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FILE PHOTO: Afghan women walk after the recent earthquake in the district of Zinda Jan, in Herat, Afghanistan October 10, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Iran suspected of killing Afghan migrants, Meta busts lunch scheme, Venezuela jails more foreigners, US and NATO mark a decade of fighting ISIS
2 million: The United Nations has called for an investigation into reports that Iran’s security forces opened fire last weekend on roughly 200 Afghan migrants who had entered the country illegally, killing an unknown number of them. Iran has threatened to deport as many as 2 million undocumented Afghan migrants who live in the country as refugees from decades of war and famine in their home country.
25: There’s no free lunch, they say – but if there were, you certainly shouldn’t use the money to buy acne treatment pads, wine glasses, or laundry detergent. Meta has fired around two dozen employees in its Los Angeles office after they were caught using the company’s $25 meal allowances to purchase household items.
5: Venezuela has arrested five foreigners, including three Americans, on charges of terrorism. Since winning a heavily disputed election this summer, President Nicolas Maduro has cracked down on the opposition, accusing it of collaborating with foreign intelligence operatives. The recent arrests bring to 12 the number of foreigners detained in Venezuela.
10: The US and NATO allies on Thursday marked 10 years since the start of their campaign to defeat Islamic State, often referred to as “ISIS.” On the plus side, the terror organization was rooted out of its modern “caliphate” strongholds in Syria and Iraq. On the minus side, it has shown a growing presence and capability in the Sahel, where some local governments are pushing out Western forces, and Central Asia, where Islamic State is at war with the Taliban in Afghanistan and has managed to carry out attacks in Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting to discuss the attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue, outside Moscow, Russia, March 25, 2024.
Why did ISIS-K attack Russia?
Islamic State-Khorasan Province, an associate of the Islamic State group based in Central Asia, claimed responsibility for the attack that left 137 dead in a Moscow nightclub on Friday. Try as he might to baselessly cast Ukraine as the responsible party, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reign has seen him plunge deep into the politics of Islamic extremism.
Moscow has a long history of animosity with the Muslims who make up about 10% of the Russian population, dating back to imperial expansion into the Caucasus and Central Asia in the 19th century.
Putin specifically earned the enmity of jihadists during the Second Chechen War (1999-2009), where he oversaw an infamously brutal crackdown on Islamic extremists fighting for the majority-Muslim state’s independence. He also deployed the Russian Air Force and mercenaries from the Wagner Group to support the Assad regime in Syria in 2015, where they fought the ISIS caliphate. Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center told the AP that Russia and Putin have been the target of ISIS-K propaganda for two years.
However, Russian was also the second most-spoken language among ISIS fighters after Arabic, as Moscow gave tacit approval for its citizens to leave the country and join the group. If the country’s disgruntled extremists are all off fighting in Syria and Iraq, the theory went, they can’t attack targets in Russia.
Those chickens may have come home to roost now. And with the Paris Olympics just months away, we’re watching what steps European leaders take to reduce their own vulnerability to terrorism in the coming weeks.
Pakistan-Iran attacks: Another Middle East conflict heats up
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week from Davos on World In :60.
How was White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s statement on a two state solution received in Davos?
Well, I mean, people like the idea of a two-state solution. They have absolutely no idea how to get there. And even if you say you could link it to Saudi normalization with Israel, by the way, the Israelis still want, and behind the scenes the Saudis still want. You still have to find a way to govern Palestine, both Gaza and the West Bank. And we are very, very far, I should say Israel is very, very far from having that as a possibility. So are the Palestinians.
Could the attacks between Pakistan and Iran ignite into a bigger conflict?
Yes, it absolutely could, but has almost nothing to do with Gaza. It was that ISIS attack in Iran that the Iranians are responding to. This is about domestic security, domestic concerns. That's why they hit Pakistan. That's why Pakistan hit them back. But no question, this is a tinderbox. The Middle East, it's very dry and we've got a lot of sparks. And I expect that this conflict is only going to escalate further.
Finally, what should we expect from the Ukraine peace summit to be held in Geneva?
Well, not very much, because the Russians won't participate. And President Putin has absolutely no incentive to give anything. The reason he's talking about diplomacy right now is because he's hoping to shake a few Europeans free and say, yeah, yeah, you should talk. You should sit down with them. It's making it easier to create a wedge inside Europe, especially once Trump gets the Republican nomination, who is clearly on that side. But we are very, very far from peace. In fact, we've got the Ukrainians right now on the back foot and deeply, deeply dissatisfied with it.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi speaking during a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the killing of Gen. Qassim Soleimani, at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in downtown Tehran, Iran, on January 3, 2024.
Islamic State group spoils efforts to blame Israel for deadly Iran blasts
Just as Iranian hardliners sought to pin blame on Israel for Wednesday’s deadly attack in the Islamic Republic, the worst since 1979, the Islamic State group swooped in and claimed responsibility.
On Thursday, the militant group said two of its suicide bombers carried out the Kerman attack, which killed at least 89 people and injured roughly 280 near the grave of Qassim Soleimani, the Iranian general killed by a US drone strike four years ago. Islamic State group, a Sunni terror organization, has also been linked to past terror attacks in Iran, a Shiite-majority country.
Security gaps. The attack was a “massive security failure” for Tehran, and it will be “under intense pressure to respond” to restore faith in its ability to protect the public, says Gregory Brew, an expert on Iran at Eurasia Group.
“There is likely to be a thorough national investigation and a wave of arrests, coupled with action against terrorist groups active inside Iran, with potential spillover into Afghanistan or Syria, where ISIS and its affiliates are known to be active,” Brew adds.
A region on edge. The fatal explosions in Kerman couldn’t have come at a more precarious time. The brutal Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has ratcheted up tensions across the region – particularly between the Jewish state and other Iranian proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon. There are growing concerns that the Middle East will soon face a broader, messier conflict.
But the Iranian government’s top priority is survival, so it isn’t particularly interested in becoming entangled in such a fight. And though Islamic State claiming responsibility for the attack “likely won’t stop figures in Iran’s political spectrum from implying an Israeli connection,” Tehran’s desire to avoid a regional conflict means it’s unlikely to formally blame Israel, says Brew.
“Escalation, when it comes, is likely to come through conflict between Israel and the US and Iran's proxies, rather than against Iran itself,” says Brew.
People attend a ceremony commemorating the death of late Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, in Tehran, Iran, January 3, 2024.
Who will Iran blame for deadly explosions near Soleimani’s grave?
Just when you thought tensions in the Middle East couldn’t get much worse … a pair of explosions rocked the Iranian city of Kerman on Wednesday, killing scores of people.
Wednesday’s explosions in Iran hit near the grave of Qassim Soleimani, the prominent Iranian general killed in 2020 by a US drone strike, as people gathered to commemorate the anniversary of his assassination. At least 84 people were killed.
Iranian officials described the incident as a terrorist attack, and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi appeared to blame Israel.
“I warn the Zionist regime, do not doubt that you will pay a heavy price for this crime and the crimes you have committed,” Raisi said in a televised address.
Raisi's political deputy, Mohammad Jamshidi, also blamed Israel and the US.
No one has claimed responsibility. The US has denied involvement and said it saw no signs that Israel was behind the blasts.
The explosions come amid growing fears that the region is on the brink of a broader conflict as Israel finds itself entangled not only with its war against Iran-backed Hamas militants in Gaza but also in tit-for-tats with other Iran-backed militant groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon. On Tuesday, Israel was accused of killing a senior Hamas leader with a drone strike in Beirut – but Israeli leaders have not claimed responsibility.
Was it Israel? While there is plenty of tension between Israel and Iran at the moment, the Jewish State is unlikely to be behind the explosions, says Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at Eurasia Group.
“For one thing, the attack doesn’t fit the M.O. of previous Israeli operations in Iran, which generally go after specific targets of military or strategic significance,” he says.
Also, while this was a terrorist attack designed to inflict maximum civilian casualties, Brew says “it seems more likely it was the work of terrorist groups active in Iran, including Islamist militants with ties to ISIS, who have carried out such attacks in the past.”
Iran has blamed Sunni terror groups like the Islamic State in Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, for previous terror attacks.
What will Iran do? Raisi warned Israel that Iran’s response to the blasts would be “severe.”
Picking a fight with Israel (which is believed to have nukes) would almost undoubtedly draw in the US (a nuclear nation) and put Iran in an exceptionally precarious position. Iran (which has no nukes, despite recent advances) would be outmatched on multiple levels in a conventional fight against Israel and its powerful allies, which also can decimate Iranian proxies across the region.
Tehran has so far sought to avoid a regional war, even as its proxies clash with Israel and the US, precisely because of the “tremendous damage” it would do to Iran’s security position, says Brew.
But if Tehran does make the dangerous decision to escalate the situation, the fight “would likely be a proxy war, though Iran would do whatever it could to support Hezbollah and other groups with arms, funds, and personnel. Iran is loath to risk its own military assets in a fight outside of Iranian territory,” adds Brew.
People protesting in Parliament Square in London
The Islamic State’s rise in Afghanistan
In 2017, the Trump administration declared that the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq had been defeated. But a new UN report released this week claims that there are between 5,000-7,000 fighters across the Levant. And many more – around 11,000 – are ready to fight but remain locked up in northern Syria, according to the UN.
At the group’s peak around 2015, it’s estimated that there were around 30,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria. Still, the latest report suggests that the group has been able to regroup and recruit.
Crucially, however, it’s in Afghanistan that the capabilities and scope of the Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-K are expanding at the fastest clip, with estimates that the group now commands up to 6,000 fighters.
Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan exactly two years ago, ISIS-K has terrorized the Afghan population and repeatedly attacked Taliban positions. (For more on the ongoing beef between the Taliban and ISIS-K, both extremist Sunni groups, see our explainer here.)
The Taliban says it has been strengthening regional security, but Western intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned that a group that was once seemingly confined to the dustbins of history is slowly making a comeback.
Ian Explains: 20 years since the Iraq War: Lessons learned, questions raised
The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, dubbed "Operation Iraqi Freedom," began 20 years ago. The Bush Administration told the world that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and the war would last weeks, but none of that was true.
In fact, almost nothing in the Iraq War went as planned. The US wasn't prepared for a violent insurgency that lasted years, killing thousands of US troops and hundreds of thousands of civilians. And two decades from its start, the war still casts a long shadow––the rise of ISIS, a civil war, ongoing violence and political turmoil.
With 20 years of hindsight, can we say the world is better off after the invasion of Iraq? What about Iraq itself? And what lessons can we learn to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past?
These are the questions Ian Bremmer asks US Senator Tammy Duckworth, who served in Iraq, and NBC's chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. Watch the episode on US public television or right here: Iraq War's legacy: Loss of lives, rise of ISIS, & political turmoil
US President Joe Biden delivers a speech in Warsaw, Poland on February 21, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Fiery rhetoric and a Ukraine “peace plan,” Israel’s economy v. judicial reforms, SCOTUS social media cases
Dueling speeches on Ukraine
A lot of players (and potential players) in the war on Ukraine have used the looming one-year anniversary of the invasion to position themselves for the months ahead. On Monday, President Vladimir Putin used his annual state of the nation address to insist that Russia would continue to fight a war he blames on Western aggression, and he announced that Russia would suspend participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty, which binds Russia and the United States to limit their strategic nuclear stockpiles and to share information and access to weapons facilities. (Note: Inspections have already been suspended for more than a year, and Russia is in no position to finance a new arms race.) President Joe Biden, meanwhile, followed up his surprise visit with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv by meeting in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda and asserting during a speech that “Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased. They must be opposed. Autocrats only understand one word: no, no, no.” In listing what he called Russia’s “atrocities,” he said its forces have “targeted civilians with death and destruction; used rape as a weapon of war… stolen Ukrainian children in an attempt to steal Ukraine's future, bombed train stations, maternity hospitals, schools and orphanages.” Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to make news on Friday with a speech of his own in which he’ll lay out the specifics of a peace plan which, given the distance between the Russian and Ukrainian positions, has virtually no chance of success. The war grinds on.
Israel’s shekel drops amid judicial shakeup
A day after the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed the first stage of a bill reforming the judicial system, Israel’s currency, the shekel, dropped 2% against the greenback – the lowest value against the US dollar since 2020. Making matters worse, depreciation of the currency comes as the country is already grappling with sky-high inflation, with the central bank recently raising interest rates for the eighth time in less than a year. For weeks, Israeli bankers and business leaders have warned that Netanyahu government’s proposed changes to the judiciary, which include stripping the power of the High Court to override government legislation, would make the country less attractive for direct foreign investment. Indeed, HSBC – the world’s fourth largest bank – recently sent a letter to investors saying that the proposed reforms would harm both foreign investment and capital markets in Israel. This comes as a new poll found that 17% of Israelis are thinking about taking their savings out of Israel. Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet say they aren’t backing down, but will that change if Israel’s economy continues to suffer and protesters continue to shout?
SCOTUS appears hesitant to crack down on social platforms
On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court began considering whether social platforms can be held responsible for harmful content promoted by their algorithms in Gonzalez v. Google, one of two cases the justices are hearing this week that may affect how social media platforms moderate content. But the justices made clear that they are unlikely to issue a sweeping decision limiting protections for YouTube, a Google subsidiary, any time soon, indicating that drawing the line on regulation is a slippery slope that should be considered by Congress. Some quick background: This case was brought by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old exchange student killed in an ISIS attack in November 2015 in Paris that also targeted the Bataclan theater. They argue that YouTube used data it collected on its users to push ISIS-related content to interested parties. At the crux of the legal battle is whether algorithms, which affect almost every online interaction, are legally protected under Section 230, a 1996 provision that says interactive service providers are not legally considered publishers of information posted by users on their sites. Both Republicans and Democrats have criticized the provision for different reasons, but efforts to revise it have stalled in Congress. Google, for its part, argues that it is legally absolved from content promoted on its platforms as it is not a publisher. The debate continues Wednesday when the Supreme Court will hear another case, Twitter v. Taamneh, looking at whether social platforms can be liable for aiding and abetting acts of international terrorism.