ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Saudi Arabia will join the nuclear club by buying “off the shelf” atomic weapons from Pakistan, US officials told a London newspaper. The Saudis — who financed much of Pakistan’s nuke program — are fearful of international efforts to keep its enemy Iran from acquiring a bomb, the Sunday Times of London reports. The Saudis think the deal, backed by President Obama, will actually accelerate Iran’s nuke push. Saudi Arabia has talked for years about acquiring a bomb from the Pakistanis. “The House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward,” a former US defense official said.

A T-14 tank with the Armata Universal Combat Platform (RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy) It made an impressive debut during the Victory parade in Moscow, Russia’s brand-new ‘supertank’ is still shrouded in mystery, and has proved a magnet for rumors. Here is what we know for sure. 1. Armata is not the name of a tank, but an armored platform, onto which modules will be fitted to create more than a dozen vehicles. Besides the T-14 battle tank, it will be the chassis for a personnel carrier, self-propelled artillery and an air defense system. 2. The T-14 is the first Russian tank designed entirely in the post-Soviet era, and in only six years. The design and production of certain crucial elements – such as the armor, and the turrets – had to be done “from scratch.” 3. Armata T-14 features a fully automated and unmanned turret – perhaps the most revolutionary technological decision taken by its designers. In theory, this should allow better protection for the crew, now located in the hu

The results of the one-day meeting in Riyadh amongst the heads of the Cooperation Council for Arab States of the Gulf (the first time it was attended by the President of France Francois Hollande) gave a crystal clear look at the tough trend to be continued by these leaders into a future military solution to the Yemen conflict. The joint decision communiqué states: “Leaders of the GCC reiterated their unconditional support for Saudi Arabia at the head of the Operation Determination Storm, which was carried out to restore the rule of law in Yemen. The leaders were satisfied with the outcome of a significantly positive campaign outcome and launched a new Operation Renewal of Hope in response to the request from Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi to restore its legitimacy and to resume the political process in accordance with our initiative in the Gulf.” Put simply, the President of Yemen called to the so-called Arab Coalition, who, abandoning self-preservation, leapt to his aid, leve

F. William Engdahl First appeared: On April 26 Russia’s main national TV station, Rossiya 1, featured President Vladimir Putin in a documentary to the Russian people on the events of the recent period including the annexation of Crimea, the US coup d’etat in Ukraine, and the general state of relations with the United States and the EU. His words were frank. And in the middle of his remarks the Russian former KGB chief dropped a political bombshell that was known by Russian intelligence two decades ago. Putin stated bluntly that in his view the West would only be content in having a Russia weak, suffering and begging from the West, something clearly the Russian character is not disposed to. Then a short way into his remarks, the Russian President stated for the first time publicly something that Russian intelligence has known for almost two decades but kept silent until now, most probably in hopes of an era of better normalized Russia-US relations. Putin stated that the terror in Ch

May 15, 2015 - Yousaf al Salafi, the professed Pakistani commander of ISIS was captured during a joint raid by law enforcement in December of last year, though Pakistani officials did not make the arrest public until January 22, 2015. The Express Tribune first reported that al Salafi, who was arrested with two companions in Lahore, confessed that ISIS, also known as ISIL and IS, are receiving funds via the United States. It was not disclosed where in the US the funding is originating from. Al-Salafi, along with an associate – who is reportedly an imam of a mosque – were receiving $600 for each new member of ISIS they were able to recruit. The recruits would then be sent to train at an undisclosed location in Syria. An anonymous source speaking with the Tribune said that US Secretary of State John Kerry was made aware of the Pakistani commander’s admission during a recent visit to Islamabad. “The matter was also taken up with CENTCOM chief General Lloyd Austin  during his visit to

BAGHDAD: The leader of the Islamic State group Abu Bakr al Baghdadi on Thursday urged Muslims to emigrate to his self-proclaimed “caliphate”, in the jihadist supremo’s first audio recording in six months. “And we call upon every Muslim in every place to perform hijrah (emigration) to the Islamic State or fight in his land wherever that may be,” he said. The voice reading the half-hour speech appeared to match previous audio recordings of Baghdadi, the latest of which was released in mid-November. As did his previous speech, the audio tape recording released on Thursday comes a few days after media reports that he might have been seriously wounded in a strike by the US-led coalition bombing IS in Iraq and Syria. There was no way to immediately authenticate the latest recording nor date it but Baghdadi speaks of developments in Yemen, where Saudi-led forces launched an air campaign against Shia rebels in late March, that suggest it is recent. Echoing his previous exhortations, Baghd

On August 6, 1945, the world (unfortunately) entered the atomic age. Without warning, a single nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima killed about 90,000 people instantly and injured many others – who then died from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians. “The Library of Congress adds roughly 60 million pages to its holdings each year, a huge cache of information for the public. However, also each year, the U.S. Government classifies nearly ten times that amount – an estimated 560 million pages of documents. For scholars engaged in political, historical, scientific, or any other archival work, the grim reality is that most of their government’s activities are secret.” – Richard Dolan, historian, author. (source) A very important point made above, how can we really know anything about America

Reuters/Stringer Dr. Can Erimtan is an independent scholar residing in İstanbul, with a wide interest in the politics, history and culture of the Balkans and the Greater Middle East. The Islamic State has become part and parcel of global news cycles, but its goals remain little discussed. Instead, Westerners focus on determining whether or not IS should be understood as representing Islam or rather as an aberration of the faith. Ever since the terror group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, conquered the city of Mosul and wide swathes of territory straddling both Syria and Iraq in the summer of last year , the West and its mainstream media have been near-obsessed with this clear and imminent danger to various countries and populations in the Middle East - all the way from Turkey down to Saudi Arabia. In spite of this really rather localized threat, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (aka Caliph Ibrahim) now even seems able to exert a certain influence on the 2016 US presidential elections, arguably as a r