Russia and Iran’s Clashing Visions for Syria’s Future

18 Apr 202030 Nov 2020

Posted originally to MintPress News on 7 February 2020 as part of a 3-Part series on the evolved geopolitical scenario in Syria. Rivals of the West in their own right,…

Wealthy Gulf States Plan to Spend Big to Coax Syria Away from Iran

18 Apr 202020 Nov 2021

Posted originally to MintPress News on 31 January 2020 as Part 1 of a 3-Part Series on the evolved geopolitical scenario in Syria. Since the dawn of the 2011 Syrian…

Erdogan’s Idlib misadventure: Reality checks and hard lessons for Turkey

3 Apr 202018 Apr 2020

Posted originally to MintPress News on 3 April 2020. Even when viewed through the prism of Turkish interests, President Tayyib Erdogan’s escalatory actions in Syria’s Idlib governorate constitute now plainly…

Is Pakistan’s US-Centrism Ceding Regional Strategic & Economic Power To India?

13 Mar 202016 Nov 2020

Posted originally to OneWorld on 13 March 2020. The present Pakistani government’s attempts to jockey the US for support have been met with constant affirmation of the Indo-US alliance. The…

Emerging Turko-Israeli Rift Helps Turkey-Iran Entente

23 Jan 202027 Jan 2020

Posted originally to Islamabad Policy Institute on 23 January 2020. Israel has long possessed a capacity to force, whether by design or by consequence, the upending of regional alignment dynamics…

The Israel Lobby’s Hidden Hand in the Theft of Iraqi and Syrian Oil

11 Dec 20199 Jun 2020

By Agha Hussain and Whitney Webb, for MintPress News, posted on 10 December 2019. KIRKUK, IRAQ — “We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re…

Lacking direction: PTI’s Kashmir Policy

7 Dec 20196 Jan 2020

Posted originally to Strafasia on 7 December 2019. Does Imran Khan ignoring the letter of Syed Ali Geelani, veteran Kashmiri freedom icon, epitomize the PTI’s Kashmir policy? Is the PTI…

The falsehood that is the ‘Persian-Arab conflict’ narrative

2 Nov 201918 Nov 2019

Posted originally to The Express Tribune Blogs on 2 November 2019. Discredited and archaic explanatory frameworks are superposed onto geopolitical conflicts and rivalries at the expense of accurate appraisal of…

Putin’s ‘doubts’ on Iran’s alertness on ISIS: A reminder of Russia’s true alignment

13 Oct 201925 Oct 2019

Posted originally to One World on 13 October 2019. Hesitancy persists among many in the media regarding owning up to just how radically different in some aspects geopolitical alliances in…

Iran’s Israel-GCC-Russia Conundrum

6 Oct 201925 Oct 2019

Israel-GCC-Russia vs Iran; resharing my January 2019 article for Regional Rapport where I predict some strategic changes within the very structure of the Syrian state Israel will through the GCC…