Author: Steven Sahiounie

European nations were so eager to negotiate with Iran that they suggested the US would end its sanctions regime if Tehran was willing to engage in dialogue, President Hassan Rouhani has said. According to Rouhani, European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal urged him to meet with US President Donald Trump, promising that Washington would lift “all” sanctions in return. “Three out of the six countries, that is the chancellor of Germany, prime minister of Britain, and president of France, all insisted for the meeting to be held, saying that the US would lift all sanctions,” stated the Iranian president. He said he…

Russia does not rule out discussing with Iran deliveries of air defence assets and radio-electronic equipment to the country, as well as the creation of an integrated system of Persian Gulf security, Federal Service of Military-Technical Cooperation Director Dmitry Shugayev said. Shugayev stressed that Russia acts strictly in compliance with international regulations, stating that defence cooperation on offensive arms with Tehran cannot be started before October 2020. “Before the UN Security Council’s sanctions expire, we can discuss cooperation on the following issues: air defence assets deliveries, creation of an integrated surveillance, security and defence system for the Persian Gulf coast,…

Security forces in Egypt have boosted their presence across the country, sealing off Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the birthplace of a revolution in 2011, amid calls for protests against President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi over corruption allegations. Egypt was rocked by unusual demonstrations on September 20 following calls for protests that were made after allegations of corruption against Sisi and the country’s powerful military were made by the self-exiled contractor and actor Mohamed Ali. Ali renewed his call for Egyptians to take to the streets on Friday. Riot police on Friday closed off streets and bridges leading to Tahrir Square, where hundreds of…

Lebanese President Michel Aoun is reportedly mulling over paying an official visit to Damascus to push for the repatriation of Syrian refugees, whose presence has worsened the already dilapidated civic infrastructure in Lebanon and placed a burden on the country’s public finances. According to a report published by the Beirut-based and Arabic-language daily newspaper Ad-Diyar on Friday, Aoun has hinted at the possibility of raising the level of contacts with the Syrian leadership in order to coordinate the return of Syrian refugees more effectively. The report added that the Lebanese president is weighing two options: either to make an official visit to Syria,…

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has announced the completion of separate prisoner swap deals with Saudi-sponsored Yemeni militiamen loyal to Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in the country’s northern province of al-Jawf and southern province of Shabwah. The Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, citing head of the Houthi-affiliated National Committee for Prisoners Affairs (NCPA) Abdulqader Al-Mortada, reported on Friday that 13 members of the Yemeni Army and allied Popular Committees had been released, and that the agreement was through “a local mediation.” Mortada, however, did not provide details about the number of released prisoners in return. Back on May 28, the NCPA said sixty-six imprisoned fighters of the…

By Paul Antonopoulos During a meeting with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro held on last Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia supports Venezuela’s legitimate government against the continued U.S.-backed coup led by opposition leader Juan Guaidó. However, the Russian president also said he supported the dialogue with different factions of the opposition and stressed that the rejection of talks would be harmful and unreasonable. “Russia consistently supports all legitimate Venezuelan bodies, including the presidential institution and the parliament. In addition, we support the dialogue you, Mr President, and the government have with the opposition. We regard any refusal of dialogue as irrational, harmful to the country and…

By Andrew Korybko Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Belarusian President Lukashenko are publicly at odds over the issue of Ukraine’s federalizaton as a possible outcome of Kiev finally implementing the Minsk Accords in the event of the “New Detente” succeeding, with this serious disagreement over the future of their mutual neighbor’s domestic administrative system representing yet another geopolitical fault line between the two members of the so-called “Union State”. Belarus has been positioning itself as the foil to its “fellow” “Union State” member Russia on key regional issues over the past year since Moscow discontinued its subsidies of Minsk’s oil imports…

Steven Sahiounie, Middle East observer After an 8 year conflict, which has killed over 400,000 people and displaced millions more, Syria cannot return to a pre-2011 system. The task ahead is to find a balance of compromise that may form a new social contract between the government and society. UN Resolution 2254 offers guidelines for the opposing sides. Forming a constitutional drafting committee is the first step toward a peaceful transition, which was proposed at a Russian-hosted Syrian peace conference in January 2018; however, it has taken until September 2019 to agree on the names of the 150-member committee, which…

Washington on Thursday imposed sanctions on a firm it said was participating in a sanctions evasion scheme to facilitate the delivery of jet fuel to Russian forces in Syria, Reuters reports. The US Treasury Department said the newly sanctioned firm, Maritime Assistance LLC, was operating as a front company for OJSC Sovfracht, a company the US had previously sanctioned in relation to operations in Ukraine. Three individuals allegedly tied to Sovfracht were also targeted. The Treasury decided to freeze any assets they may hold in the US and bar Americans from dealing with them. Five ships were designated as “blocked…

Moscow will take efforts to assist the resumption of talks between representatives of the US and the Taliban, Russia’s special presidential envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov said on Thursday. “There is no understanding on the time and the date” yet, according to Kabulov, who heads the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Asian Department. However, “there is the desire to resume the negotiations,” TASS quoted the diplomat as saying.“We will work together and assist the efforts to ensure that this takes place as soon as possible,” Kabulov said. He confirmed that he had met with US special representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad on the sidelines of…