Looming war in Arabian Gulf

…also published in Daily Trust

There has been an alarming escalation of tensions in the Arabian Gulf region over an increasingly possible showdown between Iran and the United States. Though both countries claim not to be interested in war, fears persist as the US, which already maintains a cluster of military bases across the region continues to deploy more warplanes and warships and other military hardware, while Iran deploys boat-mounted missile launchers, units of anti-aircraft artillery and other heavy-duty military equipment and weapons.

The situation began to steadily deteriorate following the US unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers i.e. US, Russia, UK, China, France and Germany. Under the agreement, Iran agreed to scale down its nuclear program in return for lifting the UN-imposed economic sanctions on it.

Hamas resistance between recklessness and bravery

…also published in Daily Trust

For more than a decade since the bloody confrontation between two major Palestinian freedom organizations, Fatah and Hamas, which resulted in the political split of the already geographically detached two autonomous Palestinian entities, West Bank and Gaza Strip with Hamas taking control of Gaza while Fatah keeping its control on the West Bank, there have rounds of confrontation between Hamas resistance fighters and the occupying forces of the Zionist state of Israel.

A typical round of confrontation between them is always triggered by provocation with each party accusing the other of it. Hamas would then begin its retaliatory measures by firing some locally assembled rockets into Israeli cities to kill or injure a few Israeli settlers or at least damage a few buildings.