It is not clear whether Abbas would present his candidacy in the upcoming presidential election. Representatives of several Palestinian factions including Fatah and Hamas, are scheduled to meet in Cairo this week to discuss preparations for holding general elections for the first time since 2006.

Divisions and bickering in Fatah were one of the reasons why the ruling faction lost the parliamentary election to Hamas in 2006. Deposed Fatah operative Mohammed Dahlan will not be allowed to run in the upcoming Palestinian presidential election, because he is a convicted criminal, two senior Palestinian officials said on Saturday.

James Jeffrey sees Israel’s campaign against Iran as part of a multi-pillar US strategy in the region that worked between 2018 and 2020. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, the former American envoy on Syrian policy notes that “US-supported Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in the country further limited the [Syrian] regime’s military options.” […]

Footage from Iran shows the missiles and precision strikes. A massive Iranian missile drill showcasing long range missiles, drones and other weapons is taking place this weekend and serves as a message to Gulf countries, the US and Israel.

US announces new round of sanctions after Tehran moves to produce uranium metal; Biden appoints new negotiator. Iran’s move towards producing uranium metal could only be used to produce weapons, the governments of France, Germany and the United Kingdom warned in a statement on Saturday.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari recently warned that the chaos and spread of arms in Libya may negatively impact security in Africa as a whole. His remarks raised concerns among experts that the weapons smuggled into Libya, namely from Turkey, may fall in the wrong hands in Africa, especially terrorist groups.

Turkish forces plan to establish an observation post 200 meters from the Damascus-Aleppo international road on the northwestern outskirts of Saraqeb city, reliable sources said Friday, a few days after Iranian forces and their proxy militias redeployed in areas that were hit by a series of airstrikes in eastern Syria this week.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Turkish Ambassador Mehmet Samsar discussed Friday the situation in Syria and Libya, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Aleppo Province – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: SOHR sources have reported clashes, on Friday evening, between Turkish-backed factions and “Manbij Military Council Forces” on the frontlines of Al-Bughaz in the western countryside of Manbij, north-east of Aleppo. the clashes coincided with exchange of bombardment between the tow parties, but no casualties have been reported.

Reliable sources have informed thee Syrian Observatory that unknown gunmen attacked, last night, a checkpoint of Hayyaat Tahrir Al-Sham at the southern entrance of Idlib city, on the road to Areha. Clashes erupted between the attackers and HTS members stationed at the checkpoint, then HTS brought in military reinforcement to the area, before the attackers […]

Syrian Observatory activists have documented a spike in the number of Russian airstrikes on the Syrian desert in the past 24 hours, as the Russian fighter jets executed 65 airstrikes targeting ISIS positions in Alepp-Hama-Al-Raqqah triangle and other positions in the desert, amid reports of casualties.

Greek lawmakers have approved a government plan to purchase advanced fighter jets from France in a three-billion-dollar deal that is expected to infuriate Turkey, amid a dispute with Athens over energy resources in the Mediterranean.

North Korea has unveiled what it says is a new submarine-launched ballistic missile, the latest apparent development in its fast-advancing weapons program. Several of the SLBMs rolled through Pyongyang’s central Kim Il Sung Square during a nighttime military parade, state media said Friday.

In a sign of the changing political environment in the Middle East, the United States military will move Israel from the U.S. European Command’s area of responsibility to that of the U.S. Central Command, DOD officials announced today.

Troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan have dropped, acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller announced today. There are now 2,500 U.S. service members in Iraq and 2,500 in Afghanistan. It is the lowest number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan since operations started there in 2001.

Israel needs to prepare for this new reality where its ability to combat Iranian forces and proxy groups is concerned. Speculation about the extent to which the incoming American administration will appease Iran has been rampant. But US President-elect Joe Biden’s picks for relevant top positions don’t seem to leave much room for conjecture.

Café Milano, the upscale Italian restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, was the scene of an important dinner on Monday night: Mossad chief Yossi Cohen sat down to eat with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the two were spotted by journalists.

The Yemeni interior minister said the Houthi militias, helped by Iranian and Lebanese experts, were behind the strikes that targeted Aden airport on December 30. The results of investigations by the Yemeni government about the Aden airport attack underline the danger posed by missiles Iran has supplied to the Houthis, which have seriously threatened energy […]

Reconciliation between Qatar and four boycotting Arab countries has not yet been reflected in the Yemeni file. Yemeni political sources suggested that a mortar attack on the Arab coalition’s camp in Al-Alam area in Shabwa was part of a broader scheme aimed at stopping the Riyadh Agreement from being implemented and thwarting the completion of […]

The Lebanese are worried that their country will meet the fate endured by Iraq, Syria and Yemen, where the Iranians and their militia proxies are playing a major role in the civil wars currently plaguing these countries. The Lebanese are demanding an end to Iranian occupation of their country; they are clearly hoping that the […]

The United States on Thursday blacklisted Chinese oil giant CNOOC and slapped visa restrictions on officials of the Chinese navy, ruling party and state-owned enterprises over land reclamation and “coercion” of Southeast Asian claimants in the disputed South China Sea.

Today, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in the Department of Commerce (Commerce) imposed new controls on any U.S. technologies and specific activities of U.S. persons who may be supporting foreign military-intelligence end uses and end users in China, Cuba, Russia, and Venezuela, as well as in terrorist-supporting countries. BIS is also enhancing controls […]

Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act passed House unanimously in 2019 but stalled in Senate Bipartisan American legislation directing the US president to sanction international individuals and agencies tied to the Gaza-based Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups was re-introduced in the House on Thursday.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres plans to appoint veteran diplomat Jan Kubis as his envoy in Libya nearly a year after the last mediator stepped down, according to a letter to the U.N. Security Council seen by Reuters on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan arrived in Moscow on Thursday to discuss bilateral relations with his Russian counterpart, according to the Kingdom’s Foreign Ministry.

Qatar released three Bahrainis on Thursday who were arrested at sea while on a fishing trip. Sami Ibrahim Al-Haddad — a body building champion — and his friend Mohammed Yousef Al-Dossari were arrested on Jan. 8 by Qatar’s coastal and border security. Manama said they were in Bahrain’s territorial waters at the time.

The Afghan Fatemiyoun also denied members were hit, but said Syrian army personnel were killed. A deputy commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) denied that any deaths had resulted from a string of airstrikes believed to have been carried out by Israel in Syria earlier this week.

Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi rejected the invitation for meeting French, German, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers in Cairo, citing the nationwide lockdown in Israel as an excuse.

The military exercise in Iran’s central desert comes as the Trump administration makes a final push to punish Tehran. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Friday fired a “barrage” of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and launched new bomb-carrying drones in a military drill held in the country’s central desert of Iran, state media reported.

Having brokered a cease-fire deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Vladimir Putin is now giving priority to the development of transport links in the conflict-ridden region. The first meeting between the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia after their six-week war over Nagorno-Karabakh last year has clearly shown that Russia is rebuilding its leadership in the Caucasus, […]

One expert noted that the Russia and Syrian regime attempts to push the SDF to withdraw from the Ain al-Issa area and shelling by Turkish-backed rebels is “giving ISIS cells greater ability to conduct attacks deep behind the SDF lines.”

Drug trafficking is a major source of revenue for the PKK terrorist group to carry out its activities in Iraq, the head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front Ershad Salihi said Monday. According to Iraqi sources, the PKK has accelerated illegal drug trafficking activities across the country to fund its terrorist network.

A group of jihadists close to Al-Qaeda has emerged as the West’s most formidable enemy in the Sahel, taking over from the Islamic State as the region’s major threat. The Group to Support Islam and Muslims, also known by its Arabic acronym JNIM, is a sworn enemy of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara […]

A former spokesman for Al-Qaeda who worked closely with the group’s late leader Osama bin Laden is now living freely in London after being released early from a US jail due to the high COVID-19 risk posed by his weight and asthma, Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper reported on Monday.

For weeks, ISIS has managed to escalate its attacks against Syrian regime forces and their allies in the Syrian Badia, largely suggesting that the terror group has succeeded in reorganizing its ranks in the vast desert region.