French President Emmanuel Macron has visited Lebanon for the second time in less than a month following the terrible blasts that destroyed Port Beirut. Macron first visited Lebanon on August 6, two days after a warehouse with 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded, killing 190 people, injuring another 6,500 and leaving 300,000 citizens homeless. The detonation, one of the largest non-nuclear…
Lifting Embargo on American Non-lethal Arms to Cyprus Is Aimed Against Russia. Washington announced the lifting of the embargo to sell American-made non-lethal equipment to the Republic of Cyprus. US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, told Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiadis over the phone on Tuesday that Washington decided to lift the embargo imposed on Cyprus since 1987,…
The summer of 2020 will certainly be remembered for many events, and most of them unrelated to the 21st century’s first pandemic. In the East Mediterranean, four key events stand out among others this summer – tensions and hostilities between NATO members Greece and Turkey; the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates; the…
A dispute over the right to exploit territorial waters in the Mediterranean has turned nasty after Turkey rebuffed German-led efforts aimed at rebuilding trust. Now Greece and Cyprus are calling on the European Union (EU) to help. While Greece and Cyprus are facing a Turkey-sized issue over who can or cannot exploit the oil and…
The current geopolitical position of France is shaped by a variety of factors. As one of the key actors in the Mediterranean region, Paris is now primarily a European leader in countering Turkey’s expansionist policy. Relations between the two countries are complicated by the necessity to reckon with the activation of significant global processes, the…
The Egyptian Parliament’s approval of their military’s possible deployment to Libya following the request for such support by the war-torn country’s largely unrecognized eastern-based parliament in Tobruk has sparked heated discussions about Cairo leading the GCC+’s proxy war against Turkey in that theater, but there are very serious limitations that the Egyptian military would inevitably…
