By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 6 January 2024
Islamic State Khorasan Province is Looking More Dangerous
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Tag Archives: Ruhollah Khomeini
The Cold War Roots of the Media Fiasco Over Israel
Iran Was Behind the Massacre in Israel
Iran Admits Responsibility for the 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing in Beirut
The Contents of Islamic State’s Weekly Newsletter ‘Al-Naba’ in August 2022
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 September 2022
Christian homes burned by the Islamic State in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo || Al-Naba 352, p. 5
Hysteria and the Iranian Revolution
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 October 2021
Iranian protesters burn an effigy of the Shah outside the American Embassy, 1979 [source]
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
Qassem Sulaymani: Life and Ambition
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 2 March 2021
A year ago, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Qassem Soleimani, the de facto deputy leader of Iran. Arash Azizi’s The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the U.S., and Iran’s Global Ambitions is an effort to explain who Soleimani was, how he rose to controlling the lives of millions of people well outside the borders of Iran, and how in the end he was brought down. Continue reading
Bosnian General Convicted for Jihadist Crimes
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 January 2021
Sakib Mahmuljin [image source]
The Jihad Factor in Bosnia
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 January 2021
Last week, as one of his last acts in office, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech about Iran’s collaboration with Al-Qaeda. It was unfortunate that Pompeo did this at this time and in this way, with such blatant political intent, because the factual content of Pompeo’s speech was unassailable: the Islamic Republic’s long relationship with Al-Qaeda does stretch back about three decades, the killing of Al-Qaeda’s deputy Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (Abu Muhammad al-Masri) in Tehran in August 2020 is demonstrative of a shift in the strategic positioning of the organisation away from Pakistan to Iran, and even the part of Pompeo’s speech that got the most pushback—about Tehran’s contact with the 9/11 killers—is not controversial and is not new.
Unmentioned in Pompeo’s speech was one of the crucibles that forged this relationship, and forged Al-Qaeda into something more than a regional menace, namely the Bosnian war of 1992-5. Continue reading
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