Author: Steven Sahiounie

By: Peter Crowley If a hegemonic power wants to purportedly build a democracy and “liberate” a people, it would do well to listen to what the people say. On January 4th, the Iraqi Parliament voted for US troops to leave the country. The State Department has already rejected this request; instead, seeking to reestablish the US’s strategic partnership with Iraq. It is true – if the US were to leave Iraq, Iran would likely gain further influence in the country. Geostragetically, this is something that Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney should have considered before the 2003 Iraq invasion. Since then,…

While some social media users roasted Trump over the whole 9/11 angle being brought into the equation, others opted to slam the president’s opponents over the impeachment proceedings instead. The media drama surrounding the impeachment proceedings against US President Donald Trump has once again been thrust into the spotlight after the US head of state cited a statement by Fox News host Mark Levin who argued that Trump is “denied due process”. “The president gets less due process than the terrorists on 9/11 get. They get habeas corpus rights and all these other… the president gets no rights, no consideration.…

The Somalian government has offered Ankara to partake in oil exploration along Somalia’s continental shelf in analogy with Turkey’s drilling operations in Libya, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. “We have received an offer from Somalia whose sea has oil reserves. They tell us ‘You drill for oil in Libya, you can come drill in our country, too,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by the A Haber broadcaster upon his return from the Berlin summit of Libya. On 27 November, Turkey and the internationally recognised Libyan government signed memoranda on maritime and military cooperation, which was not particularly…

Fayez Sarraj, the head of Government of National Accord (GNA) on Monday expressed optimism regarding the willingness of the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Khalifa Haftar, to follow the agreements reached during the Berlin conference. “After the Berlin conference we are cautiously optimistic about whether the other side will follow the agreements,” he told Al Jazeera TV channel. At the same time, Sarraj stated that the GNA had no domestic partner in the Libyan peace process. “We have no real partner to reach progress in the Libyan peace process,” he added. On Sunday, the international conference on Libya took place in…

Earlier, Iranian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said that Tehran continues to adhere to the 2015 nuclear deal, adding that the European powers’ claims about Iran violating the deal were unfounded. Moscow warns Tehran against making ‘reckless steps’ to quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said. He added that Russia urges Iran to comply with its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, giving those who oppose the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) further reasons for escalation is “counterproductive”. “Opponents of the JCPOA and those who…

A car bomb exploded on January 18 targeting a convoy of U.S. forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near a key gas facility in the eastern Syrian governorate of Deir Ezzor, according to the North Press Agency (NPA) A source in the SDF told the agency that the car bomb was parked on a highway leading to the Conico gas facility. “A Hyundai type car exploded in the village of Jadid Akkidat in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor yesterday evening, during the passage of two convoys of the International Coalition and the SDF,” the source told the NPA…

By Joaquin Flores 16 US military men with fatal injuries sustained during Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes on Ain Al-Assad base earlier this month have been taken to a hospital in camp Arifjan in Ahmed al-Jaber airbase in Kuwait, a leading Kuwaiti newspaper disclosed on Sunday. The Arabic-language Al-Qabas paper quoted informed sources as saying on Sunday that the 16 US militaries, included some whose bodies had been severely burnt and some others who had sustained shrapnel wounds, have been transferred to a US military hospital in Kuwait under strict security measures. It added that the wounded military men have gone under…

Lebanon’s Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri has urged politicians to urgently form a new government and “stop wasting time” to find solutions for the Lebanese economic crisis in order to “calm the popular storm.” “We feared for Beirut yesterday, but as usual, it has stitched the wounds of its sons from the ranks of the security forces and protesters and removed from its face the remains of anger, rioting and the smoke of blazes,” Hariri wrote on his official Twitter page on Sunday, after a night of violent clashes between security forces and protesters. “We plead to God for the…

Forces loyal to eastern Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar have shut off production at Libya’s major oil fields; an escalation that overshadowed an ongoing peace summit in the German capital Berlin. Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said in a statement on Sunday that the major southwestern fields of El Sharara and El Feel were closing after forces loyal to renegade commander Haftar shut a pipeline. The shutdown would cut oil production by 800,000 barrels a day. Forces loyal to Haftar also blocked oil exports from the war-ravaged country’s main ports Saturday. The move to cripple the country’s main source of income came after Turkey’s…

The Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) have detained one of the leaders of the Daesh* terrorist group in the city of Al-Fallujah, Anbar province, the ISOF said. According to the statement published on Twitter, the detained Daesh commander was in charge of Daesh internal security in the city. On 15 January, The New York Times reported citing military officials that the United States had resumed joint military operations with Iraq following a two-week pause. The officials, according to the report, said the United States was eager to resume joint operations with Iraq against Daesh to disrupt any momentum the organisation may have gained from…