At the start of this year, Pakistan had more imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) than it could use, with demand falling from a peak of 8.2 million tonnes in 2021 to 6.1 million tonnes by late 2025. The government sold excess gas shipments to other countries and shut down domestic gas wells to prevent pipelines from bursting under oversupply.
We are on the trigger finger. After 22 years in the movement, we have never been this busy. The American-Israeli effort to bring down the Iranian regime is not likely to succeed without the help of PJAK and other Kurdish armed groups.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical corridor for global oil and gas trade, has led to a significant surge in oil prices across Asia, Europe, and the United States, affecting consumers at fuel pumps worldwide.
Numbering between 30 and 40 million worldwide, most live amid the peaks and valleys straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. The Kurds link their history to that of the Medes, an ancient Middle Eastern people. They were left stateless a century ago when the borders of the modern Middle East emerged from the collapsing Ottoman empire.
Within hours of the United States-Israeli attacks on Iran, US assets in Iraq's Kurdistan region came under retaliatory attacks from Tehran-backed groups, dragging the country into the conflict that has since expanded across the Middle East and beyond. Since then, US assets located in Iraq have come under multiple attacks from pro-Iran groups and Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC).
The calls were the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another source said. Israel has had close security, military and intelligence ties with the Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Iran for decades. "It is the general view, and certainly Netanyahu's view, that the Kurds are going to come out of the woodwork ... that they're going to rise up," one official said.
Syrian transitional government troops and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had been fighting for weeks in northern Syria. On Tuesday evening, the announcement of a four-day ceasefire restored a measure of calm. SDF fighters were close allies of the international coalition battling the extremist "Islamic State,", or IS, group in Syria and managed to take control of strategically important areas in Syria during 14 years of civil war. Recent clashes with Syrian government troops has pushed them out of these areas.
President Trump's tactic of "flooding of the zone" has focused much of the public sphere on issues and events generated by the president's interests and whims, driving the suffering of millions of people into oblivion. Deserved attention is paid to Trump's threats to annex Greenland, his intervention into Venezuela, the imposition of arbitrary and punitive tariffs on European allies, and the assault of ICE on Minneapolis.
Crude oil extended its rally for a third consecutive session today, supported by rising geopolitical tensions, severe winter weather disrupting US output, and a surprise draw in US crude inventories. Together, these factors kept the market focused on immediate supply risks and sustained the rebound. Markets reacted to renewed geopolitical risk sin the Middle East. President Trump has renewed pressure on Iran, while a US naval group's arrival in the region has fuelled disruption fears.