Author: Steven Sahiounie

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will take delivery of an undisclosed number of stealth drones, Colonel Akbar Karimloo revealed on Sunday. According to Karimloo, the IRGC will receive the new Fotros stealth drone, which was first unveiled in November of 2013. In a conversation with the Tasnim News Agency, Karimloo said that the drones would be delivered sometime ‘in the near future’, with the decision to accept the unmanned aerial vehicle into service based on extensive meetings with the ministry of defense, as well as an evaluation of its features. The Fotros is a large multipurpose drone capable of…

The Libyan National Army (LNA) launched a heavy attack on the Mitiga Airbase in Tripoli on Sunday, targeting several sites inside this strategic installation that houses several Turkish military personnel. According to a field report from Tripoli, the LNA heavily targeted the Mitiga Airbase with artillery shells and rockets, causing a number of explosions that could be heard throughout the capital. “The Haftar terrorist militias continue to bomb the Grad rockets at Mitiga Airport and the residential neighborhoods in its vicinity,” the Government of National Accord (GNA) forces announced this afternoon. The Mitiga Airbase is Turkey’s main base in Libya,…

Turkey has deployed a new batch of at least 2,100 Syrian militants in Libya, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) revealed on April 25. The London-based monitoring group said the number of Syrians fighting for the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya is 7,400. Around 2,500 others are now preparing for deployment in the north African country. “Hundreds of fighters are preparing to move from Syria to Turkey, as the process of registering new lists of names by the Syrian National Army’s factions continues upon the orders of the Turkish intelligence,” the SOHR report reads. Most of the…

Early on April 26, another service member of the Syrian intelligence was assassinated in the southern governorate of Daraa. The service member, Adeeb Abdul Rahim al-Damad, was abducted from his house in the town of Ibtta in the northern Daraa countryside by unknown gunmen. Later, al-Damad’s dead body was found near the town of al-Yadudah. A photo of the corpse shows that he was killed with an execution-style shot. According to local sources, al-Damad fought in the ranks of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the early years of the war. In 2018, he joined the reconciliation process and enlisted…

UAE-backed separatists have broken with once-allied Saudi-sponsored militants in Yemen, saying they will establish a self-ruled administration in the war-torn country’s southern regions. In a statement released early on Sunday, the so-called Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is supported by the United Arab Emirates, declared emergency rules in Yemen’s port city of Aden and all the southern governorates. “The Southern Transitional Council announces a self-administration rule in the south, as of midnight Saturday, April 25th 2020,” the STC said. It also accused the Riyadh-backed government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi of corruption and mismanagement. Mohammed al-Hadhrami, the foreign minister of the self-proclaimed Hadi regime, described the STC’s announcement as a…

An explosive device has been lobbed at a private bank in Lebanon in the latest attack on financial institutions in a country facing its worst economic crisis in decades. The night-time assault by unidentified attackers took place at Fransabank branch in the southern city of Sidon on Saturday, destroying its roof and glass facade. The attack came a day after Prime Minister Hassan Diab said Lebanese bank deposits had plunged $5.7 billion in the first two months of the year, despite curbs on withdrawals and a ban on transfers abroad. Lebanon has been grappling with a dire economic situation, lack of equity,…

People across Yemen will mark Islam’s holy month this year amid ongoing conflict, seasonal diseases, floods and rising prices, in a country where the economic situation doesn’t allow two thirds of the population to access or afford enough food. The coronavirus threat is also on people’s minds, with one confirmed case in the country of almost 29 million. Yemen’s health system is fragile and under strain: half of all health facilities are not functioning and just this week 500 cholera cases were reported in 24 hours in one ICRC-supported hospital in the capital Sana’a. “Yemenis cope with so much hardship…

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called on the United Nations Security Council to extend its conventional arms embargo on Iran, set to expire in October, citing Tehran’s recent satellite launch. In a statement, Pompeo repeated his allegations against Iran, saying Tehran “should not be allowed to buy and sell conventional weapons”. He said Iran’s announcement Wednesday that it had launched its first military satellite showed that its space program — which Tehran has long insisted is peaceful and civilian — was in fact “neither peaceful nor entirely civilian”. Pompeo claimed that the technology used to launch the satellite was compatible with that used to launch ballistic missiles, saying “Iran’s dangerous missile programs” need to be…

The spokesman for the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces says the Baghdad government is serious about implementation of the parliament’s resolution concerning the withdrawal of US forces from the country. “The letter that US ambassador to Baghdad (Douglas A. Silliman) delivered to caretaker prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, was very positive, and covered all possible forms of strategic relationship between Iraq and the United States in detail. It was important and good,” Arabic-language al-Mawazin news agency quoted Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf as saying on Sunday. He added, “Iraq will discuss the subject of foreign forces’ presence with the United States in a serious…

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has halted economic activities and travel, has crippled demand for crude, resulting in an oil glut and sending prices plunging, heralding more shocks to the industry. Amid the destructive economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, production shut-downs in the petroleum industry are imminent, writes Bloomberg. Nosediving crude prices, oil stored offshore in tankers after refineries closed down over the coronavirus lockdown with experts concerned the world could run out of storage by May – these are just a few of the chapters in the currently unfolding oil crisis, which is about to enter a new phase. Shut-downs in…