Author: Steven Sahiounie

By Elijah J. Magnier There is little doubt that Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr controls the streets in Iraq and can make peaceful protests violent when he chooses. Notwithstanding the presence of several smaller players and those genuinely asking for serious reforms, Sayyed Moqtada can move the street in the direction he wants. However, the strategic objectives of Sayyed Moqtada are unknown to all politicians in Iraq, and perhaps outside Mesopotamia as well. Whoever wins a large number of MPs and the largest number of ministers has been always had the capacity to ask for the resignation of the government and its Prime Minister. He…

Tehran has said the US should offer compensation to ordinary citizens whose lives have been damaged during the violent protests openly backed by Washington. Iranians have filed more than 360 lawsuits seeking compensation from the US for the damages caused by the widespread rioting and looting during anti-government protests, as well as for other “crimes committed by the US against our nation,” judiciary spokesperson, Gholam Hossein Esmaeili, told reporters on Tuesday. Esmaeili accused Washington of inciting and supporting the unrest, stressing that American actions directly hurt ordinary Iranian citizens. The courts have awarded over $130 billion in damages to be paid by…

The US Navy has signed a $22 billion contract for the building and delivery of nine nuclear-powered attack submarines. America’s largest military shipbuilding company, Huntington Ingalls Industries, announced on Monday that its Newport News Shipbuilding division and teaming partner General Dynamics Electric Boat had been awarded their biggest contract to date. “Today’s contract maintains the Virginia-class build rate that provides continued stability to our workforce and to the 5,000 suppliers that will support submarines for the next decade,” said Dave Bolcar, Newport News’ vice president of submarine construction. Bolcar claimed the new contract would ensure America’s “national security and the…

A US drone strike against an Afghan village in Alisher, Khost Province destroyed a home, killing a family of six, including multiple children. The Khost Provincial council confirmed the incident, and criticized the matter. The Pentagon had initially claimed the incident killed three Taliban fighters, but has since confirmed that they are “aware” of reports of civilian deaths, saying they are working with local officials on this. The US killing civilians and insisting they killed fighters has been a recurring problem for decades in Afghanistan. While the Pentagon often agrees to joint inquiries into the reports of civilian deaths, they rarely publicly…

A cousin of ringleader of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was purportedly killed in a US military operation in Syria, has been captured in Iraq’s oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk. Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi security analyst, wrote in a post published on his Twitter page on Wednesday that “forces from the Hawija police station had managed to arrest a Daesh commander identified as Hamed Shaker Saba’ al-Badri inside the city of Kirkuk. He is the cousin of Baghdadi and better known by the nom de guerre Abu Khaldun.” Hashemi added that Abu Khaldun was “one of the most senior Daesh leaders, who…

US President Donald Trump has criticized French President Emmanuel Macron for describing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as “brain dead”. During a meeting on Tuesday with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in London on the sidelines of a meeting of alliance leaders Trump said his French counterpart’s comments were “very insulting” and “nasty.” “I think that’s very insulting … NATO serves a great purpose,” Trump insisted. Trump said he had been “very surprised” by Macron’s “tough” statement which he regarded as “very disrespectful.” “It’s a tough statement. When you make a statement like that, that is a very, very…

Iranian authorities have arrested key members of a group planning to cause unrest at university campuses in Iran, the country’s intelligence ministry said in a statement issued on Tuesday. The “counterrevolutionary” group’s plans to cause a disruption during celebrations of Students’ Day, celebrated on 7 December, were foiled thanks to the vigilance of committed students and relevant institutions, the ministry stated. Iran has been experiencing widespread protests since mid-November, which began over a sharp hike in fuel prices. The unrest led Iranian authorities to temporarily shut down the country’s Internet. Prominent rights group Amnesty International placed the death toll at 208…

by Oleg Burunov In October, President Donald Trump, who previously announced his intention to withdraw all US forces from northeastern Syria, said that some American troops would remain there to “guard oil” from Daesh* militants. During a NATO meeting in London on Tuesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his “we keep the oil” mantra in light of the US troops’ withdrawal from northern Syria ahead of a Turkish military operation against Kurdish forces in the area in October. “We left their border. We’ve been on their border long enough. They’re doing just fine on their border. We kept the oil. I kept the oil”,…

BY MONA ISSA Lebanon was one of the earliest experiments for sectarianism by France and other imperial powers. While it suffers from corruption and sectarianism, it also suffers from accumulated financial burden. The economic basis of the country is founded on the fiscal terms of the old aristocrats, who are what we call the “international financial class” today. This class, according to the Economist, monopolizes 18 out of 20 of all major banks in Lebanon. However, the Lebanese banking sector is hardly ever Lebanese. Engineered and driven by IMF, neoliberal fiscal policy, and their Lebanese billionaire minister-proxies, the West bloc in…

Hundreds of Syrian refugees have headed home in the first batch to leave Lebanon since protests broke out in the small Arab country more than a month ago. Since the early hours of Tuesday, scores of Syrians boarded buses in several locations in Lebanon before heading back to their hometowns in Syria. Vanessa Moya of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said some 225 Syrian refugees were scheduled to head back to Syria, raising the number to about 27,000 refugees who have returned to Syria over the past two years, AP reports. Thousands of Syrians have returned home from Lebanon since…