By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 March 2023
Tag Archives: Hashd al-Shabi
The World Cup in Qatar and “Personal Freedom” Make the Islamic State Very Angry
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 December 2022
Islamic State Profiles a Young Iraqi Jihadist Killed During the Battle of Mosul
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 September 2022
Islamic State Dismisses the West’s “False Victory” Against It
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 19 January 2022
Islamic State’s War With Christianity in Africa
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 January 2022
Just What Is Iran Capable Of?
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 June 2021
The clerical regime in Iran, born in terrorism and dedicated to its export, has carried out atrocities across the world since 1979. The Islamic Republic has made Israel and Jews a special target of its murderous Revolution, and this has naturally incurred what one might call “resistance” from the Israeli government. What is notable in recent times is how the global ledger is shaping up, albeit while the strategic regional situation is quite different. The Israelis have delivered blow after blow to Iran, many of them within Iran, including removing senior officials, and the Iranian theocracy has proven unable to reply because its terrorist infrastructure is so badly infiltrated and just sheerly incompetent. Continue readingGaza is Just One Front in Iran’s Regional War
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 27 May 2021
Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary-general of Hizballah, the Lebanese division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), gave an interesting interview to Hizballah’s Al-Nour radio station on 22 May, explaining IRGC/Hizballah’s vision for what it had achieved with the recent war in Gaza. Qassem added to a large body of evidence about Iran’s extensive role in the war, a lot of it supplied directly by the combatant parties themselves. Not only did the clerical regime in Iran supply the material basis for the Islamists’ war against Israel this month; they provided much of the ideological framework, too. Continue readingWhat Can We Learn From Iran’s Foreign Minister?
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 May 2021
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Muhammad Javad Zarif, took part in an oral history project intended for internal use by the clerical dictatorship in February and on 25 April the audio was leaked—so goes the story. There is every reason to think this is a controlled leak, which is to say an information operation or a piece of strategic messaging—more pejoratively, propaganda or disinformation: choose the terminology as you will—intended to assist the Iranian theocracy as it works through its negotiations on the nuclear file with the new American administration of President Joe Biden. Still, there are some insights from this episode, as with an interview Zarif gave—focused on Afghanistan—in December. Continue reading
Israel is Losing Ground to the Iran-Russia Axis
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 18 April 2019
Israeli opinion generally regards the country’s efforts to contain Iran, especially in Syria, as having been successful. In fact, the trendline runs the other way: Iran is constraining Israel, entrenching all around the Jewish state. Continue reading
Coalition Prepares the Ground for Mosul Offensive
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 9, 2016
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) is an activist group working from within the capital of the Islamic State (or so-called capital of the so-called Islamic State, if you prefer) to bring news to the outside world of the horrors therein. For this they have paid a heavy price. On 22 September, RBSS published a list on Twitter of eighteen Islamic State (IS) operatives who had been killed by the U.S.-led Coalition between 20 August and 21 September 2016. This list, presented below with some notes and context, shows the preparations being made for the rapidly-approaching offensive on IS’s Iraqi capital. Continue reading