Middle Orient

Chinese President Xi Jinping this week traveled to Moscow to meet with his friend and ally, Vladimir Putin. It was the 40th time that the two have met since Xi took office more than a decade ago. The visit not only solidified China’s strategic partnership with Russia, but Xi also …

Something astonishing happened on March 10 in Beijing. After years of vindictive antagonism, mistrust and bloody proxy wars in the West Asia, Iran and Saudi Arabia finally reached an agreement to re-establish diplomatic relations and to reopen the embassies. According to a tripartite joint statement of the countries released by …

China’s mediation to normalise Saudi-Iranian diplomatic ties has been widely welcomed internationally, especially in the West Asian region. A clutch of unhappy states that do not want to see China stealing a march on any front, even if it advances the cause of world peace, mutely watched. The US led …

The United States and its European allies are still grappling with the consequences of their invasion of Iraq. As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, it is time to understand the lessons from 2003.A large majority of Europeans knew that the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was wrong. Its …

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Tel Aviv for Rome on March 9, he was flown to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv by a helicopter because anti-government protesters blocked all the roads around it. Netanyahu’s visit was not met with much enthusiasm in Italy, either. A sit-in was …

A push by Arab allies of the United States to bring Syria in from the cold highlights the limits of a Chinese-mediated rapprochement between the Middle East’s archrivals, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The effort spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates, and supported by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, demonstrates that …

The date of the presidential elections has been announced in Turkey. This will probably be the most difficult test for Erdogan. And by internal circumstances – the strengthening of the pro-Western secular-Kemalist opposition (primarily in the person of the Republican People’s Party), a split in the AKP itself, a sharp …

On March 16, 2023, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) published an interview given by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to the Sputnik News Agency (Russia). President Al-Assad said that the BRICS countries have begun distancing themselves from the U.S. and the Western “bloc” and that when an alternative to the …

Turkish and Greek officials will hold a meeting on Wednesday as the two countries seek to revive stalled discussions for dialogue, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry said deputy foreign ministers of Türkiye and Greece, Ambassador Burak Akçapar and Konstantinos Fragkogiannis, respectively, will meet “in the context of …

Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has led to a renewed focus on the geopolitical importance of the Black Sea. What the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has overlooked is Russia’s use—often in coordination with Iran—of the Caspian Sea to advance its war aims in Ukraine. The Caspian Sea …