MoA—When AP sent the misleading tweet the commander of the Iraqi Federal Police Forces Jaffar al-Batat had already announced that the number of demonstrators exceeds one million. That number may well be correct. Reports said that the column of protesters was already eight kilometers long even while many were still arriving.
IRAQ
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PHILIP GIRALDI—That Iraq is to say the least unstable is attributable to the ill-advised U.S. invasion of 2003. The persistence of U.S. forces in the country is ostensibly to aid in the fight against ISIS, but the real reason is to serve as a check on Iranian influence in Iraq, which is a strategic demand made by Israel and not responsive to any actual American interest. Indeed, the Iraqi government is probably closer politically to Tehran than to Washington, though the neocon line that the country is dominated by the Iranians is far from true.
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THE SAKER—Russia has now made the fight against poverty a national strategic priority, something which the Russian people had wanted for years and which the previous “economic block” never considered a priority.
Furthermore, the entire Eurasian Sovereignists block of the government has remained unchanged. This indicates two things: First, the Russian national security and foreign policy will remain unchanged. Second, the Eurasian Sovereignists have finally weakened the Atlantic Integrationists to such a degree that a Medvedev nicely “boxed in” in the Russian Security Council or a Siluanov “boxed in” in the new Russian government have ceased to represent a serious threat to the future of Russia. -
RAMIN MAZAHERI—Americans might be subjected to analyst after analyst rationalizing the brutal, inhuman slaying – and the Orwellian attempt to call an anti-terror hero a “terrorist” — but nobody outside the US believes such nonsense for a moment. And certainly not in the Muslim World, where the US is (allegedly) trying to “win over hearts and minds”, as Washington so often puts it.
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ARAM MIRZAI—Nobody has escaped the news of the so called “popular demonstrations” in Iran during the recent days. Hundreds of thousands of articles, updates and tweets have been made on this matter, and many have talked about what the reasons behind these protests have been. Many videos show groups of so-called Iranians tearing down the pictures of Martyr Qassem Soleimani, while others chant “death to the Islamic Republic” and “death to Khamenei”. Thousands of such people have appeared across Iran and many of those Iranians outside of Iran cheer them on, while the Empire takes every chance to attack Iran.