In Brief Many Syrians were surprised when Bashar al-Assad appointed Hussein Arnous as prime minister after the dismissal of Imad Khamis, in what resembled a scandal, on Aug. 30, 2020. The Syrians knew nothing about Arnous, despite him being part of the Syrian bureaucratic system for nearly thirty years. People …

As Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed historic peace deals in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Iran dismissed the agreement as a “strategic mistake” and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah called for “military resistance” in support of the Palestinians.

The Syrian regime and Russian forces are facing a growing threat of the Islamic State, which continues to hold pockets across the desert in central Syria.

The US-led anti-IS coalition provided helicopter transport for the Iraqi raid in al-Rutba. Iraqi commandos killed a suspected Islamic State (IS) financier and captured an IS leader in an operation in western Anbar province on Monday, according to Iraq’s Defense Ministry.

The Afghan paramilitary group Fatemiyoun Division, which answers to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), held its first “international conference,” an ideological indoctrination gathering, on Aug. 13 at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday warned France that its efforts to resolve the crisis in Lebanon would be in vain without immediately tackling the issue of Iran-backed Hezbollah’s weaponry.

The United States applauded Serbia on Sunday for announcing that it will designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization.

British police said counter-terrorism officers arrested a man on Saturday on suspicion of attempting to cause an explosion over a package sent to an address in north London earlier this week.

Al-Qaeda has threatened French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo with a repeat of a 2015 massacre of its staff, after it republished controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the SITE observatory said on Friday.

The International Coalition against the so-called Islamic State on Sunday conducted an airstrike against a hideout of the terror group in rural parts of the disputed Kirkuk province, killing at least two suspected terrorists.