Eurasia

Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to lead the State Department, has worked alongside Biden for nearly two decades. President-elect Joe Biden named foreign policy veteran Antony Blinken as his pick for Secretary of State on Monday, tasking a trusted aide with fulfilling his campaign pledge to reassert America’s standing …

The Arab Coalition on Tuesday said it had destroyed five naval mines planted by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in the southern Red Sea.

Clashes between Kurdish fighters and Turkey-backed opposition gunmen in northern Syria left at least 18 fighters dead in some of the most intense fighting in weeks, an opposition war monitor and a Kurdish news agency said Tuesday.

Les invectives à répétition dont le président turc Erdogan abreuve Emmanuel Macron ont sans doute une visée politique: faire de la Turquie une puissance mondiale et de lui-même un nouveau calife. Elles sont aussi le reflet de son caractère profond, celui d’un homme élevé à la fois à l’école islamique …

A U.S. Navy destroyer took on Russian forces on Tuesday in a direct challenge to Moscow’s territorial claims in the Pacific. Dispatched from a Navy base in Japan, the USS John McCain set out for Peter the Great Bay in the Western Pacific to combat Russia’s “excessive maritime claims,” according …

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the implementation of a Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the war in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in separate phone calls with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, the Kremlin said on November 24.

The Syrian regime “continues to allow Iran and its proxies to use its territory… to entrench its presence in Syria.” The United Nations Security Council must demand Iran’s ouster from Syria and condemn attacks by its proxies against Israel from that neighboring territory, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan …

Strikes reportedly targeted Iranian, Hezbollah targets; 8 pro-Iranian fighters said to have been killed. Syria has blamed Israel for a series of airstrikes on locations south of the capital Damascus and on the Golan Heights late Tuesday night.

Human rights activists have called for the arrest of Bassam Haji Mustafa, a militia leader who now lives in Paris and has styled himself as a political activist reports Etihad Press.

Northern Raqqa has experience a surge in violence, with the Syrian Democratic Forces targeting Turkish-backed groups and regime forces being hit by Turkish drone fire reports The Levant News.