Category: Middle East

News and Analyses of events in the Middle East

D-8 can play a pivotal role in multipolar world

The present world economic scenario offers D-8 a broadened scope. The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) multilateral trade regime lost its momentum as a result of wealthy countries’ noncompliance and member states’ lack of cooperation. The lengthy characteristics of the WTO’s system may be due to international politics and disagreements between the USA and China, LDC versus developed members, and lastly the voluntary nature of implementation capacity.

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Categories: Central Asia / East Asia / Indo-Pacific regions / Middle East / South Asia

Iran-Albania crisis brings Middle Eastern powerplay in the Balkans

Iran initially tried to win the support of Albanians by taking part in the Kosovo War. There were reports of Iranian combatants there, and Iranian media openly reported on Albanians thanking Iran for its support and expressing a desire for a similar theocratic state, similar to the strategies Iran used to win the support of Bosniaks during the prior Bosnian War. Mohammad Khatami, the president of Iran, had sharply criticized NATO for bombing Yugoslavia in 1999.

As a result of Albania’s allying with the US, tensions between Iran and Albania had already been deteriorating. Iran established the “Koran Foundation of Kosovo” in an effort to persuade Albanians in both Albania and Kosovo to reject secularism and favor a Shi’a theocracy, but this effort was ineffective; Albanian authorities even started to crack down on the foundation.

Iran had refused to acknowledge Kosovo’s independence in 2008 as revenge for the crackdown on Iran-supported parties in Albania and Kosovo as well as the fact that Kosovo was a pro-Western American-backed state that fiercely opposed both Russia and China. The ties went further downhill after Albania agreed to host MEK.

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Categories: Middle East / Western Europe

Iran is poised to become the ultimate gainer in Iraqi crisis

Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in OPEC, and in recent months, its rising oil sales have resulted in a $20 billion cash surplus. Control of this money ultimately serves as the foundation for the current political turmoil because oil profits are illegally utilized to pay the nation’s political forces and paramilitaries.

With the Russia-Ukraine war, Iran is hoping to take a slice of European energy market, amidst talks of lifting of some sanctions from Tehran and worsening of Europe’s relations with Moscow. Iran will look to extend its political shadow over Baghdad’s oil resources to influence global oil market and stay ahead of its Saudi rivals.

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Categories: Middle East

Exploring Dhaka’s options in a multipolar world

In its interactions with more powerful and adversarial nations thus far, Bangladesh has demonstrated diplomatic maturity and poise. A troubled polarization of the region between China and India has resulted from the Bay of Bengal’s recent reemergence of its strategic significance. The US involvement in the Indo-Pacific area has also increased, and Washington is working harder than ever to restrict China by establishing an axis with India in the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh, an Indian Ocean littoral nation, has assumed a more significant role in these circumstances. In the midst of this escalating geopolitical conflict, it has had to play smart.

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Categories: America / Central Asia / Eastern Europe and Russia / Indo-Pacific regions / Middle East / South Asia / Western Europe

Israel exploits opportunities for offence amid global crises

In 1948, the British announced the creation of the state of Israel after failing to reconcile Muslims and Jews with the fall of the Ottomans. A conflict sprang out as the local Arabs objected. An enormous Arab coalition force consisting of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Northern Yemen was routed by Israel. They still refer to the battle, which caused more than 700,000 Palestinians to lose their homes and become refugees, as “The Catastrophe,” or Al-Nakba.

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Categories: Middle East

Putin’s Iran visit and its geopolitical implications

Moscow is searching for new venues now that its connections to Europe have been severed, and the huge region of Middle East, with all of its intricacies, presents a welcome chance. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia before the trips of the Russian President, where he also had meetings with peers from the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council. At this time, it appears that Russia’s relations with the West, specifically Europe, are beyond repair, and Moscow appears to have undertaken a clear and decisive pivot eastward and southern, toward Asia. More importantly, Russia is acting as a guarantor to maintain the balance between Turkey, Iran and the Arab world. And for a proper balance, all parties are pursuing a strategy that can be described as compartmentalized policies for each country in order to achieve a greater collective result that satisfies domestic objectives.

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Categories: America / Eastern Europe and Russia / Indo-Pacific regions / Middle East

Is the war in Ukraine to blame for the global food crisis?

In 2021, over 193 million people in 53 countries/territories faced acute food insecurity (IPC/CH Phase 3-5; see Chart 1), according to the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2022). In comparison to the already record numbers of 2020, this is an almost 40 million increase. Over half a million people (570,000) in Ethiopia, southern Madagascar, South Sudan, and Yemen were identified as being in the most critical phase of acute food insecurity (IPC/CH Phase 5; see Chart 1) and required immediate assistance to avoid widespread livelihood collapse, famine, and death. The number of people encountering crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or higher; see Chart 1) approximately doubled between 2016 and 2021 when looking at the same 39 countries/territories represented in all editions of the report, with persistent increases each year since 2017.

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Categories: Africa / America / Central Asia / Eastern Europe and Russia / Indo-Pacific regions / Middle East / South Asia / Western Europe

Bangladesh can gain from changing Middle East

Young men from Bangladesh travel to the Middle East in search of work. Over time, they transfer money to their family back home, and our nation benefits from these labor-intensive foreign exchange transactions. Over 10 million Bangladeshis, mostly in the Middle East, reside and work abroad. After the clothing industry, they constitute the country’s second-largest source of remittances from abroad.

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Categories: Middle East / South Asia
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