Latest Articles about Middle East
PUTIN PRAISES SUCCESSFUL ICBM LAUNCHES
On December 25, Christmas Day, the Russian military test-fired two intercontinental ballistic missiles – one from land and the other from the sea. The Tula, a Delta-4 nuclear submarine, launched the RSM-54 Sineva from the Barents Sea. The Sineva is a modification of the Soviet-made... MORE
GAZPROM SET TO POUNCE ON SERBIA AS PUTIN MOVES INTO THE BALKANS
Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to visit Bulgaria on January 18 for the signing of a Russian-Greek-Bulgarian agreement to build the South Stream gas pipeline. A joint project of Gazprom and Italy’s ENI, the line would run from Russia across the seabed of the Black... MORE
MOSCOW RAISES STAKES IN IRAN GAME
In the last days of 2007, Moscow made several purposeful steps that barely registered in the West, where the Christmas break was already well underway. The first step was the delivery of fuel elements to the nearly completed nuclear power station in Bushehr, which could... MORE
BELKOVSKY PREDICTS MEDVEDEV WILL TIGHTEN THE SCREWS
Just before New Year’s, Stanislav Belkovsky, head of the National Strategy Institute, gave an interview in which he repeated for a third time his claim that Vladimir Putin is a multi-billionaire and said that Dmitry Medvedev was chosen to succeed Putin in order to complete... MORE
Is the “Politicization” of the Kurdish Struggle in Turkey a Security Threat?
For almost three decades, Turkish governments and the military establishment have had to fight back a violent armed struggle for an independent Kurdish state. Despite increased attacks in recent months by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), what Ankara has invariably tagged as its “top security... MORE
Al-Qaeda Adapts its Methods in Iraq as Part of a Global Strategy
For the last few months, reports from Iraq have been indicating a tangible decline in insurgency and terrorist operations. For the first time since 2003, the Iraqi people are enjoying a sense of security in the streets of Iraq, although skeptics claim it is the... MORE
WHAT ROLE FOR SILOVIKI IN THE PUTIN-MEDVEDEV MARRIAGE?
The resolution of the protracted intrigue around the transfer of supreme political power in Russia appears to leave everybody happy. Dmitry Medvedev, the president-to-be, appeals to the electorate as someone attentive to social needs, to the business elite as a man familiar with managing large... MORE
Reviving a Forgotten Threat: The PKK in Nagorno-Karabakh
The decades-long war between the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish army has had a significant impact on Azerbaijani politics. Being a staunch ally of Turkey and suffering from problems of separatism and terrorism itself, Azerbaijan has always expressed its full support for... MORE
RUSSIA WANTS TO SELL GREECE WEAPONS AS WELL AS GAS
Following the defeat of German General Erwin Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Corps in North Africa in 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressed for a subsequent Allied invasion of either Italy, the Balkans, or Greece, arguing that the regions represented the “soft underbelly of Europe” to... MORE
Al-Qaeda at Year’s End 2007: What Do the Facts Say?
If an analyst in al-Qaeda’s intelligence services or a journalist friendly to al-Qaeda were asked to compile a roundup of news stories from 2007 that support his sympathies, here is what he would write. It would be a reasonably effective and sophisticated bit of open-source... MORE