Middle Orient

Syrian Kurdish leader says Turkish intentions unclear. Will Turkey mount yet another military incursion against US-backed Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria “at any time, any moment,” as the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been threatening for some time? The threat seemed to subside as Erdogan came back “empty handed,” …

The Iranian regime’s military cooperation with Russia is one of the core pillars of Tehran’s foreign policy and this partnership intensifies whenever the regime faces greater isolation and pressure in the region. The US last week stated that the Iranian government is planning to supply Russia with hundreds of unmanned …

Iranian Minister of Energy Ali Akbar Mehrabian said the Islamic Republic has signed a long-term strategic electricity contract with Iraq to provide its Arab neighbor with sustainable energy supplies. Iran is already a key energy provider to Iraq which faces chronic electricity shortages despite sitting on the world’s fourth largest …

US Vice President Mike Pence’s meeting with Iranian opposition leader Maryam Radjavi at the Mojahedin’s headquarters in Albania and his strong support for the Democratic Alternative (National Council of Resistance of Iran) signal the prospect of the end of the regime in power in Iran. Lessons from history This is …

Last Wednesday, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan informed reporters traveling with Joe Biden to the Middle East that the president would not be shaking hands during his trip. The stated reason was the recent uptick in COVID-19. But in reality, the White House—which less …

President Joe Biden initially picked much of the low-hanging fruit from the misery of the Trump years. He revived the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and returned the United States to the Paris climate accords; the World Health Organization; and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations. But Biden …

When Arab leaders sit down with US President Joe Biden in Riyadh this week, one topic they will no doubt be eager to raise is the threat posed by Iran and how Tehran’s nuclear ambitions can be thwarted or contained. During his campaign for the presidential nomination in 2020, Biden …

Iran getting the Bomb is not necessarily a bad thing, though in a perverse way. An Israeli physicist who worked at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, which produces the plutonium for the country’s nuclear warheads, published a Haaretz article declaring the the US and Israeli policy of “maximum pressure,” has utterly …

L’inévitable poignée de mains avec Mohammed ben Salmane ne sera pas la seule épreuve pour le président américain sur la route semée d’embûches de cet Orient compliqué. Dix-huit mois après son arrivée à la Maison-Blanche, le président américain Joe Biden a débuté mercredi sa première tournée au Moyen-Orient, une région …

As the Ukraine war has entered its fifth month, and two decades after Iran, Russia and India signed the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) in 2002, Dariush Jamali, head of the Iranian-Russian Port of Solyanka in Astrakhan Oblast, announced that the first transit shipment from Russia to India had been …