Last week it was all fire and brimstone. The US was threatening more sanctions on Iran, the Brits were seizing oil tankers and Iran was violating the JCPOA. This week things look different all of a sudden. An oil tanker goes dark while passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the story fails to get any…
The chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s International Affairs Committee used very loaded language when describing the status of his country’s sailors who were on a UK-flagged vessel that was just detained by Iran. Russian-Iranian relations have always been very complicated, but their contemporary state is probably the most complex that it’s ever been. Russia’s…
What on Earth were the British politicians and officials thinking who gave the go-ahead for the seizure of the Iranian oil tankerGrace 1 off Gibraltar on 4 July? Did they truly believe that the Iranians would not retaliate for what they see as a serious escalation in America’s economic war against them? The British cover…
The surprise pullout of troops and warplanes from Yemen by the United Arab Emirates has been interpreted as a “peace move”, or at least a tacit admission of defeat. But, more plausibly, the timing of the withdrawal seems more to do with the UAE redeploying forces at the behest of the United States in order…
The US boasted of downing an Iranian drone over the Strait of Hormuz, admittedly in international waters, just miles off Iran’s coast, and thousands of miles from Washington. It claims the drone was “threatening” a US amphibious assault ship, the USS Boxer. The Washington Post in its article, “Trump says the U.S. Navy downed an…
In October 1950, as U.S. forces were reeling from hordes of Chinese troops who had intervened massively in the Korean War, a 5,000-man Turkish brigade arrived to halt an onslaught by six Chinese divisions. Said supreme commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur: “The Turks are the hero of heroes. There is no impossibility for the Turkish Brigade.”…
