The Internationalism

From the series The arms industry in the Middle East Europeans started selling weapons to the Middle East a century and a half ago, recalls the Economist . At the time, European armies began to adopt the breech-loading tifle and to sell the surplus of rifled muskets to rival Arab tribes . The fow of arms has never stopped since, but in the meantime the importance of the area has grown, attracting new sellers: Americans, Russians, Chinese and also emerging local groups. The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) EDGE conglomerate, with 12,000 employees and sales worth $4.7 billion, recently entered the SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) top 25 arms-producing companies in the world for the first time. An unstable but enormous market In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) there are three ongoing conflicts (Syria, Libya, and Yemen) and a heated dispute over gas resources in the easter Mediterranean. Recent diplomatic moves, such as the agreements between Israel and the...

David Petraeus, Commander of the US forces in Iraq and the Gulf in 2007-2008, then director of the CIA in 2011-12, described the elimination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on January 3 rd in Baghdad as a defensive action , with which the Trump presidency restored a US deterrence , which was weakened by recent Iranian actions . This is a reference to the attacks conducted indirectly, unclaimed by Tehran, against the Saudi oil infrastructures on September 14 th 2019. In March 2008, when the forces under Petraeus’ command supported the Iraqi Army in the fight against local Shite militias, Soleimani sent a message to the American general: informing him that he was the person in charge for Iranian policies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza therefore the channel through which to define an agreement to resolve the various issues with Tehran. Petraeus holds the advisors of the Quds Force, the spearhead of the Pasdaran asymmetric operations, responsible for the killing of around 600 ...