Iran

Spotlight on Global Jihad (November 24-30, 2016)

This week, Syrian Army forces with Russian air support continued to take over neighborhoods held by the rebel organizations in the northern part of east Aleppo. So far, they have taken more than a third of east Aleppo. There were no significant developments in the campaign for Mosul.
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Initial Reactions in Iran to the Election of Donald Trump as President of the United States – Dr. Raz Zimmt

Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the United States was received in Iran with great surprise. Senior Iranian officials, among them Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, reacted with care and restraint in their initial references to his victory, claiming Iran was not worried but rather prepared to cope with any possible challenge. However, they
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Spotlight on Iran* (November 7-20, 2016)

Faysal Meqdad, the Syrian deputy foreign minister, paid a visit to Tehran and met with senior Iranian officials. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, advisor to the speaker of the Majlis (the Iranian parliament) for international affairs, told him Iran would continue to support Syria in its fight against terrorism. Mohammad Bagheri, the Iranian chief of staff, said that
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Spotlight on Iran* (October 23 – November 6, 2016)

Four Iranians, two of them high-ranking officers, were killed by rebels in Syria. They died during the attack begun by Syrian rebel organizations in Aleppo aimed at breaking the Syrian forces’ siege of the city’s eastern neighborhoods. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, meeting with families of Iranian fighters killed in Syria, said he was particularly
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The Campaign for Mosul: The Situation and Initial Assessment (As of the morning of October 27, 2016)

On October 17, 2016, Haidar al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, announced the beginning of a military campaign to liberate the large, important Iraqi city of Mosul, ISIS’s main stronghold in Iraq. It was where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the founding of the Islamic Caliphate on June 4, 2014, which gave Mosul great symbolic value.
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Spotlight on Iran* (October 9-23, 2016)

Hassan Firouzabadi, senior military advisor to the supreme leader and former chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, told that the presence of Iranian advisors in Iraq and Syria, and Iran’s support for Yemen and Hezbollah, manifested its revolutionary and religious ideology. Basij commander Mohammad-Reza Naqdi said it was Iran’s duty to fight for
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