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 …

Building the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline from Russia to China is a rational decision that would have made sense even before the war, but the project will never be able to replace Russia’s decimated gas trade with Europe.Before its invasion of Ukraine, Russia sold over 150 billion cubic …

In his recently published bestseller “The End of Regime,” author and journalist Alexander Baunov analyzed the democratization of various autocratic systems. In this article for Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, he looks at German-Russian relations and asks what lessons from German history might be important in the future.It may be commonplace—on both …

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 …

The Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fuad Hussein, confirmed on Thursday that 3,000 Iraqi terrorists detained in Syria have been returned to Iraq, where the majority of them have been tried, according to the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Al-Sahaf. During his speech at the ministerial meeting …

U.S. officials tasked with tracking Islamic State are seeing worrisome signs that the terror group’s core leadership is strengthening control over its global network of affiliates despite a series of key losses. Specifically, the United States is raising concerns about the group’s General Directorate of Provinces, a series of nine …

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is fond of stating “There is no Plan B” to emphasise the refusal to veer away from the two-state paradigm, over which there is international consensus. Yet Israeli colonialism in Palestine has rendered the two-state framework defunct. “Israel was established against a historical trend of mass …