DPG West Asia Review
The internal security situation in Iran deteriorated considerably in July 2020. A series of blasts rocked the capital Tehran, while fire damaged at least seven vessels at a shipyard in Bushehr. In the light of these incidents, for which Iran holds Israel responsible, the U.S. Central Command Chief General Kenneth McKenzie has warned Israel, that Iran will respond to the explosions and fires at its nuclear and industrial facilities.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of India has described reports of Iran dropping India from the project to build a railway line connecting Chabahar port to Zahedan as ‘speculative’. However, India is set to lose the opportunity to develop Farzad-B gas field as Iran has inducted a new operator replacing ONGC.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the vulnerability of critical infrastructures to cyber-attacks. In light of this, on July 15, 2020 India and Israel signed MoU for operational collaboration in the field of Cyber Security, an important pillar in partnership between the two countries.
In a major development the United States (Lockheed Martin) removed Turkey from F-35 global participants list. This is primarily on account of America’s opposition to Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile defence system.
On July 14, 2020, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected an appeal by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt, questioning the authority of the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) to hear the case about air blockade of Qatar. The ICJ judges ruled that ICAO is a competent authority to hear this case.
On July 18, 2020, Saudi Arabia hosted a virtual meeting of G20 where bankers and minister’s agreed to consider a possible extension of the debt to certain countries in the second half of 2020. Thus far, 42 countries have asked for their debt to be deferred totalling around USD5.3 billion.
In a major boost to its space program, on July 19, 2020 the United Arab Emirates successfully launched spacecraft bound for Mars. This is the Arab world’s first mission to Mars.
Syrian Arab Republic on July 19, 2020 held parliamentary elections in the territory controlled by President Bashar al-Assad. With this, Assad marks 20 years in power amid civil war and Covid-19 pandemic. In other major news, the United Nations once again warned about oil spill from abandoned tanker off the coast of Yemen in Red Sea. This could spark a major environmental catastrophe.
