The UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed: Palestinian leadership has accused UAE of ‘stabbing them in the back’ by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. The controversial peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates has two fathers already — US President Donald Trump and …
Continue reading “Israel, UAE legitimise their relationship”
“The keys predict that Donald Trump will lose the White House this year.” The statement by the Director of the United States National Counterintelligence and Security Center William Evanina on August 7 giving an “unclassified overview of foreign threats” to the 2020 US presidential election selectively focuses on “the ongoing and potential activity” by three …
Continue reading “The ‘foreign threats’ to 2020 US election”
Iraqi militia fighters attacked the US Embassy, Baghdad, Dec 31, 2019. Getting caught between a rock and a hard place is an unenviable situation for a politician. A tragic case in modern times was of Hafizullah Amin, the Cold War era Afghan communist politician who tried to reduce his country’s dependence on the former Soviet …
Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton said Israel should act now ahead of US election to strengthen its security interests. The former US National Security Advisor John Bolton is a paradox in some ways — an extreme right winger with working class background, an outlier like Richard Nixon who had to run twice …
Continue reading “Bolton forewarns Israel on US policy shifts”
US President Donald Trump (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shaking hands after the Helsinki Summit, July 16, 2018 There was a time when President Trump’s personalised diplomacy seemed a hydra-headed phenomenon with tentacles reaching far and wide. He engaged such diverse politicians — from Shinzo Abe and Kim Jong-Un to Xi Jinping and …
Continue reading “Trump foreign policy enters lame duck period”
With the rebound of the Chinese economy, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is on the march again. An Associated Press report from Beijing last Thursday said China is the first major economy to grow since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, recording a 3.2% expansion in the latest quarter following the reopening of factories and …
Continue reading “China’s BRI makes entry in post-Covid-19 era”
Iranian oil tanker Clavel crossing the Gibraltar stretch heading for Venezuela, May 20, 2020 Escorted by the Venezuelan navy and air force, an Iranian oil tanker named Fortune has entered that country’s waters on Sunday, amidst intense speculation whether the US would interfere with the delivery. The US has imposed oil sanctions against Venezuela and …
Continue reading “Iran surges in Venezuela in defiance of US sanctions”
The drawdown of US military presence in the Middle East, especially from Saudi Arabia, may not be an automatic open sesame — to borrow the magical phrase in the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”— leading to the hidden treasure of regional peace and stability, but it does open up a tantalising vista …
Sanitising the shrine of Hazrat Masoumeh against the coronavirus in the holy city of Qom, Iran, February 25, 2020. File photo Iran has delivered a devastating blow to the ego of the Trump administration, puncturing it beyond repair, by its announcement Sunday that mosques will start reopening in low-risk areas of the country from May …
Richard Lugar Public Health Centre in Georgia, which Russia alleges to be a Pentagon laboratory for biological weapon development. Beijing has called on the US to respond to Russian concerns. The Russian-Chinese entente emerged as one of the most significant templates of international politics in the recent period since the hugely consequential developments in Ukraine …
Continue reading “Russia-China entente deepens in the shadow of the pandemic”
