Author: Steven Sahiounie

By Elijah J. Magnier On the third of January, after midnight, news about the assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, Brigadier General Hussein pour Jaafari, Colonel Shahroud Muzaffari Nia, Major Hadi Tameri and Captain Wahid Zamaniam reached the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad. Officers at the embassy were in contact with the convoy, and suddenly the communication was interrupted. Sardar Soleimani had diplomatic immunity and had been officially asked by the Iraqi government to help in defeating ISIS. Moreover, the convoy was attacked just before an Iraqi checkpoint that knew the Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes was in convoy along with his protection team. The news…

All that glitters is not gold and any similar weapon is not necessarily as an Iranian weapon,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi told reporters in a press conference in Tehran on Monday. “Medicine and medical goods are sent to them (the Yemenis) with difficulty; then how could military equipment go through and sent to them?” he asked. Mousavi said that the Yemeni nation has made astonishing progress in the military field and manufacturing weapons and military equipment after facing the Saudi-led aggression. His remarks came after experts claimed in a report to the Security Council that some of the new…

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz expressed their readiness to coordinate efforts within OPEC+ format to stabilize the situation on the international oil markets, which saw crude prices plummeting amid a deadly coronavirus outbreak in China. The two leaders “extensively discussed” the present situation and agreed to “maintain contacts” on various levels, Kremlin said in a statement. OPEC+ is a format that involves the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other major oil producers, including Russia, which earlier already coordinated reduced oil supply to support prices. The news comes amid reports that oil prices fell by…

The two major warring parties in the Libyan civil war have for the first time sat down for commission-level talks in Geneva. The meeting was agreed at the Libya summit in Berlin, after a peace process started by Russia and Turkey. Officials from the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and Libya’s National Army (LNA), which is led by General Khalifa Haftar, have gathered in Geneva for the first session of the Libyan Joint Military Commission. The talks are UN-brokered and are moderated by the UN Special Representative Ghassan Salamé. Each side sent five of its officers to the meeting.…

Previously, the Turkish president slammed the Syrian military for attacking Turkish troops in Syria’s Idlib province, cautioning that Ankara will not leave such acts unanswered. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has characterised the current developments in Syria’s Idlib province as “unmanageable”. He added that around one million refugees from the province have started moving towards the Turkish border with the Arab Republic, claiming that this is a result of Damascus’ offensive in Idlib. The president said that it would be difficult for Turkey to receive so many refugees. He further stated that the number of dead among Turkish soldiers due to Syrian shelling…

Steven Sahiounie, political commentator Imagine a lawsuit being tried in a courtroom. The case is coming to a close, and one side is sure of their position of being ‘in the right’, and then the opposing side offers a ‘deal’ to settle the case out of court. However, the deal they offer is empty and does not satisfy the basic legal claims. They decide to reject the offer, and wait for the chance of winning their full rights, depending on the justice system, and the merits of their case as presented. Details of the deal The “Deal of the Century”…

A shelling incident in Syria in which Turkey said four of its soldiers were killed may have been caused by the failure of the Turkish side to warn about the movement of their convoy, the Russian military said. “Units of the Turkish military conducted movement within the Idlib de-escalation zone during the nighttime from February 2 to February 3 without informing the Russian side and came under fire by the Syrian government troops, which were targeting terrorists west of Saraqib,” the Russian center for Syrian reconciliation said on Monday. The statement stressed that there are established lines of communications between Russian…

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will allocate a hefty sum to stabilize the currency market and ensure there is enough liquidity in the country’s financial institutions, which remain thwarted by the sweeping coronavirus epidemic. PBOC has announced that it will deploy as many as 1.2 trillion yuan ($173 billion) “in order to maintain reasonable and abundant liquidity of the banking system and stable operations of the currency market” during China’s fight against the novel virus. That money will arrive on Monday when Chinese markets reopen after a 12-day pause. Investors expect volatility as China’s currency, bond and stock markets have remained closed since January 23. The…

Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has condemned the use of force to disperse protest camps across the country. He also renewed calls for early elections to be held in a free and fair manner. Sistani, who delivered his message through a representative at Friday prayers in the holy city of Kerbala, also “heavily condemned” US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan, Reuters reported. Earlier this month, Sistani condemned the US-Iranian military confrontation taking place on Iraqi soil, saying it risked plunging the war-ravaged country and the wider Middle East into deeper conflict.

People in Lebanon have held a protest rally near the US embassy in capital Beirut to express their dissent against American President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan, known as the so-called deal of the century, on Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Sunday, protesters, both Palestinian refugees and Lebanese, chanted anti-US and anti-Israel slogans and waved flags near the US diplomatic mission in Beirut’s northeast district of Awkar. They tried to reach the embassy but were stopped as security forces blocked a road to the compound. “The ‘deal of the century’ shall not pass,” read a huge banner in the colors of the…