Olivier Decottignies and Soner Cagaptay Having a permanent military foothold in the Gulf will put Turkey in an elite group of powers, but more presence also means more exposure, whether to Saudi-Iranian tensions or other local crises. In December, Ankara announced that it will establish a new military …

David Schenker, Sarah Feuer, Vish Sakthivel, and John P. Entelis This series of articles sheds light on regional actors outside the tired authoritarian-versus-Islamist narrative and provides suggestions for how best to cultivate and preserve this limited resource during this critical time of transition. Concern about the political direction …

Dennis Ross By taking an overcautious approach in Syria, the president has highlighted America’s failure to have an open discussion about the real strategic lessons of the Iraq war. Few issues have confronted President Barack Obama with tougher dilemmas than Syria. Over the course of the nearly five …

King Abdullah II of Jordan discussed a greater Jordanian and indigenous ground presence in the fight against Daesh in Iraq and Syria during a Tuesday visit with US lawmakers, two senators told Sputnik. “He [King Abdullah II] did make comments to us about what they were thinking,” Senator James Risch said on Tuesday when asked if there …

On August 28, 2014, Abdul-Rauf Rigi, alleged to be leading a Sunni sectarian organization called Jaish-al-Nasr, was assassinated in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan. The motive for his killing could not be ascertained, but Jaish-al-Nasr had been accused by Iranian officials of carrying out attacks on Iranian …

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Sorry, we made a mistake: The NYT’s retraction was presented as a technical error whereby the wrong pictures were mistakenly selected. “A packet of American briefing materials that was prepared for the Geneva meeting asserts that the photograph was taken in Russia. The same …

According to the US magazine National Review, Washington should accept an uncomfortable truth: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is pursuing the right strategy in Syria.  Accepting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stance on Syria is an uncomfortable necessity that Washington should acknowledge if it wants to degrade and destroy Daesh, journalist Jay …

Arab foreign ministers on Sunday accused Iran of interfering in the affairs of other Middle East states and undermining regional security, as officials met at an emergency Arab League session to discuss escalating tensions in the region. The crisis between the Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and …

By Jason Ditz Iran was initially not expected to implement everything until spring, and early on US officials were expressing annoyance that Iran was complying “too fast.” It’s been coming for awhile, but according to Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran is just “days” away from a final …