Middle Orient

Turkey’s skies remain open to Russian airlines and its doors remain open to hundreds of thousands of Russians and their money. Turkey’s exports to Russia are surging. Russian cash helped to plug the growing hole in Turkey’s foreign currency reserves — and at a time when Erdogan needs foreign money …

By strengthening alternative transit corridors, Moscow hopes to counter tightening Western economic sanctions and transit restrictions adopted in response to Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine. One of the most important prospects for Russia in this regard is to strengthen shipping and transit cooperation with Iran in the Caspian Sea. To …

Tehran vows to continue targeting Iraq’s Kurdistan region until the Iranian Kurdish opposition leave the area permanently. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, which has close links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), announced today that the attacks on Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in Iraqi Kurdistan will continue until these groups …

Iranian shops are closing up in waves amid the continuing nationwide protests. Iran was hit with widespread business strikes on Thursday in support of anti-government protests that were entering a third month.   Over the past week, and despite severe internet disruptions and rigorous controls, campaigners have urged civil disobedience on the anniversary …

The operation coincided with the US ambassador’s visit to Hadhramaut province, where he met with officials in the Saudi-backed government On the evening of 9 November, Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement launched a drone attack targeting a foreign oil tanker in the Qina port of Shabwah province’s Radum district, marking the …

The Al-Maamara clan said the US forces must be defeated from by the homeland ‘no matter the sacrifices’ On 10 November, Syria’s Al-Maamara tribe called on its people in Hasakah governorate to boycott any meeting or conference called forth by US occupation forces throughout eastern Syria. The Syrian Arab News …

US occupation troops plunder at least 80 percent of Syria’s daily oil production, as Washington has established over two dozen illegal military bases in the resource-rich northeast On 11 November, Ali Hassan al-Yousef, an engineer in the Jabsa Oil Fields Directorate of Syria’s Hasakah governorate, said in an interview with …

There are conflicting reports on whether the US or Israel carried out the airstrikes At midnight on 9 November, large explosions ripped through the outskirts of the Al Bukamal area following airstrikes launched near the Syrian-Iraqi border crossing in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor. At least 15 people who …

Throughout the eight years of war in Yemen, Ankara has seen its policies towards the country shift several times due to Turkey’s own changing political and economic situation. Turkey’s foreign policy under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is based on the ideology of “Neo-Ottomanism.” Ankara employs soft …

The meeting this week between two Eurasian security bosses is a further step toward dusting away the west’s oversized Asian footprint. Two guys are hanging out in a cozy room in Tehran with a tantalizing new map of the world in the background. Nothing to see here? On the contrary. …