Author: Steven Sahiounie

Steven Sahiounie, political commentator Recently, the author Jeff J. Brown interviewed the journalist Steven Sahiounie. The following is an edited and expanded version of the interview. 1. Steven, please tell us about yourself and how you ended up managing Mideast Discourse. Steven: I am a Syrian American, and grew up in Latakia, Syria, attended school there, and I came to Lebanon 4 years ago to study further. I began journalism in 2011 when the war on Syria started, and I felt I had to share the truth based on the facts on the ground. I have written articles in the…

Iraqi Kurds should rest assured that Washington is firmly backing them – just take it from VP Mike Pence, who made a surprise visit to Iraq weeks after his boss was dragged through the mud at home for abandoning Syrian Kurds. The US Vice President and his wife Karen showed up at the Al Asad Air Base some 185 km west of Baghdad to serve some Thanksgiving turkey to the troops. The unannounced visit then brought them to Erbil, the capital of the northern autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, for more interaction with the soldiers – and the Kurds.Pence did have a…

Earlier this month, the US announced that it would keep its military presence in Syria despite achieving its stated goal of defeating Daesh*. US Central Command chief General Kenneth McKenzie stated Saturday that some 500 US personnel still remained in eastern Syria in order to take part in the upcoming anti-Daesh operation in the region. US President Donald Trump announced early in October his intention to bring the US troops stationed in Syria “back home,” though weeks later the US announced they it would keep a small number of troops in the area to “protect the oil fields.” The decision was made amid another…

About 500 people and around 100 families have returned to their homes in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor Governorate under the supervision of Russian military police. Abdullah Sheikh Salahal, the local elder, told reporters that the operation to ensure their return lasted more than three months. “People submitted the lists to Syria’s Reconciliation Committee. They were checked in a computer database. It turned out that all of them are civilians,” TASS quoted him as saying. For his part, Deir ez-Zor Governor Abdul Majeed al-Kawakibi added that “thanks to Russia, more than 15,000 people have returned to their homes over the past two…

Nearly a dozen people have lost their lives when a powerful car bomb explosion ripped through a northern Syrian border town seized by Turkish military forces and their allied militants in the aftermath of a cross-border incursion against militants from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Witnesses and a rescuer said a car rigged with explosives went off in Tal Abyad, located about 500 kilometers (310 miles) northeast of the capital Damascus, on Saturday, leaving people ten people dead. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at nine, saying two children were among those killed…

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi minces no words as he lashes out at the United States over Washington’s one-sided approach to world politics and its adversarial attitude towards Beijing. “It (the US) has already become the world’s biggest destabilizing factor,” China’s Foreign Ministry cited the top diplomat as saying on the sidelines of a Group of 20 ministerial meeting in the city of Nagoya in southern Japan on Saturday. He went on to explain how Washington’s policies were making waves across the international stage, saying, “The United States is broadly engaged in unilateralism and protectionism, and is damaging multilateralism and…

By Dr. Leon Tressell The Trump impeachment hearings give the illusion that voters in the United States have a choice between two different political parties: the Democrats and Republicans. The daily impeachment hearings dominate news headlines. Meanwhile, politicians of both parties have unanimously passed the Hong Kong Human Rights And Democracy Act revealing how both wings of the American elite share the same visceral fear of China’s challenge to the American empire. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, sums up nicely the flagrant hypocrisy of the American political elite with her declaration: “The Congress is sending an unmistakable message to…

by Tim Korso The US established what it calls a “maritime coalition” to ensure the safety of shipping routes in the Persian Gulf after at least six tankers suffered attacks there this year. Iran has argued that local forces are more than capable of ensuring the maritime security in the region without external help. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Major General Gholam Ali Rashid has cautioned foreign states hostile to Iran against acting irresponsibly in the Persian Gulf region, stressing that the message is mostly directed at the US. He added that otherwise, the safety of their military contingency could not be…

Iraqi Kurdistan is not presently considering at closing its border with Syria given the continuous flow of refugees, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman stated. When asked whether there are any talks about closing the border with Syria, Rahman said, “Not at the moment”. Rahman noted that the KRG has never closed the border to refugees. “Even when we were being flooded with refugees and displaced people, we kept the border open”, she said. Rahman said earlier that Iraqi Kurdistan received 16,700 Syrian refugees after Turkey’s military operation in northeast Syria, but refugees…

Kazakhstan will host a fresh round of Syria peace talks sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran on December 10-11, Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi told reporters on Friday. UN special envoy Geir Pedersen said on November 8 that a UN-backed panel on Syria will meet again in Geneva later this month, after it met for the first time seeking political reconciliation, Reuters reported. “The two co-chairs have agreed to meet here again in 14 days. The next round of discussions will start on November 25,” Geir Pedersen said of the Constitutional Committee. The Syrian Foreign Ministry appealed to the international community…