Eurasia

The Omani economy is benefiting from both higher oil and gas revenues and the country’s fiscal policies and discipline. Oman’s economy has enjoyed a strong first half to 2022 and the outlook for the rest of this year and 2023 is positive. The sultanate’s public finances have significantly improved compared …

Iranian news outlets are emphasizing the uncertainties facing the nuclear deal as the country’s top diplomat said more guarantees were still needed from the United States for the accord’s revival. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has demanded that Washington offer more robust guarantees for sanctions relief in negotiations over the …

How AI Distorts Decision-Making and Makes Dictators More Dangerous In policy circles, discussions about artificial intelligence invariably pit China against the United States in a race for technological supremacy. If the key resource is data, then China, with its billion-plus citizens and lax protections against state surveillance, seems destined to …

Malgré les inquiétudes des ONG, Kinshasa a lancé un appel d’offres pour l’exploration et l’exploitation de 27 blocs pétroliers et 3 gaziers. Estimant qu’il est temps de saisir l’opportunité d’augmenter significativement les revenus de l’État. Entretien avec Didier Budimbu, le ministre des hydrocarbures. La volonté du gouvernement congolais d’accélérer l’exploration …

On July 25, the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative and Future of Iran Initiative hosted a virtual event titled “Iran and Iraq: The struggle for tenable relations.” Moderated by Masoud Mostajabi, associate director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, the discussion analyzed the political, economic, and cultural ties and …

After eight months of stalemate in the Iraqi Council of Representatives (CoR), Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his parliamentary bloc to turn in their letters of resignation on June 12 and withdraw from the partially disabled legislature. Even with seventy-three members of parliament out (22 percent of the total members), the institution …

Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced he would resign from Iraqi politics on August 29, prompting his followers to storm government palaces in response and sparking fears that violence could erupt in a country already beset by its worst political crisis in years. Iraq’s military announced a nationwide curfew and the …

Moscow’s Struggle to Sustain Its War in Ukraine In April, just weeks after he launched the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin maintained that the West could never strangle Russia’s economy. The barrage of American and European sanctions had not succeeded and would not succeed in bringing his country …

The main beneficiaries of the increased revenues will most likely be the office of Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and more importantly the IRGC’s elite branch the Quds Force, which carries out extraterritorial operations to advance the revolutionary principles of the Islamic Republic abroad. …

The Road Not Taken After two weeks in Iran during latter part of January 1979, the height of the revolutionary movement against the dynastic, autocratic rule of Mohammed Reza Ayatollah, I had the opportunity for an extended conversation with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in his tent where he received foreign visitors …