Middle East

Donald Trump repeated an eyebrow-raising idea this week that the United States should have kept Iraq’s oil after ousting Saddam Hussein.

"I’ve always said -- shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil," Trump told moderator Matt Lauer at NBC’s Commander-in-Chief Forum on Sept. 7, 2016. "If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil."

Barnett Rubin is of the opinion that the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), meets the “the national interest” of Iran and the United states.

Donald Trump’s recent comments on America’s alliances, coinciding with the Republican convention last week, have further raised the anxiety levels of US allies about Washington’s global role after the US presidential election.

World events of the past decade have put the international refugee system under great stress. The challenges include a dramatic increase in the number of forced migrants, a significant shortfall in needed funding, and inadequate international burden-sharing.

The United States has something important to teach Europe about the migration crisis. Right now, though, Europe isn’t listening.

Sarah Cliffe CIC Director, recently moderated the Third Session of the Doha Forum held in Qatar from May 21-23. The theme for the Third Session was the Global Economy. Globally we are facing two major economic challenges; the global slowdown and volatility of commodities, currencies and financial markets.  Watch the full video of the Third Session of the Doha Forum below:

A strange thing happened in the Aegean Sea last month: No refugees drowned. This modest piece of good news was, however, overwhelmed by the calamity in the Mediterranean, where 1,083 refugees drowned in the last week of May. Those poor souls, almost all African, left from Libya, a country unable to exercise control over its borders. But passage across the Aegean is controlled by Turkey, which has clamped down on trafficking in the wake of a deal it reached with the European Union in March. In 2015, 800,000 refugees crossed from Turkey to Greece.

Experts say reports of an Iran-backed Taliban buffer zone in Afghanistan against the Islamic State are overstated but that Iran has had links with Taliban commanders for over a decade. 

Iran is working with the Taliban to set up a buffer zone along its border with Afghanistan to keep out the Islamic State, the latest sign of how the rise of the Syrian-based terror group is turning longtime rivals into uneasy allies.