ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman (L-3rd L) meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (2nd R) at a hotel in Vienna, Austria June 28, 2015 (Reuters / Carlos Barria) Forget the mad spinning. Here it is, in a nutshell, what it really takes for Iran and the P5+1 to clinch a game-changing nuclear deal before the new July 7 deadline. Iran and the P5+1 agreed in Lausanne on a “comprehensive plan of action,” taking into account delicate constitutional considerations in both the US and Iran. A crucial part of the plan is the mechanism to get rid of sanctions. Lausanne – and now Vienna – is not a treaty; it’s an action plan. There will be a declaration when a deal is reached. But there won’t be a signing ceremony. The next important step is what happens at the UN Security Council (UNSC). All the concerned parties at the UNSC will endorse a declaration, and a resolution - which is st

LIVE messages and pictures of Sunni ISIS fighters dressed in Islamic attire circulated through social media network such as You Tube ostensibly authenticate the hostile agenda of the ISIS fighters to dismember Iraq by carving out a Sunni Islamic Caliphate stretching from Syria to the western Sunni heartlands in Anbar Province in Iraq. The usage of the state seal of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) on the ISIS flag as well for its Coat of Arms seemingly validates that ISIS are Sunni fighters. The rapid march of the ISIS towards Baghdad and its swift takeover of Mosul and Tikrit, and Baiji oil refinery, Fallujah and Ramadi in the Anbar Province, and seizure of border crossings into Syria and Jordan are presented by political analysts as a “civil war” fought along sectarian lines, Sunni Arabs versus Shiia Arabs. Added to this is the ethnically different Iraqi Kurds who have enjoyed semi-independence under the US patronage and are now on the verge of declaring complete independence from Baghdad.

Reuters / Khaled Abdullah Around 1,200 prisoners, including some Al-Qaeda suspects, managed to stage one of the biggest jailbreaks in years in Yemen’s south-eastern town of Taiz, after violence broke out and guards abandoned their posts, according to officials. “Groups of Al-Qaeda supporters ... today attacked the central prison in the city of Taiz and more than 1,200 of the dangerous prisoners escaped,” the Saba state news agency quoted a security official as saying. This marked one of the biggest prison escapes in the country in the last few years, signaling a lack of security, as various forces fight to gain control of the country. Another official confirmed to Reuters that some of those who escaped were “suspected of belonging to Al-Qaeda,” adding that they were able to make their getaway as militias clashed in the city. “Heavy fighting took place near the central prison and the popular committees approached and seized control of the area, but Saleh’s forces opened the prison doors

Reuters / Marko Djurica Even if Greece accepted all of the austerity measures demanded by its main creditors, the Troika, it still would not be able to make ends meet by 2030, according to IMF estimates revealed in a set of documents obtained by a German newspaper. The most optimistic scenario shows that Greece would face an unsustainable debt in 2030 even if it agreed to the package of tax increases and spending cuts proposed by the European commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF in exchange for a five-month €15.5bn loan from its creditors. These prospects were outlined in six documents that were part of the “final” proposal offered to Greece by the three main creditors on Friday. The papers were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and seen by The Guardian . The estimates provide support for Greece’s decision not to accept the bailout deal. They prove that for Greece to survive economically, it needs real debt relief measures, not austerity reforms. Accord

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has killed more than 100 civilians in a 24-hour rampage through the Kurdish town of Kobane in what a monitor group described as one of the group's "worst massacres" in Syria. Women and children were among the slain civilians whose bodies were found in their homes and in the streets, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. "According to medical sources and Kobane residents, 120 civilians were executed by ISIL in their homes or killed by the group's rockets or snipers," Rami Abdelrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, told AFP news agency on Friday. "When they entered the town, the jihadists took up positions in buildings at the southeast and southwest entrances, firing at everything that moved." "We heard gunshots at 5am. We went out to the street and saw people lying on the ground, shot and killed. Bodies and blood everywhere. Mahmoud Muslim, survivor Turkish officials s

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.(Reuters / John Stillwell) The United States has unparalleled surveillance capabilities that it uses to spy on the entire world, including its allies, to boost its competitiveness, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told a Russian TV channel. “The US is a surveillance superpower,” he told Rossiya-1 in an interview, slated to be broadcast later on Sunday. “This country spends on surveillance 60 percent of what the entire world spends on espionage,” he said.“They spy on everyone, including their allies. And use the information for their political and economic goals.” Earlier, WikiLeaks released classified NSA document apparently proving the intelligence agency had been spying on top French officials, including three consecutive presidents. US President Barack Obama and State Secretary Kerry assured that no such activities had taken place. Assange insists the documents released by the whistleblower website are proof enough. New data on the issue is to be rel

Reuters Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has executed more than 3,000 people in Syria alone, of which 1,700 were civilians, since the group proclaimed themselves as a caliphate on the territories of Syria and Iraq as of June 29, 2014, a monitor group said. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group told AFP it had documented a total 3,027 confirmed executions by IS, including 1,787 civilians, 74 among of them children. About half the civilians killed were from the Syrian Sunni Shaitat tribe, and 930 more victims were from a clan in Deir Ezzor, which faced mass executions after rebelling against Islamic State last year. The death toll also includes victims of a recent IS attack on the Kurdish town of Kobani, which claimed the lives of 223 people this week. During the year since the IS declared the “caliphate,” the group has executed 216 members of rival rebel fractions and Kurdish fighters, as well as about 900 government troops, the Syrian Observatory for H

Two small newsitems have not received much attention recently, and yet they might be the signs of something big happening: Poroshenko has fired the notorious Head of the equally notorious Security Service of Ukraine or SBU: Valentin Nalivaichenko. Sergei Ivanov, the powerful Deputy Prime Minister of Russia has stated that the US and Russia have created a bilateral communications channel on the Ukraine run by Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, for the USA and Grigorii Karasin, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, for Russia. The official reason for that was “not to complicate the already delicate “Normandy-format”. So on one hand, we have Kerry and Nuland who came to Russia and who, by all accounts, got nothing of what the asked for but who are now getting a “communications channel” while at the same time, the 100% USA-controlled Nalivaichenko, who is rumored to be an actual CIA agent recruited many years ago, is booted out by Poroshenk