A report released late Saturday by the Civil Aviation Organization of Iran concluded that a misaligned missile battery, miscommunication between troops and their commanders and the fatal decision to fire without authorization all led to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shooting down a Ukrainian jetliner in January, killing all 176 people on board. The report comes months...
Russia’s top diplomat on Friday dismissed U.S. intelligence information alleging that Moscow offered bounties to the Taliban for killing American troops as a product of election year politics in Washington. U.S. intelligence officials said information about Russia’s alleged bounties on the heads of troops in Afghanistan was included in an intelligence brief for President Donald Trump in late...
The U.S. decision to provide education and training to Cyprus’ National Guard will not undermine relations with either Russia or China said on a Friday the internationally recognised government of the island under President Nicos Anastasiades. According to Cypriot Defense Minister Charalambos Petrides “there’s no question” of disrupting the country’s ties with Russia and that...
A warning has been issued by the State Department on Saturday advising U.S. citizens to “exercise increased caution” in China due to heightened risk of arbitrary law enforcement including detention and a ban from exiting the country. “U.S. citizens may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime,” the...
Reports of another explosion that occured on Thursday west of the capital Tehran have been refuted by Iranian officials. However, the fact remains that a series of mysterious blasts are occuring in the country during the last few weeks. Social media users reported hearing explosions in the nearby cities of Garmdareh and Qods, state media...
The U.S. State Department expressed “disappointment” on Friday that Turkey would revert the 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia, built as an Eastern Roman – or Byzantine – Christian cathedral, to a mosque by July 24. The famous Istanbul landmark, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and major tourist destination, has been a secular museum since 1935, when the founder of...
By Micah Halpern* The author in the following analysis is unfolding the new realities of a changing international diplomatic environment, especially in the currently extremely volatile region of S.E. Mediterranean, considering the deepening bonds between Greece and Israel as one of the best examples. Greece and Israel are advancing a series of mutual defense agreements. Those...
In the following short analysis written by Kostas Stoupas for news website Capital.gr reposted in Ahval.com the author considers that a fundamental rethinking of Greece’s defence doctrine is imperative as Turkey seeks to obtain a wider influence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East by expanding beyond the borders set by the 1923 Treaty of...
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan handed administrative control of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia to Turkey’s top state religious body on Friday, shortly after the country’s highest administrative court annulled a 1934 decree that converted the disputed landmark from a mosque to a museum. Management of the Hagia Sophia will be given to the Directorate of Religious...
As the US plunges into an ever deeper coronavirus morass, setting record new infection rates and the death curve begins to rise again, there’s no prospect of the nightmare ending for months. Delusion dominates an administration that perversely claims the United States is the world leader in beating this modern day plague. There are only contradictions,...