The Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent official visit to China on July 1-6 highlights a new template in regional politics — the rise of Bangladesh as regional power. Last year Bangladesh outstripped India as the fastest growing economy in South Asia — at 7.3%. Hasina has set the compass to navigate her country to …
Iran’s shock therapy breaks JCPOA stalemate
Iran’s enriched uranium to fuel its nuclear power plant in Bushehr (file photo) A series of announcements in Tehran through the past week took the situation around the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA) — and the US-Iranian standoff — to an inflection point. On July 1, it transpired that Iran has exceeded …
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Trump outflanks Iran to the west and east
(Incirlik air base in eastern Turkey housing US warplanes and 50 nuclear bombs. File photo) The Turkish state news agency Anadolu has featured an analysis titled US sanctions on Iran increasing public unease, which is highly critical of the Iranian ruling elite’s approach to the current standoff with the US. The thrust of the commentary …
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Trump is finished with the Afghan war
US soldiers like these deployed to Afghanistan have been in the landlocked mountainous country since late 2001 (AFP Photo) There could be several ways of interpreting the US State Department’s decision on Tuesday to designate the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, which imposes economic sanctions on the group and anyone affiliated …
US eyes Sri Lanka as its military logistics hub
(Sri Lankan presidential aspirant Gotabaya Rajapaksa with the radical Buddhist monk Gnanasara Thera of Bodu Bala Sena. File photo.) The Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka on 21st April in which 259 people were killed and over 500 injured were initially attributed to the Islamic State (IS). But no hard evidence is available to …
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Long and winding road for US-China trade talks
(US-China talks at Osaka led by President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping, Osaka, June 29, 2019) The spotlight at the G20 summit in Osaka was undoubtedly on the meeting last Saturday between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Much of the ‘feel-good’ impression of that event was based on three things. One, …
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Israeli attack on Syria is a message for Russia
(Russian President Vladimir Putin met US President Donald Trump at Osaka on June 29, 2019) Although G20 summit in Osaka achieved nothing and there were no breakthrough decisions, a pleasant feeling had appeared momentarily that in the disjointed world situation, all the participants in the event at least reconfirmed their commitment to continue efforts to improve the global trade …
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Russia tamps down US-Iran tensions
(Donald Trump signed an executive order for new sanctions against Iran on June 24, 2019) The US President Donald Trump is learning that Persian is a tricky language and does not easily yield its hidden charms to westerners. The western media attributed to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani a remark during his televised speech on June …
Will India and Turkey jointly broker an easing of US-Iran tensions?
How amazing that the defeat of the Turkish ruling party AKP in the election for Istanbul mayor on Sunday turns out to be world class headline in the western media! At the most obvious level, it only highlights the deep antipathy toward Turkish President Recep Erdogan in the West and the US’ regional allies in …
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Israel is leading Trump up the garden path
When Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute argued in an article in the National Interest last week that the ‘maximum pressure’ policy of the Trump administration against Iran must be maintained despite the dangerous brinkmanship at the Strait of Hormuz last week, we got an authentic version of Israel’s stance on the current US-Iran …
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