Indonesia and Japan signed an agreement on Tuesday for the export of Japanese-made military equipment and technology to Jakarta, as both nations face Beijing’s increasing expansionism and maritime activities in disputed regional waters. Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto and his Japanese counterpart Nobuo Kishi inked the deal in Tokyo after …

Trouble is brewing in the backyard of Muslim-majority states competing for religious soft power and leadership of the Muslim world in what amounts to a battle for the soul of Islam. Shifting youth attitudes towards religion and religiosity threaten to undermine the rival efforts of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and, …

Knowing he is politically vulnerable, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is silent on Washington’s intention to return to the nuclear deal with Tehran. Israel finds itself irrelevant and inconsequential as the race against the Iranian nuclear threat enters its most important leg. As was the case on the eve of the …

Disagreements over the dollar exchange rate and foreign loans have blocked the parliament from passing the country’s budget bill for a fifth time. Iraq’s parliament failed to pass the federal budget bill on Sunday despite a last-minute agreement between Erbil and Baghdad over the Kurdistan Region’s share. Now disagreements loom …

The Paris Climate Accord is more of an aspiration than a strategy while the Iranian nuclear problem has always been a way of avoiding the real issue: the danger that the Islamist regime poses for regional peace and stability. [T]he Biden doctrine, if one might suggest such a label… could …

The failure of the Obama administration to defend the Philippines in early 2012, in a confrontation similar to today’s, emboldened China’s regime to adopt an even more aggressive posture in its peripheral waters. China claims all the waters inside the dashes are sovereign as well, terming them “blue national soil.” …

Salvage teams on Monday finally freed the colossal container ship stuck for nearly a week in the Suez Canal, ending a crisis that had clogged one of the world’s most vital waterways and halted billions of dollars a day in maritime commerce. A flotilla of tugboats, helped by the tides, …

In Bulgaria regular parliamentary elections are due to take place on 4 April 2021. At the elections 240 representatives/deputies in the Bulgarian National Assembly will be elected according to the proportional system with closed lists. In each of a total of 31 election units, between four and 16 representatives/ deputies …

Ever since Muhammad Bin Salman otherwise known as MBS assumed the de facto leadership of Saudi Arabia, his rule has evidently been synonymous with one controversy after the next. Arbitrary detentions of critics, torturing family members during shakedowns, executing a revered cleric, creating a catastrophe in Yemen and of course …

Iran wants to leverage China’s role in the region and show that it can resist the US. China also wants to reassure the West that Iran will safeguard the nuclear deal. For Iran, the visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Tehran on an official two-day visit to hold …