Tag Archives: IS
22 April 2015
The sale of American military hardware is on the rise in the Middle East, reports the New York Times. Defense industry officials notified Congress that Arab allies fighting the Islamic State – Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt – are set to purchase thousands of American-made missiles and other weapons. Until recently Gulf Nations militaries have been “a combination of something between symbols of deterrence and national flying clubs. Now they’re suddenly being used”, said Richard L. Aboulafia, a defense analyst at the Teal Group. Saudi Arabia has become the world’s fourth largest defense market, spending more than USD 80 billion on weaponry last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute tracking global military spending. The Emirates and Qatar have followed suit, the Emirates spending nearly USD 23 billion last year and Qatar signing an USD 11 billion agreement for the purchase of Apache attack helicopters and an air defense system. (more…)
Source: The New York Times | Sale of U.S. Arms Fuels the Wars of Arab States
26 March 2015
The Yemeni foreign minister, Riad Yassin, requested Gulf Arab states for support to prevent the advance of rebels further into the country. The Shia Houthi rebels who ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi in February 2015 siezed Yemen’s third largest city, Taiz. (more…)
Source: BBC | Yemen minister calls for Gulf military intervention
2 March 2015
The UN Security Council has strongly condemned the ‘ongoing barbaric terrorist acts’ committed by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and reaffirmed its determination in defeating the extremist group. (more…)
Source: UN News Centre | Security Council strongly deplores ISIL's 'barbarism,' says resolve stiffened to defeat group
7 October 2014
An analysis conducted by Conflict Armament Research, a London-based organisation that is collecting evidence of weaponry used by the Islamic State, has recently uncovered 21 nations as sources of ISIS’s ammunition- with more than 80 percent of the ammunition having been manufactured in the USA, China, the Former Soviet Union, post-Soviet Russia and Serbia. A small sample of cartridges, including ammunition manufactured as recently as 2013, was found to be of Iranian origins. (more…)
Source: The New York Times | ISIS’ Ammunition Is Shown to Have Origins in U.S. and China
29 September 2014
The New York Times reports that President Hassan Rouhani of Iran delivered a searing indictment of Western and Arab states in his speech to the UN, blaming them for sowing the seeds of extremism in the Middle East with ‘strategic blunders’ that have given rise to the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups. (more…)
Source: The New York Times | Iran’s President Says West’s ‘Blunders’ Aided Rise of Islamic State