The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) has published the 2017 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), measuring and understanding the impact of terrorism. Some of the most interesting results show that for the second year in a row, the number of deaths caused by terrorism has decreased and yet the number of countries with terrorist attacks has increased.
These results demonstrate the capabilities of the new wave of terrorism to expand and reach new countries, despite the apparent reduction in harm
By Jim Carey*
The MEK’s violent past makes it clear why its only remaining friends are those who seek regime change in Iran at any cost.
With the recent protests across Iran, some people are, for the first time, being exposed to a fringe group of Iranian exiles known as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK, and their political front group, The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
While audiences of Western media may be seeing the group, they aren’t actually being provided the proper
by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
The 1981 Algiers Accords laid out the legal framework for US-Iranian relations, including provisions forbidding interference in each other’s internal politics and a ban on trade sanctions. One party to the agreement violated it terms almost as soon as the ink was dry.
This week marks the 37th anniversary of a pledge made by the United States in 1981:
The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene
A senior American political analyst said the dirty hands of the Saudi regime and certain Arab states were evident in the recent unrest in some Iranian cities but the turmoil came to an end due to the strong popular support for the Islamic Establishment.
“There can be little doubt that indeed it was dirty money coming from the dirty hands of the Saudis and other (Persian) Gulf nations who proved themselves to be willing partners in such dirty business as demonstrated in the role they played in
A senior American political analyst and author said Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei is “correct” to say that the recent protests in Iran were directed from abroad, noting that the rioters were sponsored by outside agitators.
“It is difficult to believe that Iranians are so stupid that they do not understand the source of their hardships. As I do not believe that Iranians are stupid, I conclude that the protesters were manipulated and/or paid to protest by
A former US Senate candidate said Washington and Tel Aviv have drawn up a new game plan to destabilize Iran via “draconian sanctions” and “black intelligence operations”, stressing that this is the plan of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s operatives in the US government.
“As for Mr. Trump, his national security team and foreign policy advisors are riddled with Zionist interventionists, of whom Nikki Haley is arguably the most blatant and obvious. The game plan is this: Attempt to
By Tara McCormack
Western foreign policy has deepened the conflict in the Middle East.
What is the British ‘national interest’? That phrase often gets thrown around by politicians, with no explanation as to why a particular policy is actually in the ‘national interest’. This is especially true of our foreign policy, which some might be surprised to hear supports and funds barbaric jihadists in the name of ‘democracy and human rights’. (Or, in plain terms, in the pursuit of regime change in the
One would think that the United States would have learned by now, that it is never a good idea to arm terrorist groups in different parts of the world, due to the inevitable “blowback” which eventually ensues after these violent groups determine that the USA is no longer in support of them, or when the USA wants to deny that they have any relationship with them.
We have seen this paradigm unfold countless times before, over the past few decades, with groups like Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, La
As 2017 draws to a close, it is difficult to be optimistic about what will be coming in the new year. The American President, whose margin of victory was certainly based on his pledge to avoid unnecessary wars, has doubled down on Afghanistan, refuses to leave Syria even though ISIS has been defeated, and is playing serious brinksmanship with a psychopathic and unpredictable regime in Pyongyang. The White House has also bought into the prevailing largely fabricated narrative about a Russia
One of the striking characteristics of the past week of protests in Iran is the apparent lack of a leadership organization behind them. The Green Movement that lead the protests against the tainted presidential election of 2009, mostly made up of the reformist faction, has remained absent this time around, with the reformist leaders mostly distancing themselves from the protesters. There doesn’t appear to be a government-in-waiting that those who dream of "regime-change" in Tehran can install
Sources close to security bodies have said of over 500 people arrested during the disturbances in different cities in Iran, more than 80 percent have admitted receiving money and ordered from outside the country to misuse the people’s protest against price rises and high unemployment.
This comes against the backdrop of a declared scheme by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to bring unrest to the streets of Iran. The plot seems to have untraveled in the form of sporadic feats of sabotage
A political analyst based in London hailed Iran’s “critical role” in the collapse of the Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group in the Middle East and said Iranians proved, with their blood, their commitment to fighting terrorism.
“Iran has played a very critical role in the fight against Wahhabism in Syria and in Iraq,” Marcus Papadopoulos said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.
“The Iranian Government and the Iranian people have proved, with their blood, their commitment to fighting
There are some great duties which need to be carried out. You honorable gentlemen came up with some solutions and specified certain responsibilities in this congressional meeting. I too would like to mention two, three tasks that cannot be ignored: one is the formation of a scholarly, rational, and comprehensive movement, by ulama from all Islamic denominations, with the purpose of uprooting the takfiri orientation. This movement should not be confined to certain denominations. All the
President Donald Trump’s airstrikes in Afghanistan are making it easier for the Taliban to recruit new members to attack U.S. troops, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban said.
In an interview posted on the Taliban’s website, spokesman Muhammad Yusuf said there is a direct link between an increase in civilian casualties in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s ability to recruit new members.
“Civilian losses and casualties increased significantly due the indiscriminate bombing, artillery shelling and
A UK report on modern slavery identifies its various manifestations – sexual exploitation, labour exploitation and domestic servitude – concluding that increased awareness results in an increase in detection and reporting. But, with trafficking at the root of much modern slavery it is clearly a worldwide phenomenon, not limited to the west or to any particular country.
Modern Slavery is usually a hidden phenomenon, it goes on behind closed doors and can be hard to detect. Victims are
It was a few weeks after the rains failed in the winter of 2009 that residents of Shirqat first noticed the strange bearded men.
Circling like vultures among the stalls of the town’s fertilizer market in Iraq’s northern Salahaddin governorate, they’d arrow in on the most shabbily dressed farmers, and tempt them with promises of easy riches. “Join us, and you’ll never have to worry about feeding your family,” Saleh Mohammed Al-Jabouri, a local tribal sheikh, remembers one recruiter
On Nov. 7, Albania's High Criminal Court changed the sentences of two Muslim Albanians from prison to house arrest. The detainees, Xhezair Fishti and Medat Hasani, who are Salafists, were arrested in November 2016 by Albanian counterterrorism units on suspicion of planning an attack on the Israeli national football team, which was scheduled to play Albania on Nov. 12, 2016.
These Salafists were two of some 150 Muslims who the Albanian police detained that month. Albanian authorities, who
The RAND Corporation’s recent piece titled, “Al Qaeda in Syria Can Change Its Name, but Not Its Stripes,” all but admits what was already suspected about designated terrorist groups operating in Syria – that they are undergoing a transition in an attempt by their state sponsors to bolster their legitimacy and spare them from liquidation amid the shifting tides on the battlefield.
The piece, written by Colin Clarke described by the RAND Corporation as a “political scientist at the RAND
A number of recent terror operatives and fighters for the Islamic State hail from that landlocked nation and some of its Central Asian neighbors. Why?
The alleged assailant in the New York terror attack, Sayfullo Saipov, has brought back to global attention Uzbekistan, the resource-rich, desperately poor, and wildly corrupt Central Asian state that has been largely hidden from view for over a decade.
A number of recent terror operatives and fighters for the Islamic State hail from that
Chatting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November 2016, Barack Obama mentioned Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood back in the 1960s. The country, he noted, was a changed place. Where Muslims once adopted elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, and animism, a more austere version of Islam had taken hold once Saudi Arabia began pouring money into Wahhabist madrassas in the 1990s. Where women had formerly gone about with