Week in Review: North Korea Sparks Asian Instability, EU Command Center, Iran’s Military Spending, and Much More

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Highlights:

Europe to build military headquarters

• European Union leaders approved on March 6 the creation of a new military headquarters.
• EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini said, “We are progressing steadily toward strengthened defense cooperation, and we will continue to do more.”
• “It’s a first step,” said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. As for “a European army, maybe later.” The EU Observer said that some see the new headquarters as “the nucleus of a future European army.”

The rise of Iran’s financial empire

• On Wednesday, the National Council of Resistance of Iran released a book titled Iran: The Rise of the Revolutionary Guards’ Financial Empire.
• According to Rowan Scarborough, who reviewed the book in the Washington Times, “Iran has spent $11 billion alone on icbms [intercontinental ballistic missiles] from rogue state North Korea, based on a 2009 agreement.”
• “Military spending has gone from $3 billion annually in 2008 to $13 billion in 2015. Tehran spends another $3.4 billion annually on internal security and $1.4 billion annually on the ‘export of fundamentalism.’”
• Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote after the deal, “Iran changed nothing in its policies of aggression, subversion and sponsoring terrorism. It didn’t even say it would reform in any of these areas! Without giving in on anything, Iran was given all it needed in order to greatly accelerate its race toward getting the nuclear bomb.”

Hamas to change anti-Semitic charter

• Hamas is set to update its foundational charter in a bid to reshape its public image.
• The amendments to the 29-year-old document of the Gaza-based Palestinian group will be officially released in April, but here are some of the highlights: Hamas will endorse a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines; Hamas will officially break with the Muslim Brotherhood; Hamas will no longer be anti-Semitic.
• Could this be the beginning of Hamas’s attempt to wrest complete control of the Palestinian cause from Fatah, not through an armed takeover, but rather a charm offensive that gets the international sponsors of the Palestinian cause on its side first?

Turkey and Germany fall out again

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan likened the German government to Nazis on March 5, as relations between the two countries reached a new low.
• In February, Turkish police held Deniz Yücel, a German-Turkish journalist and correspondent for Die Welt newspaper, for two weeks, before finally arresting and formally charging him. The incident led to outrage in Germany.
• Two German local authorities seemingly retaliated by canceling rallies led by Turkish ministers who were campaigning for a “Yes” vote in Turkey’s constitutional referendum.
• Erdoğan lambasted German authorities, saying, “Germany, you have no notion of democracy,” he said. “Your practices are not different from the Nazis of the past.”
• The Telegraph reported Erdoğan saying, “I’ll come tomorrow if I want to, and if you do not let me in, or try to stop me speaking, I’ll start an insurrection.”

Other news:

• On Monday, North Korea fired four missiles toward Japan. Three of them fell within 200 nautical miles of Japan’s coast.
• Russia and China both now have the capacity to carry out critical cyberattacks on other nations that is significantly ahead of American capacity to defend against such attacks, a new government report says.

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