political dynamics, but a sense of weariness is becoming evident even in the region’s most pro-Ukrainian countries.