On March 4, Iran released an edited version of the test launching of the S-300 Surface-to-Air Missile System, purchased from Russia. According to the report, which was posted by IRIB on YouTube, the launch was successful, “destroying the target missile with precision.

On February 25, 2017, the Iranian reformist website Amad News reported, citing a source in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), that the IRGC is using civilian passenger jets operated by the Iranian airline Mahan Air to transfer weapons to Syria and Yemen and also to bring back the bodies …

Bishop Armash Nalbandian, Primate of the Armenian Church of Damascus, accused Turkey of giving militants in Syria instructions “to target Armenian places, churches, and schools, and to target the very identity of the Armenians.” Bishop Nalbandian, speaking on the Egyptian ON TV channel on January 28, said that a new …

Several international developments during the first half of the year 2014, such as the situation in Ukraine and the Russian annexation of Crimea, China’s claims in its coastal waters and the new strategy of Japan, or Iran’s moves to acquire a dominant position in the Muslim world, brought back to …

CASE STUDIES IN THE ARAB WORLD   According to U.S. National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) “Global trends 2030 – Alternative worlds”[1], the world’s current roughly 50-percent urban population will climb to nearly 60 percent, or 4.9 billion people, in 2030. Urban centers are estimated to generate 80 percent of economic growth; …

The Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013 abruptly brought to attention the situation in the North Caucasus where, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia faces the same threat of radical Islam as the West does elsewhere. Most observers, who label the North Caucasus “Russia’s southern underbelly”, agree that the …

Overview The Arab 2011 upheavals and the follow-up developments, as well as the Western and regional political actors’ renewed efforts aimed to end the Afghan armed conflict, are bringing to the analysts’ attention the evolution of Islamism in Central Asia and the Indian sub-continent. Most analysts followed closely the contacts …

I. General aspects The outcome of the 2011 so-called “Arab Revolutions” that in most of the countries paved the way for the Islamist movements and groups to enter the political arena with real chances of getting the power brought to the analysts’ attention the spectacular rising of the Muslim Brotherhood …

One of the most worrying trends generated by the economic crisis that broke in Europe several years ago – and that still shows little signs of ending – is the gradual radicalization of the traditional societies, in both directions (left and right), a process that matches the growing trend of …

Recent developments in Europe, where the economic crisis continues to affect the political and social life, are showing a worrying rise of the “traditional” extreme – both right and left – parties, as well as of the newer “anti-system” or  “fringe” movements that oppose the existing institutions (especially the global …