Eurasia

Turkish strikes on Syrian government troops and overt Kurdish attacks on targets inside Turkey signal that both sides are changing the rules of the game as Ankara eyes normalization with Damascus. Ankara’s reconciliation overtures to Damascus have been accompanied by growing Turkish attacks on Syrian Kurdish and government forces along …

To make matters worse, the Chinese state has been open about its hostility to the United States. Among other things, in May 2019 People’s Daily, the Party’s self-described “mouthpiece” and therefore most authoritative publication in China, declared a “people’s war” on America. Many of those “different social systems”—especially the United …

When the regime’s television host asked him about the video showing concrete being poured into the Arak reactor’s pipes to block them, Ali Akbar Salehi, former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran responded: “[N]ot the pipes you see here. We had purchased similar pipes, but I couldn’t announce …

“The US has started packing its bags to leave the Middle East. It is no longer able to impose maximum pressure on us.” — Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, August 4, 2022. Like their patrons in Tehran, these proxies are all staunchly committed to …

The U.S. and Russian presidents staged high visibility visits to the Middle East in the past week and a half. The visits were designed to assert each great power’s influence in the region at a time of escalating great power conflict. But both presidents cut a diminished figure on the …

The decades-long confrontation between Israel and Iran is now arguably becoming more dangerous. Economic, political, and military pressures have failed to stop Iran from becoming an almost nuclear threshold country. The Islamic Republic does not recognize the Jewish state and the latter considers the former an existential threat. Now, amid …

The Russian invasion and the Middle East The impact of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has reverberated around the world, and the Middle East is no exception. Regional leaders, who heretofore generally managed to maintain good relations with both Washington and Moscow, are now being pressured to pick a side. …

As countries around the world cope with supply shortages of staple foods, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, and India are creating an India-Middle East Food Corridor — a new West Asia value chain that harnesses the three states’ commercial and technological synergies to form what promises to be a …

The U.N.-sponsored truce of April 2022 between the government of Yemen, the Saudi-led military coalition, and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels remains very fragile. Yet it is the longest pause in fighting Yemen has experienced since the Houthi armed rebellion broke out in September 2014 and the Saudi-led coalition forces intervened …

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum’s joint address with the FBI Chief on 6 July saw a welcome rebalancing of the security service’s focus towards nation-state threats. Counterterrorism is an important function, but it was allowed to dominate for two decades while Russia, China and other belligerent states were insufficiently monitored. …