In an official statement, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced the September 14 multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and cruise missile attacks on Saudi Arabia’s main Abaqaiq oil processing facility and the Khurais oilfield that crippled Saudi oil production: “We strongly condemn attacks on... MORE

Following last month’s (August 12) Caspian Economic Forum in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan (see EDM, September 4), a number of Russian commentators celebrated what they saw as a victory of the “Russian-Iranian approach,” which seeks to promote north-south trade over the east-west flows supported by the three... MORE

Both Iran and Russia suffer from the United States’ sanctions: the former since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the latter since its 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea. But in a recent bout of creative synergy, Crimean “deputy prime minister” and the permanent representative of Crimea to... MORE

On August 12, delegations led by the prime ministers of the five Caspian littoral states—Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan—came together at Turkmenistan’s coastal resort of Awaza to hold the first annual Caspian Economic Forum. The heads of government from two other countries, Uzbekistan and... MORE

On July 1, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi issued a decree stating that the Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militias that operate under the umbrella group of the Popular Mobilization forces (PMU) should be fully integrated into the Iraqi armed forces under his direct command (alhadath.net, July... MORE

“Welcome to your second homeland,” President Emomali Rahmon told his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani upon his arrival in Tajikistan for the fifth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), on June 15 (Radio Ozodi, June 15). The visit comes... MORE

Continued tensions between the United States and Iran have begun having second order effects on the war in Yemen. The war was, somewhat wrongfully, originally characterized as a proxy war with Iran, but the conflict is now more at risk of being driven in that... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists in Moscow that an agreement had been reached with the White House on a meeting with Donald Trump on June 28, during the G20 summit, in Osaka, Japan. According to Ushakov, the meeting is... MORE

Over the past year, there has been an increased awareness of, and attention to, the activities of Iran's intelligence services and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to target Iranian dissidents and leaders of diaspora movements that are based in Europe (The National [Abu Dhabi],... MORE

Russian diplomacy is well known for its apparent readiness to engage with all parties to the multiple conflicts in the Middle East, and this characteristic has recently produced another awkward tangle of opportunistic intrigues. President Vladimir Putin fancies himself a master of communicating with difficult... MORE