Author: Steven Sahiounie

Tehran has waged a low-intensity counterterrorism campaign against militants in the country’s northwest for several decades, accusing the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia of providing support to local separatists, and accusing officials in Iraqi Kurdistan of helping to arm and train the guerillas. Three Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) troops were killed a clash outside the town of Divandarreh, western Iran on Tuesday, Tasnim News has reported. An unknown number of terrorist gunmen were also said to have been killed in the fighting outside the Iranian Kurdistan Province town. An IRGC spokesperson did not clarify which militant group was involved…

The United States wants to maintain its space partnership with Russia, but will seek a “balanced” relationship, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on Tuesday. “The partnership we desire is they launch on our rockets and we launch on their rockets,” Bridenstine said. “[From] 2011 to today, we put ourselves in a position where we were dependent on them launching our astronauts on their rockets.” Bridenstine stressed the importance of maintaining a good partnership between NASA and Roskosmos, the Russian space agency. However, the United States must not let itself fall again into a condition of dependency on Moscow, he added.…

According to a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), France’s recent announcement of a Paris hospital’s treatment of a patient with the COVID-19 novel coronavirus on December 27 is understandable, considering when symptoms of the disease appeared in China. “The findings in France or in any similar scenario, helps to better understand the potential virus circulation of COVID-19,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said during a United Nations video conference briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday, reported Anadolu Agency. “It’s not surprising, given the earliest cases of COVID-19 had symptoms onset already in early December.” Lindmeier argued that judging by China’s…

The Iraqi Security Forces announced on Monday the killing of “Abu Qasurah”, the military leader of the Islamic State terrorist organization along the Syrian-Iraqi border. According to the Iraqi Security Forces, the high-ranking ISIS commander was killed by an explosion in the western part of the Al-Anbar Governorate, near the Syrian border. The military said in a statement that “the security forces implemented the Operation Black Desert, which was launched this morning under the supervision of the Joint Operations Command, to search areas western Al-Anbar, through a force of a modern buildup brigade within the Al-Jazeera Operations Command.” “We saw…

In a rare move, the Russian Federation gave Iran access to Syria’s Hmeimim Airbase in the western part of the country, a flight tracking app revealed this week. According to the reports, a Syrian IL-76 cargo aircraft was tracked flying from Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport to the Hmeimim Airbase near the coastal city of Jableh in Syria’s Latakia Governorate. The plane, which mostly travels from Tehran to Damascus, is under the watchful eye of the Israeli military, who has on several occasions attacked the cargo unloaded from the aircraft. Israel, with varying success, nevertheless destroyed several military facilities of the Iranian…

A senior Iraqi lawmaker says his country will buy long-range surface-to-air S-300 or S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia in a bid to update its own defense infrastructure in case Washington does not help Baghdad in getting modern armaments. “Iraq is contemplating buying S-300 or S-400 systems from Russia in order to secure its own airspace against any foreign act of aggression. Iraq will reach out to purchase such systems in case the American side does not provide modern air defense armaments,” the head of the security and defense committee in the Iraqi parliament, Mohammad Reza al-Haider, told Iraqi…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey “will no longer tolerate harassment in Syria safe zone.” Terrorist groups are trying to exploit Turkey’s preoccupation with the coronavirus pandemic to step up attacks both within Turkey’s borders and beyond, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised address following a Cabinet meeting in Istanbul. “This attitude alone is enough to show how far the terrorist group is from humanity,” he said. He further added that the Turkish Armed Forces “are pursuing and neutralizing terrorists non-stop,” both their operations with and outside of the borders continue without stop. “We closely monitor every…

Iraqi army troops and allied fighters from Popular Mobilization Forces — known as Hashd al-Sha’abi — have conducted fresh operations against Daesh militants amid warnings of collaboration between the United States and remnants of the Takfiri terror outfit in the country. On Monday, Iraq’s Security Media Cell announced the launch of a new military campaign, dubbed ‘Desert Lions,’ against Daesh sleeper cells in the country’s desert areas. The operation covers “Wadi Houran, Husayniyyat, Al-Kara, H2, and Wadi al-Hallcom, all the way to international borders” in Iraq’s western Anbar Province with an aim to “enhance security and stability in these areas, to pursue terrorist elements…

The Royal Air Force (RAF) has carried out a bombing raid in northern Iraq under the guise of combating the terrorist group Daesh. According to a statement from the Ministry of Defense (MoD), a pair of RAF Typhoons and “other coalition aircraft” carried out a bombing raid on “six cave entrances” northeast of the city of Baiji, northern Iraq. The Mod claims that the RAF was acting on “intelligence” that a “group of IS [Daesh] fighters with weapons were operating out of the caves”. The RAF Typhoons set off from their base in RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus to bomb alleged…

A number of terrorists have been killed as forces with Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) carried out a security operation in the western province of Kordestan, which borders Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. A statement by the IRGC’s Hamzeh Seyed al-Shohada Base said several “counter-revolutionary’ terrorists were killed during clashes in Divandarreh County on Tuesday, without providing a specified number. Three IRGC staff members, including senior commander Colonel Shakiba Salimi, were also martyred during the operation, it added. The statement further hailed Salimi for spending his life promoting security in Kordestan and recently making utmost efforts in fighting a deadly…