In the Two Minute Drill, Corey Stutte shares his insights on some of the day's most important geopolitical issues. The excerpts below are taken from the video above.
How significant were the Israeli airstrikes overnight in degrading Houthi forces in Yemen?
If you didn't see the news, Israel conducted airstrikes against Houthi ports, as well as power stations in Houthi control areas of Yemen.
These were significant because this is only the third time that Israel has conducted strikes against the Houthi rebels in the country. This comes after Houthi forces launched missiles at Israel. And this was Israel's response. Now Iran is saying that this is a violation of international law, which probably shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. But this probably didn't significantly impact Houthi readiness or anything like that within the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden area. That being said, Houthi rebels did say that there were nine casualties in the strikes, and they really pointed to those being civilian casualties. Which, of course, Israel says were not.
Are we seeing more Turkish movement in the Kobane area during the ceasefire?
As you might know, there's been a lot of discussion over the past few days about Turkish forces and Turkish-backed forces moving closer to the border of Syria. We have seen more drone strikes in those areas while there has been an ongoing ceasefire there. US forces had diplomatically tried to establish a ceasefire there but have really been unsuccessful in doing so.
And we continue to see Turkish forces launching strikes into these SDF-held areas, which will probably continue on for the near future. In other parts of Syria, we're continuing to see protests. We saw some protests against Turkish forces in the north and up in the Qamishli area.
And we also saw protests in Damascus for women's rights. And so that's important to note, as we start to see this transition of government. In Syria, it's important to pay attention to all these little things going on throughout Syria. To better understand what might actually transpire and how things might unfold.
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