This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the the Ukraine War, or even just whatever you’re reading. Megathread for the Israel-Palestine conflict is here though if you want to talk about it in this thread as well feel free.
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Notes -
Iran
Republicans have blamed Biden for fueling the Israeli crisis by recently unfreezing $6 billion of Iranian assets (which presumably could have been sent to Hamas/Hezbollah), though the Biden Administration denies that any of the funds had been transferred prior to the present conflict. Competing articles have argued both that representatives from Hamas and Hezbollah have said Iran helped plot the attack on Israel but also that the Israeli military says they don’t have evidence of Iranian involvement yet and US intelligence officials says that Iran was completely surprised by it. Iran of course denies culpability, no clue which narrative is correct (their weapons were definitely used though).
The building diplomatic ties between Iran’s arch-nemeses (is that a word?) Saudi Arabia and Israel are of course imperiled by the now ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. A number of sources have shared a headline that Saudi Arabia has already announced that negotiations are over, but I haven’t seen it from a particularly credible source yet.
Separately, Iran has finally restored diplomatic relations with Sudan, who had broken them off seven years ago following Iranians storming the Saudi embassy in Khartoum.
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