Middle Orient

As one of the signatories of the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the flawed nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, Russia, as well as China, will ultimately have a say in any new agreement that emerges from the Vienna talks. Rather than seeking to curb Iran’s nuclear …

European Eye on Radicalization (EER) recently hosted its fifteenth webinar on the thorny issue of whether jihadist foreign fighters from Europe and their families should be brought home, with specific reference to the members of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the camps in Syria. Despite the destruction of ISIS’s “caliphate” …

Turkey’s interior minister on Saturday described a gun attack that killed a police officer in the country’s south as an “America-based” operation. Two suspected Kurdish militants opened fire on security force lodgings in the Mediterranean province of Mersin late Monday, killing one officer and wounding a second officer and a …

Turkish warplanes “neutralized” 23 Kurdish militants in a raid 140 kilometers (90 miles) inside Iraq, the Turkish Defense Ministry said Sunday. The ministry usually refers to killed militants as “neutralized.” It said the number of casualties in the mission in the Asos region of northern Iraq, which is controlled by …

On the Jewish new year holy day of Rosh HaShanah, September 26th and 27 this year, Jews throughout the world read the Torah chapters of Genesis 21 and 22; the narrations of Abraham, the Hebrew’s (Genesis 14:13) two first born sons: Ishmael, Abraham’s first born son of Hagar the Egyptian; …

A senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was shot dead on Friday during clashes with anti-regime gunman, according to state media. Ali Mousavi, who was a leading figure of the IRGC in the Sistan-Baluchestan province, was killed in the south-eastern city of Zahedan, Tasnim news agency reported. …

The Iranian Foreign Minister stated that the US has sent multiple messages to Iran through the foreign ministers of certain countries. The Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein was among a number of his counterparts from certain countries who carried America’s messages to Iran and vice versa, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein …

Iraq (Federal Iraq and Kurdistan Regional Government) is the second-largest crude oil producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia. It holds the world’s fifth-largest proved crude oil reserves, at 145 billion barrels, representing 17% of proved reserves in the Middle East and 8% of global reserves.1 Most of Iraq’s major known …

Today’s Damavand [volcano] s made of a new generation of Iranians who don’t give tuppence about the Islamic Republic’s arcane narrative, and prefer life in the modern world, warts and all, to the North Korean-style society that “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei is trying to impose on Iran. The uprising was …

Israel and Lebanon received a US-brokered proposal for an agreement on a maritime border between the two countries. Lebanese President Michel Aoun met with US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea on Saturday and received the written proposal from US mediator Amos Hochstein, according to the Lebanese Presidency. At Sunday’s regular …