July, 2020

• 21 July

  What’s behind the wave of mysterious incidents in Iran?

  On the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Stuxnet computer virus, designed by the U.S. and Israel to target Iran’s nuclear program, the Islamic Republic is facing a new wave of unclaimed acts of sabotage. While military and nuclear facilities in Parchin and Natanz have been attacked, this latest …

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• 21 July

  Turkey’s Generation Z Turns Against Erdogan

  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s online address to students on June 26 was the latest sign that his efforts to shape Turkey’s young generation in his image have failed. Thousands of students joining the YouTube livestream disliked the video and used the comments section to criticize Erdogan and tell him …

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• 21 July

  Iran's Military Alliance with China Threatens Middle East Security

  Announcing Iran’s intention to build a new military base in the Indian Ocean, Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the naval attachment of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that the base would be used to protect fishing and commercial vessels from piracy and “foreign ships”, a reference to …

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• 21 July

  Armenia-Azerbaijan

  Clashes broke out Sunday along the Armenia-Azerbaijan state border, killing four Armenian and eleven Azerbaijani soldiers, as well as an Azerbaijani civilian. It is the worst and most worrying escalation on this front since 2016, say Crisis Group experts Olesya Vartanyan and Zaur Shiriyev. Along the border, the shooting disrupted …

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• 21 July

  Lebanon's New 'Great Satan'

  Hezbollah’s financial crisis is the result of US sanctions on its patrons in Iran, which had been supporting the terrorist group annually with about $700 million from oil revenues…. — Fahim al-Hamid, Saudi journalist, okaz.com.sa, March 22, 2020.

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• 21 July

  Lessons from the polish opposition

  After years of misrule under Poland’s Law and Justice party, a candidate representing the mainstream opposition almost managed to wrest back control of the presidency. In fact, anti-populists everywhere should see Rafal Trzaskowski’s near-miss campaign as a model for their own efforts.Although Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski did not come out …

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• 21 July

  Were Prosecutors Right to Publicise Charges Against Kosovo’s Thaci?

  The announcement that war crimes charges had been filed against Hashim Thaci and Kadri Veseli caused a political storm, but questions persist about whether prosecutors in The Hague were justified in making the accusations public.

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• 21 July

  The Netherlands Looks Again at its Controversial Role in Srebrenica

  Young Bosnian-Dutch activists are campaigning to raise the low level of public knowledge about the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and the Netherlands’ role in the UN peacekeeping mission that did not prevent the mass killings of Bosniaks.

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• 21 July

  Forget Expectations: German EU Presidency no Magic Wand for the Balkans

  It is foolhardy to think Germany’s presidency of the EU or the bloc’s revival of Belgrade-Pristina talks signal a radical shift in enthusiasm for enlargement to the Western Balkans. Balkan states themselves must make concrete plans if they are to deepen relations with the bloc.

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• 21 July

  Chinese Military Exercises Threaten to Invade Taiwan

  China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is currently staging a military exercise across from the Taiwan Strait that looks as if it plans to culminate in an amphibious assault on an island in the South China Sea.

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