Iran’s influence is spreading. It exerts control over Hezbollah in Beirut, over Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, over the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and now over the Iraqi government in Baghdad.

“For the first time in 1600 years, no Christmas and Easter masses were celebrated in Mosul.”

Western governments in particular must wake up to the reality that radicalised Western women and girls are neither less likely to join ISIS, and nor do they pose a lesser threat because of their gender.

The HSC’s Executive Director, Julie Lenarz, tells Dotun Adebayo that much more needs to be done to defeat ISIS. “Our current strategy is one of containment, not elimination.”

The HSC’s Executive Director, Julie Lenarz, reflects on the Defence Committee’s report calling for greater involvement in fight against ISIS.

During the course of the next 12 months, we could easily see development in one or more of these threats: a total meltdown in Iraq and neighbouring Middle Eastern states; a nuclear Iran, toward which Israel might well lose its patience, in the absence of meaningful American support; and a renewed Russian campaign against the rest of Ukraine, or even a Baltic state or two

We are guilty, notably in the developed world, of focusing our attention on issues we deem of immediate importance at the expense of long term intractable conflicts. However, what we continuously fail to recognise is how those issues we have never prioritised, and those we long ago forgot, continue to drastically shape our economic stability and security.

The United States recently signed a $11 billion arms deal with the tiny Persian Gulf sheikdom, and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member, Qatar. The deal included twenty-five AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, Patriot air defence missile batteries and portable Javelin anti-tank missiles. It constitutes the biggest arms deal the United States has undertaken this year and comes after four-years of selling those GCC states billions and billions of dollars worth of arms and military technology.

On 5th September, 20014, the HSC’s Director for Government Relations and Strategic Partnerships, Dr Dwayne Ryan Menezes, was on PMLR’s Westminster Podcast discussing the situation in Iraq.    

Whatever Russia’s ultimate intentions in Ukraine are following their annexation of Crimea, NATO – an organisation that was facing what some saw as existential questions post-Afghanistan – is now required to once again turn its attention to the defence of its member states.