(Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967) The US President Donald Trump’s tweet on Thursday that the United States should back Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967, didn’t quite come like a bolt from the blue. There has been talk about such a thing for sometime. Last December, the …
Continue reading “Trump’s Golan move shows US contempt for international law and rules-based order”
(Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force visiting the frontline somewhere in Iraq.) A new phase is beginning in Iran’s approach to the situation since last May when the US withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran had thus far prioritised the consolidation of Western opinion against President Trump’s decision with a …
Continue reading “With eye on US, Iran revs up ‘resistance front’”
(Handout picture of US officials at peace talks with Taliban, Doha, Qatar) The Press Trust of India has reported on the discussions regarding Afghanistan in Washington last week between the visiting Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and the US special representative Zalmay Khalilzad. The report carries New Delhi dateline and is attributed to ‘official sources’. According …
Continue reading “India shouldn’t undermine Afghan peace talks”
Abu Omar, 70, smokes his pipe as he sits in his destroyed bedroom listening to music on his gramophone in the neighbourhood of al-Shaar in Aleppo, Syria. As Syria’s war enters its ninth year on March 15, many questions arise as to how it began and what it morphed into, but the most pressing one …
The Afghan national security advisor Hamdullah Mohib, while on a visit to Washington, tore into the US’ peace talks with Taliban in remarks to the American media on Thursday. Mohib alleged that US special representative Zalmay Khalilzad is keeping the Afghan govt in Kabul in the dark about the negotiations with the Taliban and that …
(The United Nations Security Council in session in New York) The Chinese reservation about placing a technical hold on the listing of the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed Masood Azhar as a ‘global terrorist’ by the United Nations Security Council does not come as surprise. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman in the recent days had made it …
(A view of the Taliban’s office in Doha, Qatar) The marathon talks between the US officials and the Taliban representatives at Doha through a 16-day period ending yesterday can be seen as a defining moment in the endgame in Afghanistan. Both the US special representative Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban have signalled that progress has …
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani received a phone call from Pakistan PM Imran Khan late in the evening on March 9, which was their first contact after the fedayeen attack near the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on February 13 that Tehran alleged as having been executed by terrorists from across the border. Twenty-seven soldiers of …
Continue reading “Iran trusts Imran Khan but will verify the promise”
(S-400 : Russia’s geopolitical missile targeting the US) The Turkish-American relations are at a crossroads. Unlike past history of their troubled relationship saw hiccups but the two NATO allies moved on eventually, this time around, they are barreling toward a clash. From an Indian perspective, it is of interest that the clash is over the …
Continue reading “If US sanctions Turkey, can India be far behind?”
(Samjhauta Express carrying some 150 passengers left Lahore railway station for New Delhi on March 4, 2019) There were three key elements in the remarks at the press briefing in Washington on Tuesday by Robert Palladino, deputy spokesperson of the US State Department, regarding India-Pakistan tensions, while flagging that “there’s a lot of private diplomacy …
Continue reading “US, China and root cause of terrorism in South Asia”
