Middle Orient

Behind the raft of OPEC+ production decisions riling the collective west lies a tight Russian-Saudi strategy and enhanced Russian-Iranian energy cooperation. A curious thing happened in Vienna on Sunday just as the 35th Ministerial Meeting of OPEC+ was about to start at its headquarters. Three princely western news organizations – …

In an exclusive interview, The Cradle speaks to former Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, who reveals the challenges, foreign conspiracies, and controversies that defined his truncated two-year tenure, amidst political and economic turmoil that shook the nation. Adil Abdul-Mahdi, prime minister of Iraq from October 2018 to May 2020, emerged …

Despite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad being welcomed back onto the international stage, all is not well at home. His country is broken into three parts, which, at best, are in a state of uneasy coexistence and at worst are stuck in a low-intensity active conflict. In the country’s northwestern Idlib …

The Biden administration will soon submit an interagency strategy to Congress on combating Syria’s illicit Captagon drug trade, which comes hot on the heels of the diplomatic rapprochement between Damascus and Arab states. The administration will unveil this strategy in the coming weeks, said US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State …

To most Syria observers, the accelerated Saudi-led drive to rehabilitate the Assad regime is not a surprise. After all, the Saudis and the other allied Arab regimes in the region did not have essential contradictions with the Syrian regime in 2011, when the anti-Assad uprising broke out. The involvement of …

Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “used the Islamic concept of ‘Taqiyya’ to describe the regime’s decision to accept the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with the West. Taqiyya means the permissibility to deny or conceal one’s real beliefs to secure a worthy goal.” — iranintl.com, May 20, 2023. “Khamenei’s emphasis …

At a gathering in Riyadh of the global alliance to defeat IS, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked partners to repatriate their detained citizens and announced new funding for stabilization work in Iraq and Syria. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged countries to take responsibility for their citizens …

Officials in northeast Syria tell Al-Monitor that women in Islamic State internment camps are forcing young boys to impregnate women as part of an alleged IS campaign to “go forth and multiply.” Sitting on a classroom chair, his fingers drumming nervously on a tablet, a young boy slowly raises his …

US troops conducted a total of 38 missions against ISIS in Iraq and Syria during May, according to US Central Command. 21 of those missions took place in Iraq, and 17 were conducted in Syria, all with partner forces, Task & Purpose reported. 31 suspected ISIS operatives were detained, and …

The United States and Saudi Arabia urged countries to take back citizens captured in the fight against Islamic State, with the kingdom’s top diplomat saying it was “absolutely unacceptable” that wealthy countries skirted that responsibility. “I would say to those countries, you must step up,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal …