Islamic State Under Pressure in Northeast Syria

Kurdish forces in Syria’s northeast retook a series of villages that the Islamic State captured earlier this year. The towns’ residents are reportedly waiting to return for fear of booby traps, and approximately 200 Assyrian Christians from the area are still believed to be held by the Islamic State. Farther south, Assad regime forces conducted airstrikes against Islamic State-held Taqba air base near Raqqa. The attack marks one of the few occasions the Islamic State has been targeted by the regime and could be a response to the Islamic State’s capture of Palmyra from Assad’s troops.

The Islamic State has reportedly executed 15 prisoners in the ancient Roman ruins in that city. In Iraq, the country’s health minister said that government personnel have excavated four mass graves near Tikrit, recovering 470 bodies. The dead were killed in a massacre of Iraqi soldiers at the Speicher military base in June 2014.

American Journalist on Trial in Iran

American journalist Jason Rezaian, on trial in an Iranian court this week after being detained since last July, rejected accusations of espionage, according to reports by Iranian media. (No foreign press are allowed to cover the trial.) “I’m only a journalist,” he reportedly told the court. “All my activities were as a journalist and all were legal.” As evidence against him, the court presented a letter from Rezaian to President Barack Obama in which Rezaian discussed his reporting. “In Iran, I’m in contact with simple laborers to influential mullahs,” Rezaian reportedly wrote. If convicted, Rezaian faces up to twenty years in prison.

Headlines

At least 80 people were killed in the deadliest day of Saudi airstrikes to date in Yemen; one-third of the country’s population is in need of urgent medical care, according to the World Health Organization.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mehmet Cavusoglu walked back comments from earlier this week suggesting that the United States would conduct airstrikes to protect Syrian rebels, saying foreign military support is still being “technically studied.”

With one month before the proposed deadline for negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran, Iranian and French officials said this week that talks could extend past June 30.

Saudi Arabia added two Hezbollah officials to their designated terrorist list for their purported actions in Yemen and Egypt.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is resigning from his post as Quartet Middle East peace envoy after eight years in the role.

Arguments and Analysis

“‘Strangling Necks’: Abductions, torture and summary killings of Palestinians by Hamas forces during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict” (Amnesty International)

“In every case Amnesty International has documented, it has uncovered evidence of Hamas forces using torture during interrogation with the apparent aim of extracting a ‘confession’ from the detainee. Testimonies indicate that victims of torture were beaten with truncheons, gun butts, hoses, wire, and fists; some were also burnt with fire, hot metal or acid. In several cases family members of victims described to Amnesty International various injuries inflicted on the detainees, such as broken bones — including of the spine and neck bones — trauma to the eyes, as well as damage, punctures or burns to the skin. The torture and summary killing of people in captivity — including suspected ‘informers’ or ‘collaborators’ — are, when committed in the context of an armed conflict, serious violations of international humanitarian law, constituting war crimes.”

“Academics Living Under ISIS” (Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education)

“It was at this point, continues the witness, that ‘IS started to arrest the lecturers one after another and take them to prison, which sadly was their college. They were insulted, humiliated and tortured. The lucky ones were able to leave the city under dangerous conditions with their families to avoid this destiny.’ Yet even those who have found safety in Kurdistan often receive death threats or news that children left behind have been kidnapped. And all this just for the ‘sin’ of wanting to ‘improve higher education in our country and to teach modern knowledge, which is forbidden and unacceptable to IS.’”

-J. Dana Stuster

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images