Over the past week or so, China has eased quarantine measures in Wuhan – the city in which the global coronavirus pandemic began – with the entire lockdown scheduled to end on 8 April. With China’s President Xi Jinpiang having visited the city just a few days ago, the industrial economy across China as a whole is back working and operating at levels even above the pre-coronavir
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The changing geopolitical landscape for Iraq’s energy sector Much ink has been spilled over the past week assessing the current confrontation between the US and Iran following the US-ordered airstrike against Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces
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Iran’s clerical leadership, under “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali HoseiniKhamene‘i, is expected to make rapid, significant, and symbolic responses to the targeted killing in Baghdad on January 3, 2019, of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani. It seems unlikely that the Iranian response would initially be to launch a military assault
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Ever since the U.S. signalled through its effective withdrawal from Syria that it now has little interest in becoming involved in military actions in the Middle East, the door has been fully opened to China and Russia to advance their ambitions in the region. For Russia, the Middle East offers a key military pivot from which it can project influence West and East and that it ca
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Barely a month goes by without yet another corruption scandal emerging or developing in Iraq. Whether it be the Barzanis’ industrial-scale corruption in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan or the endemic multi-level corruption in the south it is little wonder that Iraq ranks as one of the very worst countries in the world for bribery and corruption. The last month or so has
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