Author: Steven Sahiounie

Lebanon has been witnessing mass protests since 17 October, following the government’s announcement of a tax increase on tobacco and internet calls. The demonstrators have been demanding the resignation of the government and far-reaching political reforms. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has announced that he will be submitting his resignation amid the anti-government protests that the country has been witnessing since 17 October. “I put my resignation at the disposal of the President of the Republic”, Hariri wrote in a tweet. ​In a televised address today, Hariri said that he had “reached a dead end” and was going to the…

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has lashed out at the United States for pursuing a policy aimed at isolating the Islamic Republic in the region, saying such attempts are futile. Zarif, who is in Qatar to attend the annual Munich Security Conference (MSC), made the remarks in an exclusive interview with the Doha-based television network Al Jazeera on Tuesday. He said Washington’s policy of excluding Iran “from any regional arrangement – whether in Syria, Afghanistan or Yemen – will just not work,” once again emphasizing that US sanctions against Iran have “failed.” He also described as “unacceptable” Saudi Arabia’s similar attempts to isolate…

By Rep. Ron Paul President Trump is reversing his foreign policy decisions so quickly these days that it almost seems like he overturns himself before making the decision in the first place. Last week he was very clear that the US was pulling its troops out of Syria. “Bringing soldiers home,” he said. “Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.” But then he overturned himself later in the same speech. He said: “We’ve secured the oil and therefore a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil. And we’re going to be protecting…

BY JEREMY SALT Outside powers have been playing ducks and drakes with the Kurds for more than a century.  In Ottoman times they were reviled in Europe as tribal predators and persecutors of the Christians. Now they are everyone’s favorites. After 1918 they hoped for independence. The allied victors were favorable but the advance of the Turkish nationalists and their own inability to pull together put an end to that. In the newly-formed state of Iraq they were bombed from the air by the British in the 1920s. In the Kurdish mountains, the noise and unfamiliar sight of planes was enough…

Steven Sahiounie, political commentator U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper explained in a press conference Tuesday, that a new U.S. force will be stationed in eastern Syria to protect the oil fields.  Barbara Starr, CNN’s Pentagon reporter, pressed Esper on whether the US military mission there will be to prevent the Russian or the Syrian government forces from accessing the oil at Deir Ez Zor.  Esper was forced to admit that the mission was designed to prevent the oil, and revenues generated, from being used by any group other than the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), otherwise referred to as the Kurdish…

The leader of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has warned Saudi Arabia about the consequences of its ongoing campaign of blockade and aggression against the country. According to a statement by the spokesman for Ansarullah, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, during a meeting with the visiting United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths in the capital Sana’a on Monday, Abdul Malik Badruddin al-Houthi highlighted the fact that the Saudi military option had miserably failed to advance peace and security in the region. The Ansarullah leader also urged an end to the conflict and the lifting of the blockade, while calling for a solution…

by ROBERT FISK Burning tires do not a revolution make. The pictures are good, the television footage dramatic. Brave words sound good, but soundbites don’t bring down governments. Certainly not the Lebanese government, whose sectarian elites have been running their country in a cesspit of corruption ever since the French mandate decided after the First World War that Lebanon should be a sectarian country run by dividing Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shia in a mutual pact of patriotism, fear, jealousy and distrust. (The British, remember, did the same in Palestine, Cyprus – yes, and Northern Ireland too. The French did it in Syria.) It’s not just…

The Russian military described the US scheme as nothing less than “international state banditism.” MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The Russian Defense Ministry published satellite intelligence images proving that oil from Syria was sent abroad under the guard of US servicemen before and after the defeat of the Daesh terrorists, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Saturday. The ministry spokesman said that “the space intelligence images showed that oil was actively extracted and massively exported for processing outside Syria, under the reliable protection of US troops, before and after the defeat of the Daesh* terrorists.” Commenting on the satellite…

Libya’s coastguard said on Monday that it had intercepted dozens of Europe-bound migrants off the Mediterranean coast. A rubber boat with 53 African migrants was stopped off Libya’s western town of Abu-Kemmash, about 25km (15.5 miles) from Tunisia, the previous day, said the coastguard spokesman, Ayoub Gassim. The migrants were returned to shore and taken to a detention center in the capital, Tripoli, AP quoted him as saying. The EU has partnered with Libya’s coastguard and other local groups to stem the dangerous sea crossings. Rights groups say those policies leave migrants at the mercy of armed groups or confined…

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says several columns of US forces have crossed through the al-Walid border crossing point between Iraq and Syria and been redeployed in bases in north and northeast Syria, in a reversal of President Donald Trump’s earlier order to withdraw all troops from the country. The Britain-based war monitor  said on Monday that over the past three days more than 500 US soldiers in addition to military and logistical equipment had arrived at a base located on the M4 Motorway, which runs parallel with Syria’s northern border with Turkey and links the town of Tal Tamr…