Salman Rafi Sheikh

When the US president Joe Biden delivered his first major foreign policy speech in February, he signalled America’s return to an interventionist and confrontationist policy design, one that thrives on creating troubles for its competitors. Accordingly, whereas we see the US continues to blame the Chinese authorities for carrying out a “genocide” in Xinjiang – which is a major...

While China has already made its mark in the Middle East and is already outsmarting the US, the recently signed China-Iran pact is perhaps the biggest economic venture China has made in the Middle East so far. However, while China does have big ambitions with respects to its economic engagement with countries in West Asia, Middle East remains...

If there is major stumbling block to Syrian unification and normalisation back to the pre-war years, it is the continuing presence of foreign forces inside Syria and the support they continue to provide to jihadi elements and militias that continue to seek to overthrow Assad’s government. Their presence, therefore, not only dovetails pretty closely...