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Archive for the tag “Iraq”

22 Feb 2021

Biden Deprioritises The Middle East

President Joe Biden is tired of dealing with the Middle East — and, barely a month into his tenure, the region has noticed. The signals are not meant to be subtle, his advisers say. The president has made only one call to a head of state in the Middle East — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday — which itself was delayed by more than three weeks and followed calls to other allies and even adversaries like Russia and China. 

Read Here – Politico

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08 Jan 2020

Soleimani’s Ultimate Revenge

For years, Tehran’s leadership talked fatalistically about Soleimani as a “living martyr,” but it surely did not anticipate President Donald Trump’s audacious targeted killing. Now the Iranians will seek vengeance—methodical, cold-blooded, and nasty. They will look to avoid an all-out war with the United States that they cannot win. But they will also look to turn a tactical blow into a strategic boon.

Read Here – The Atlantic

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08 Jan 2020

What Is The Middle East In The Middle Of Anymore?

The United States is trying to square a circle, remaining strong and deterring dangerous elements, but to do so for U.S. interests—interests that increasingly seem to be fewer and fewer in the Middle East.

Read Here – American Greatness

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19 Oct 2019
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Cease-Fire Chaos: The Kurds, Turkey, And Trump Administration Are Touting Different Strategies

Even if the Trump administration moves closer to Turkey, the relationship between the country and Congress will sustain long-lasting damage. It’s unclear whether the latest cease-fire will mollify the cries to punish Turkey.

Read Here – The National Interest

Posted in Middle East and tagged , , , ,
16 Sep 2019

U.S. Blames Iran For Saudi Oil Attack, Trump Says ‘Locked And Loaded’

U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States was “locked and loaded” for a potential response to the attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, after a senior U.S. administration official said Iran was to blame. Trump also authorised the use of the U.S. emergency oil stockpile to ensure stable supplies after the attack, which shut 5% of world production and sent crude prices soaring more than 19% in early trade on Monday, before moderating to show a 10% gain.

Read Here – Reuters

Also Read: Saudi oil facility attacks may have come from Iraq

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02 Jun 2019

Is The United States Baiting Iran Into A War?

With armed forces on both sides on high alert, additional American naval and aerial hardware newly arrived in theater, and Saudi Arabia having pounded the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel force in Yemen for its attack on a major Saudi oil pipeline, there remains not only the potential for an unintended clash or misfire, but also a worrying threat that misperception may lead to conflict.

Read Here – The National Interest

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14 May 2019

Is Trump Yet Another U.S. President Provoking a War?

The United States has a long history of provoking, instigating, or launching wars based on dubious, flimsy, or manufactured threats….Today, the question in Washington—and surely in Tehran, too—is whether President Trump is making moves that will provoke, instigate, or inadvertently drag the United States into a war with Iran.

Read Here – The New Yorker

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31 Mar 2019

Why Iran Is So Afraid Of A Free Iraq

Beyond support for armed militias which take orders more from Tehran than Baghdad, Sistani is also aware that Iraqis, including most Iraqi Shiites, resent more mundane issues such as Iran’s dumping of cheap manufactured goods on the Iraqi market, thereby undercutting struggling Iraqi businesses. The anti-Iranian sentiment is so widespread that when fertilizer run-off poisoned fish in the Tigris River, rumors spread across Baghdad that Iran had killed the fish to force Iraqis to buy from them instead.

Read Here – The National Interest

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19 Mar 2019

What Rouhani’s Visit To Iraq Tells Us About Iran’s Syria Policy

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s recent landmark trip to Iraq was closely monitored and discussed from various aspects by the media and analysts around the world. Some observers put their focus on the bilateral aspect, talking about the importance of the visit in terms of Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, while others analysed it within the context of Iran’s plans to overcome the US sanctions…But a largely ignored — and yet very important — aspect of the Iranian president’s three-day visit to Iraq is the explicit and implicit implications of the trip for Iran’s policy in Syria.

Read Here – Al Monitor

 

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03 Feb 2019

The U.S. Has Wasted Billions of Dollars On Failed Arab Armies

The United States has spent 70 years and tens of billions of dollars training Arab militaries—with almost nothing to show for all the effort. Time and again, America’s Arab allies have failed to live up to martial expectations. The U.S.-trained Egyptian Armed Forces performed miserably in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm. If anything, they did somewhat better under Soviet tutelage in the 1973 October War. The U.S.-trained Iraqi Army collapsed when attacked by a couple thousand Islamic State zealots in 2014. The U.S.-trained Saudi military fell flat on its face when it intervened in Yemen in 2015, and it has become badly stuck there.

Read Here – Foreign Policy

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