Dear Readers,

After discussion of the way forward, we are making some changes at EA WorldView.

Focus on Analysis

First of all, we will be using the latest developments to bring more analysis to you. On both Syria and Iran, we will feature daily “Forecasts”, going beyond news of the most significant events to project their significance for the future.

These Forecasts will complement our Analyses, going in-depth on political, military, economic, and social issues and trends.

Weekly Briefing — Now On Site As Well As Via E-Mail

The success of our Weekly Briefing, with an overview of the key events of the week, has exceeded even our highest expectations when we launched it this summer. Many of you have signed up to receive it every Monday, looking forward to what we think will happen in the week ahead.

We will now be posting the Briefing on the site as well as sending it by e-mail.

Of course, if you prefer to have the Briefing in your in-box, please sign up via the form on the homepage.

THANK YOU for the Donations

We would like to say a huge thanks to all of you for your donations — and your fantastic words of support — in the past week.

Regular readers will notice a change when they come to the site — we have put up a PayPal Donation Button notice to ask those who wish to make a small contribution to EA.

EA does not receive any funding and we do not ask readers to pay a subscription, because we want to share our analysis with as many people as possible.

Your donations help us keep sharing this analysis with you — and to venture into new areas…

Speaking of which…

New Initiatives — Russia

Regular readers will also have noticed an addition to our work on Iran, Syria, and the Middle East — we have also started to look at events in Russia, particularly in the Northern Caucasus.

Why?

Well, one reason is that nothing happens in a vacuum — there are links between insurgent movements in the Northern Caucasus and what is happening in Syria. As Russian-speaking Chechens join and even lead Islamist brigades, including the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham, Russia’s fear grows of Islamist extremism in the North Caucasus.

This fear, including how that ideology affects other areas of the Russian Federation, informs both Moscow’s domestic policies and its foreign policy. Russia has been instrumental in orchestrating the strategy to save President Bashar al-Assad after the regime killed more than 1,300 Syrians with chemical weapons on August 21.

Another reason is personal. I have a long-standing interest in Russia, having lived and worked in Moscow and Kyiv and travelled extensively in the region. I was last there a year ago as a journalist in the official Israeli delegation with President Shimon Peres, during his visit to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

I speak the language fluently and have a reading knowledge of Ukrainian, and I am particularly interested in nationalist insurgency movements.

New Initiatives — The EA Community Page

But enough about us. EA never has been just about our insights and analysis of events in Iran, Syria and the Middle East. We have always been centered on a crowd-sourced approach, both in how we gather information and in how we share it. We are proud of the community that we (mostly Scott) have created, and we want that to continue.

So please do come join us on our new Google Plus EA Community Page, where we would like to hear your thoughts on our content and on your own input.