The minute you set foot in the streets of Mashhad, the air smelling of saffron, a fine breeze oozing from the mountains, it hits you; you’re in the heart of the Ancient Silk Road and the New Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). To the east, the Afghan border is only three hours away on an…
The Middle East is a region where many different interests meet and interact. Moving one piece may provoke a reaction at the other end of the chess-board. The tentatives by Donald Trump to break with the strategy of Admiral Cebrowski [1] and pacify a particularly wounded zone are, for the moment, provoking contradictory consequences which are…
Three waves of detentions reflect Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s increasing paranoia. He seems unable to distinguish between friend and foe. Despite having reached the threshold of consensus with regards to his ascension to the throne, MBS is behaving as if his position is anything but assured. Feeling insecure These detention campaigns can be seen…
The annulment of the Iran nuclear deal framework could not be fended off by the visits or entreaties of Merkel, Macron or May. Donald Trump has refused to renew the agreement formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), removing the United States from the deal. In reality, it changes little for Washington,…
The South East Asian sub-region (SEA) remains an important link in the chain of direct as well as indirect “conflict zones”, beginning on the Korean Peninsula and ending at the entrance to the Strait of Malacca, in the Sino-American standoff. There is no scoring system to keep track of “goals, points, seconds” that could be…
How do you organise a successful genocide – in Turkish Armenia a century ago, in Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1940s, or in the Middle East today? A remarkable investigation by a young Harvard scholar – focusing on the slaughter of Armenians in a single Turkish Ottoman city 103 years ago – suggests the answer is simple:…
