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Israel-Iran Shadow War on Verge of Exploding Into the Open By Sri Lanka Guardian •June 10, 2022 •Espionage feature World View •Comments : 0 Iran removing UN monitoring cameras, poised to move troops into Syria by Jonathan Broder On the evening of May 31 in the central Iranian city of Yazd, an Iranian aerospace engineer was returning home from dinner with a colleague when he suddenly felt ill and collapsed into unconsciousness. Ayub Entezari was rushed to hospital, where he died after several unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate him, according to an Iranian opposition media outlet. The cause of Entezari’s death:...

urkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday warned Greece to demilitarize islands in the Aegean Sea, saying he was “not joking” and posting tweets in Greek and English, in a marked harshening of rhetoric against Turkey’s neighbor and historic regional rival. Turkey says Greece has been building a military presence in violation of treaties that guarantee the unarmed status of the Aegean islands. It argues the islands were ceded to Greece on the condition they remained demilitarized. Athens counters that the islands, which have been garrisoned for decades and lie within close striking distance of a large Turkish landing fleet,...

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to arrive in Israel on Monday, as Jerusalem, Cairo and Brussels make strides toward a natural-gas export deal. The European Union Embassy in Israel said von der Leyen was arriving “to advance relations between the EU and Israel, especially cooperation in the area of energy. The president will also discuss with Israeli government representatives the global reaction to the food crisis and the situation in the Middle East.” During her two-day visit, von der Leyen is expected to meet with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, President Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister Yair...

Swedish archaeologists in cooperation with the antiquities department have excavated two burial tombs at the site of Dromolaxia-Vyzakia that they believe belonged to two rich families judging by the nature of the finds, they said on Friday.This large Late Bronze Age city, which flourished between 1630 and 1150 BC, is situated along the shores of the Larnaca Salt Lake near the mosque of Hala Sultan Tekke.Both tombs contained material from the outgoing 15th and the 14th centuries BC, which chronologically corresponds to the Late Cypriot IIA-B period, the Late Helladic IIIA1-2 and the famous Egyptian 18th Dynasty. One of the...

Syrian and Russian warplanes on Tuesday carried out military drills amid increasing Israeli strikes, according to a military statement released by Syrian defense ministry. The drills and patrols took place near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in southern Syria and also in the northern and eastern parts of Syria. Two Russian SU-35 jets and six Syrian MIG warplanes took part in the drills...

Nasrallah v. US envoy to negotiate on maritime border: "If you (the Lebanese government) want to, continue negotiations but not with Hochstein (US envoy), Frankenstein or any Stein who comes to Lebanon" @coren_ido https://t.co/WzcagFfExU pic.twitter.com/pg69dIUAQ2— roi kais • روعي كايس • רועי קייס (@kaisos1987) May 9, 2022

The buckets of cold water Turkey is pouring on Finland and Sweden’s bids to join NATO may be coming from the sea around the shore of Cyprus, the divided Mediterranean island that is a bargaining chip for the Turkish president, Tayyip Erdogan. There is mounting evidence that Turkey could be using its status as a member of NATO to wield its veto power over the anticipated accession to the alliance of the two Nordic countries as a lever to force the international community to confer legitimacy on its de facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. London’s Sunday Express recently reported...

The sins of former President Obama are just now beginning to surface. We know that Obama targeted George Papadopoulos first to stop the construction of Israel’s natural gas pipeline to Europe in favor of Iran’s pipeline. Then Obama targeted Papadopoulos a second time to prevent candidate Trump from being President! The pieces are all starting to fall together and Obama and his gang can’t make it stop. The most corrupt President in US history, Barack H. Obama, will soon be known as the biggest crook to enter the Oval Office. One individual who was targeted by Obama will be the...

Athens (AFP) – Greece's government said Thursday it plans to double production of lignite, or brown coal, in the coming two years despite the pollution it causes as Athens aims to reduce its dependence upon Russian gas. Greece depends upon Russia for 40 percent of its natural gas and since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February it has been searching for alternatives to ensure normal supplies. "Lignite is polluting and in normal circumstances, natural gas is cheaper," government spokesman Giannis Ekonomou said. But given the conflict in Ukraine and the needed to diversify energy supplies, Ekonomou said increased brown coal production...

Yahalom-Mack adds that her team was surprised to trace the ingots to Sardinia, which is “beyond the western Mediterranean, beyond the [Cypriots’] regular route of trade, which is Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia and the Aegean.” Though Cyprus was once considered a passive player in the Bronze Age metal trade, simply producing copper for other countries, more recent research has painted a portrait of a “small but agile nation with both formal and informal trade ties that may well have helped fill the power vacuum that occurred with the collapse of entranced empires around 1200 B.C.E.,” per the Times of Israel.Divers...

A new discovery off the coast of Bahrain is estimated to contain at least 80 billion barrels of tight oil, the kingdom's biggest ever find, its oil minister said on Wednesday. Independent appraisals by U.S.-based oil consultants DeGolyer and MacNaughton and oilfield services company Halliburton had confirmed Bahrain's find of "highly significant quantities of oil in place ... with tight oil amounting to at least 80 billion barrels, and deep gas reserves in the region of 10-20 trillion cubic feet," Oil Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al-Khalifa said. Russia's entire oil reserve is 80 billion barrels. Tight oil is a...

He says Putin overestimated Russia's military, not realizing its budget had been embezzled. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has stalled amid tough Ukrainian resistance. A former Russian foreign minister claimed that widespread corruption is among the reasons for the Russian military's apparently poor performance in the invasion of Ukraine. Andrey Kozyrev, who served as foreign minister under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, put forward what he said were misjudgments made by President Vladimir Putin in ordering the invasion. In the thread, he claims Putin overestimated the Russian military, which he dedicated billions of dollars to modernizing. But this money, Kozyrev...

Andrey Kozyrev laid out reasons why Putin may have misjudged his invasion of Ukraine. He says Putin overestimated Russia's military, not realizing its budget had been embezzled. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has stalled amid tough Ukrainian resistance. A former Russian foreign minister claimed that widespread corruption is among the reasons for the Russian military's apparently poor performance in the invasion of Ukraine. Andrey Kozyrev, who served as foreign minister under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, put forward what he said were misjudgments made by President Vladimir Putin in ordering the invasion. In the thread, he claims Putin overestimated the...

MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) -- It is almost forty years since those fine falsettos, the Bee Gees, put their pop classic, “Massachusetts”, on the top of the charts. They had no idea that their lyrics might become the alleged plot of a scheme by a trio of Ukrainian metal men to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the processing of manganese ore, and the sale of ferromanganese, ferrosilicon, and silicomanganese to steelmakers around the world. “And the lights all went out in Massachusetts,” sang Robin and Barry Gibb. “They brought me back to see my way with you.” On...

While Putin's war machine inflicts death and destruction on women and children in Ukraine, the runt of the Irish parliament returns to its favourite sport - Israel hating. Senator Frances Black is an ultra nationalist politician and a member of the Upper House. Though nominally an Independent, she is closely aligned with Sinn Féin. She seeks to portray herself as a defender of Palestinian Arabs, but every so often the mask slips and exposes herself for the old school antisemite that she really is. She introduced an "Occupied Territories" (sic) Bill to criminalise Irish Jews and allies, for seeking to...

Turkey, a NATO member with close ties to Russia, initially denied the request, citing international law. When the situation in Ukraine escalated to war, however, Turkey affirmed that provided legal grounds to block the waterway.

Migrants Desecrate More Than 2,000 Churches Just in Greece"As a deeply religious society, these attacks on churches are shocking to the Greek people and calls to question whether these illegal immigrants seeking a new life in Europe are willing to integrate and conform to the norms and values of their new countries." — Greek City Times, May 16, 2020.While the report most likely has the 1453 sack of Constantinople (today Istanbul) in mind — when countless Greek churches, including Hagia Sophia, were desecrated, destroyed, or turned into mosques — that pattern is a century older.Before Christmas, in the North Rhine-Westphalia...

Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk says the lesson from the war between Russia and Ukraine is that the period of American dominance is over. “One lesson of the Russian-Ukrainian war is that the era of US unipolar domination has ended. The US was not in a position to declare war on Russia because it is not the sole decision maker in international politics,” he claimed in a post on Twitter. He then added, “Here we can talk about the future of the Zionist entity,” meaning the future of the State of Israel. In a separate tweet, Abu Marzouk wrote,...

Despite a request from the Biden administration to back a UN Security Council resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Israel refrained from doing so, two diplomats familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel. Eighty-one countries signed on to the resolution as co-sponsors, though the effort was ultimately vetoed by Russia. Israel is one of the few countries that maintains relatively warm relations with both Ukraine, a fellow Western democracym as well as Russia which controls the airspace over Syria.

Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Cyprus are blocking Russia's disconnection from the international interbank system SWIFT as CNN reported. “Removing Russia from SWIFT would make it almost impossible for financial institutions to send money in or out of the country. This would seriously impact Russian businesses with foreign customers and could do real damage to the country's economy,” the message says. At the same time, high-ranking EU sources report that there is a split in the union amid the adoption of the issue. It is noted that such countries as Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Cyprus are against disconnecting Russia from the...