Author: Steven Sahiounie

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…

Former French leader Jacques Chirac has died at the age of 86, his family reported. Under his leadership, France enjoyed an independent foreign policy, distinguishing itself from European states eager to appease Washington. Outside of his native country, Chirac is perhaps best known for his principled opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Unafraid of then-president George W. Bush, the French statesman prevented his country from becoming entangled in the Middle East conflict, now widely regarded as a quagmire that was based on false pretenses. He was a fierce critic of Europe’s willingness to follow Washington’s lead. In…

The United States is deploying to Saudi Arabia a battery of Patriot missiles, four sentinel radar systems and about 200 support personnel, Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman said in a press release on Thursday. “In light of recent attacks on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and at their invitation, Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper announced today that the US would deploy the following equipment to the kingdom: One Patriot Battery, Four Sentinel RADARs, approximately 200 support personnel,” Hoffman said in the release. In the early hours of 14 September, a drone attack targeted Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing…

Syrian government forces have carried out a string of clean-up operations in the country’s west-central province of Hama, discovering US-built missiles, munitions produced by NATO member states and communication devices from former strongholds of Takfiri terrorists. An unnamed military source told reporters that Syrian soldiers launched an operation in al-Lataminah town, located 39 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital city of Hama, on Thursday to clear the area of hidden explosive devices and ordnance left behind by militants, the Arabic service of Russia’s Sputnik news agency reported. The source added that the weapons were hidden inside a cave, which was part of a long underground network…

Fishery officials from Iran and Russia have agreed that a ban on fishing sturgeon and other fishes that produce caviar eggs should be extended for another year. Head of Iran’s fishery organization said on Thursday that the two countries had agreed that the beluga sturgeon, the source of caviar, is still among the endangered species in the Caspian Sea, where more than 90 percent of the world’s caviar is produced. “We agreed that the ban on commercial fishing for this fish from the Caspian Sea should continue,” said Nabiollah Khunmirzaei, adding that Iran and Russia both shared same concerns about…

The US intelligence chief has publicly broken with President Donald Trump and some Republican lawmakers, saying the whistleblower who filed a complaint against Trump over his phone call with Ukraine’s president “did the right thing” and “followed the law every step of the way.” The acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, testified for more than three hours on Thursday before the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee to discuss the complaint about a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A declassified version of the complaint was released publicly by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence…

Saudi-led coalition air strikes killed seven children in Yemen on Tuesday, a local official and doctor said The seven children were among 16 people killed during the air strike, as Saudi Arabia continues to pound the country already facing a humanitarian disaster. “Sixteen people, including women and children, were killed and nine others injured” in a raid targeting a home in Daleh, a local official told AFP on condition of anonymity. A doctor at Al Thawra hospital in nearby Ibb province, which received the bodies of those killed, told AFP that seven children and four women were among them. The Houthi rebels…

By Pepe Escobar “It is clear to us that Iran bears responsibility for this attack. There is no other plausible explanation. We support ongoing investigations to establish further details.” The statement above was not written by Franz Kafka. In fact, it was written by a Kafka derivative: Brussels-based European bureaucracy. The Merkel-Macron-Johnson trio, representing Germany, France and the UK, seems to know what no “ongoing investigation” has unearthed: that Tehran was definitively responsible for the twin aerial strikes on Saudi oil installations. “There is no other plausible explanation” translates as the occultation of Yemen. Yemen only features as the pounding ground of a…