For Bibi Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister save only founding father David Ben-Gurion, it has been a week of triumph. Last Tuesday, President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal as Bibi had demanded. Thursday, after Iran launched 20 missiles at the Golan Heights, Bibi answered with a 70-missile attack…
Russia’s predominant position in Syria & Iraqi Kurdistan places Moscow right in the middle of the misleadingly characterized “Shiite Crescent” and allows the Kremlin to “balance” Iranian influence in the Mideast better than any other country ever possibly could. It’s impossible to ignore the geopolitical reality that the “progressive” faction of Russia’s permanent military, intelligence,…
There is good and bad news about the Iraqi elections. The good news is that party lists are split on non-sectarian lines. To be Sunni or Shia is not the determinant factor. There are even splits within party lists themselves. The bad news is that the Iraqi election, due to be held on 12 May,…
Willing believers in lies are willing slaves, because lies are coercion of the mind, as opposed to coercion of the body (slavery by physical violence instead of by mental violence, which is called “lies”); and anyone who willingly complies with any type of coercion when escape from that coercion is available (and this is precisely…
The protests that rocked Iran earlier this year barely affected how most countries engage with the world’s only Shiite theocracy. But in neighboring Iraq, they have forced a much deeper debate that goes to the heart of the country’s political future — and that of the whole region. With protesters’ demands ranging from lower egg prices…
Even in the context of a post-truth geopolitical environment run amok, Russian President Vladimir Putin telling his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani over the phone that any further Western strikes against Syria may “lead to chaos in international relations” should at least be seen for what it is; a massive understatement. According to the Kremlin, Putin…
