Author: Steven Sahiounie

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry says a group of more than one hundred Turkish children, whose parents are being held in the Arab country for membership in the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, are going to be repatriated from Baghdad later this month. The ministry’s spokesman, Ahmad al-Sahhaf, told the Arabic service of Russia’s Sputnik news agency on Wednesday that the repatriation of the 125 children will take place on December 26, stating that it is the result of coordination between the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, the Supreme Judicial Council and security authorities. Sahhaf noted that the forthcoming return will take the number of Daesh children repatriated to their respective countries…

Lebanon’s Caretaker Prime Minister Sa’ad al-Hariri has withdrawn his nomination for the premiership race, and stressed that the forthcoming parliamentary consultations to form a new cabinet “should not be postponed under any excuse.” “Ever since I tendered my resignation 50 days ago in response to the scream of the Lebanese, I have strenuously sought to fulfill their demand of forming a government of experts, which I believe that it alone can address the dangerous social and economic crisis that our country is facing,” Hariri said in a written statement released on Wednesday. “When I realized that the stances that surfaced…

South Korea will send a navy dispatch to the Strait of Hormuz early next year where it will join a US-led coalition opposing Iranian influence in the critical oil shipping lanes, Joongang Ilbo reported Wednesday. Yonhap News Agency has cited government sources as saying that the Cheonghae anti-piracy unit, patroling the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa as part of the multinational Combined Task Force 151, will be ordered to join the coalition. The country’s National Security Council decided against deploying a separate unit to join the coalition, but instead to expand the operation of a task force already in…

The Libyan National Army (LNA) is making significant advances in the capital city of Tripoli and causing heavy casualties among the military ranks of the Government of National Accord (GNA), LNA information officer Al-Mundhir Al-Khartoush stated on Wednesday. “The 73rd Infantry Brigade made excellent progress yesterday evening and has set up new posts in known points in the Asfah area in accordance with the orders from the Western Region Operations Centre”, Al-Khartoush told a Sputnik correspondent. Al-Khartoush added that the GNA forces, whom he referred to as armed militia, attempted to win back the territories it had lost with ambush…

by Tim Korso Early in October, the US president announced the withdrawal of American troops from Syrian soil only to partially revert it at a later date. Some US servicemen stayed behind with the Pentagon claiming that they are guarding Syrian oil fields from falling back into the hands of terrorists. US troops have returned to six out of 16 bases and outposts in Syria that had been previously abandoned during the October withdrawal ahead of a Turkish military operation in the country’s north, Anadolu news agency reported. The agency clarified that the American soldiers have mainly been deployed to the oil rich…

The leader of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has called on the United Nations to work out effective mechanisms aimed at ending the air embargo on Sana’a airport, which has already taken its toll on the Yemeni civilian population, as well as the devastating Saudi-led military campaign against the country. During a meeting with the UN special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths in the Yemeni capital Sana’a on Monday, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi underlined his group’s firm stance on peace in Yemen, saying Ansarullah is acting seriously and responsibly in this regard. He also pointed to the sufferings of Yemeni people as a result of the ongoing…

Students, teachers and other demonstrators have rallied in their thousands in Algeria’s capital on Tuesday against the newly-elected president, rejecting his offer of dialog with a months-old protest movement. Abdelmadjid Tebboune won 58.1 percent of the vote in Thursday’s election, according to official results, and on Friday said he was ready for talks to “build a new Algeria.” But protesters, long opposed to an election they saw as a ploy by the establishment to consolidate power after ailing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned under popular pressure in April, remained defiant. Shouts of “The election was fixed! It wasn’t legitimate! The march will…

The Syrian authorities plan to switch public transport and taxis from gasoline to natural gas amid an oil deficit in the country, the Al-Watan newspaper said. According to sources in the state-run fuel distribution company that spoke to the Al-Watan newspaper, the project was proposed even before the Syrian war broke out. A plan to introduce control over the consumption of gas and fuel oil by public transport and taxis using GPS tracking is also reportedly in the works. The goals of these two projects include the reduction of imports and demand for foreign currency, tracking smugglers and counterfeit oil products, as…

US Defence Secretary Mark Esper told reporters on Monday that he would need to speak with his Turkish defence counterparts in order to determine the gravity of recent remarks in Turkey regarding the possible closure of US and NATO bases. “I need to talk to my defence counterpart to understand what they really mean and how serious they are”, Esper told reporters as per a transcript posted by the Defence Department. The defence secretary went on to say that he would need to discuss with NATO allies the possibility of Turkey shutting down the Kurelik radar system, which is owned and…

Steven Sahiounie, political commentator Cyprus, ‘Israel’ and Egypt have all discovered offshore gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean, and they have each mapped out their own ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’ (EEZ), to protect their interests in developing lucrative projects. Although Turkey has no energy resources, they wish to explore the possibility. When the Arab Spring swept the region, Turkish President Erdogan decided to place all his bets on the Muslim Brotherhood, which turned out to be the loser; however, he remains firmly in allegiance to the radical ideology, and now reaches out to the Muslim Brotherhood government declared in Tripoli.  On…