Tag Archives: Hizballah

The Death of Al-Qaeda’s Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri: One Year On

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 31 July 2023

Continue reading

A Note on Iran and the “Axis of Evil”

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 June 2023

President George W. Bush said in his first State of the Union speech after 9/11, on 29 January 2002:

Our nation will continue to be steadfast, and patient and persistent in the pursuit of two great objectives. First, we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans and bring terrorists to justice. … Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. …

North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens. Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom. Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. … This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens …

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

Continue reading

What To Make of China “Brokering” the Saudi-Iran Deal

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 14 March 2023

Continue reading

Al-Qaeda and Global Terrorism: What is the Current Threat?

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 February 2023

Continue reading

Islamic State Attacks Iran and Many Iranians Ask: Did it Really?

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 2 December 2022

Continue reading

The Shah’s Perspective on the Islamic Revolution That Toppled Him

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 October 2022

Continue reading

Britain Won the Spy War with the Irish Republican Army

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 July 2022

An IRA parade in Belfast || Image source

Continue reading

Spywar and Strategy: The Israel-Iran Contest in the Middle East

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 June 2021

Members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, at a memorial in Gaza, 31 January 2017. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib, Flash90.

The May 2021 round of fighting in Gaza brought with it the upending of the unspoken understanding between Israel and Hamas and a level of intercommunal violence within Israel that has not been seen in quite some time. The scale of the rocket attacks on the Jewish state must also be counted among the unusual elements of this latest flare-up, with Iran clearly identifiable as the enabling state behind Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the two primary factions behind these attacks. Continue reading

Just What Is Iran Capable Of?

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 June 2021

Massive explosion at Khojir in eastern Tehran lights up the night sky, 25 June 2021 [image source]

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 reading