In response to Iran’s increasingly bellicose foreign policy, which extends from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to civil war in Yemen, terrorist attacks on regional American allies to supporting Hamas in dropping 600 rockets on Israel this week, the Trump administration has squeezed the Iranian economy.
On Sunday, May 5, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton announced that the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force had begun to make their way from the Mediterranean Sea toward the coastline of Iran. Iran, Bolton said, had made “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.” He was, characteristically, not specific. It was enough that Bolton—who has a history of making hazardous statements—had made these comments from the perch of the White House in Washington, D.C. “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime,” he said rather incredulously. After all, what is the arrival of a massive war fleet on the coastline of a country but a declaration of war?
More than 250 people were killed in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in churches and hotels in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 20 April during Easter Sunday. Local Islamic orgasnisations NJT and JMI are held responsible for the attack. Islamic State has also claimed responsibility. Sri Lanka has had a long history of majoritarian Buddhist and state violence against religious and ethnic minorities. During the civil war, the Tamil group LTTE too had attacked Muslims in its Eastern province. However, there have been no cases of inter-ethnic clashes between Muslims and Christians in the island nation. Motivation for these attacks apparently came from what is seen as persecution of Muslims in other countries.Multi religious and multi-ethnic countries of South Asia are especially in danger of being sucked into global terror spawned by imitations of the Islamic State and its virulent ideology. Before Colombo, there was the Dhaka attack on a café in which 29 people were killed. Signs from Pakistan and Afghanistan are not propitious where IS inspired terror groups have deeper base. Like Sri Lanka, India toois not immune from this kind of terror.
TWO DECADES ago al-Qaeda made its name by mounting a succession of bombings against America across the world. These included the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; an American destroyer moored in Yemen in 2000; and, most bloodily of all, the attacks of September 11th 2001 on American soil. Though Osama bin Laden, the group’s founder, had long railed against “Jews and Crusaders”, so giving a religious sectarian dimension to his global jihad, his central target was clear: “kill the Americans and their allies”.
Bottom Line Up Front:
On April 16, Egypt’s parliament passed amendments to the Constitution that provide President al-Sisi with a path forward to maintain power until 2030.
There is little observable public opposition to the constitutional changes, likely a result of the oppressive nature of the Egyptian government.
The number of suspected foreign ISIS fighters being detained by US-backed forces in Syria has now surpassed 2,000, with a small number claiming to be US citizens, three US officials told CNN.
On April 8, Islamic State started what it called “the Campaign of Vengeance for the blessed al-Sham Province,” claiming attacks by its affiliates around the world under this banner.
Bottom Line Up Front:
Global arms sales are booming, with a spike caused by a years-long increase in spending from countries in the MENA region.
Countries exporting arms cite the link between deterrence and stability to justify these sales, while often downplaying the role these weapons play in helping autocrats oppress their populations and often prolong wars and insurgencies.
Supporting one-sided resolutions against Israel is not Germany’s only unfriendly act against the Jewish state. Chancellor Angela Merkel has put pressure on other European Union states so that they do not transfer their embassies to Israel’s capital. Stopping the murder of Israelis is also not on the German government’s agenda.