An explosion at the Latakia port in Syria on Tuesday left an unidentified ship on fire, according to local reports, with some suggesting that the affected vessel had been used to transfer Iranian oil to Syria in the past. Smoke was seen billowing from a ship moored at Latakia port …

Move comes as part of efforts to ensure holding Libyan elections in December, says US Embassy in Tripoli TRIPOLI, Libya The US ambassador and special envoy to Libya began a two-day visit to Egypt’s capital of Cairo on Tuesday to meet with renegade Libyan General Khalifa Haftar and Egyptian officials, …

Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid landed in Morocco Wednesday afternoon, for the highest-level visit by an Israeli official since the two countries normalized relations last year after nearly two decades. The countries have not, however, established full diplomatic ties. Lapid was greeted at the airport in Rabat by Morocco’s Deputy …

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani reportedly has dismissed Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Wali Mohammad Ahmadzai from his post, after the ninth provincial capital fell to the Taliban early on Wednesday morning. The Taliban have captured more than a quarter of the country’s provincial capitals in less than a week. …

After almost two years of frenzied action started by President Donald Trump’s decision to sanction one of Moscow’s most ambitious energy projects, the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline,[1] the United States, under the newly elected President Joseph Biden, terminated all its attempts to derail the construction works and agreed …

New Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi named Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as the nation’s next foreign minister on Wednesday, succeeding Javad Zarif. Mr Amir-Abdollahian served as Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs under conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and moderate Hassan Rouhani. He was appointed deputy foreign minister in 2011 under …

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein arrived in Iran on Tuesday to personally invite new President Ebrahim Raisi to a summit in Baghdad aimed at defusing regional tension. Mr Hussein was expected to extend the invitation on behalf of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi at a meeting with Mr Raisi …

Trump’s adoption of a realistic relationship with China successfully slowed any CCP plans for military expansion in the South and East China Seas. What ended any possibility of a warming trend in US-China diplomatic ties was Beijing’s repeated lies that there was no human-to-human transmissibility of its Wuhan virus. Soon, …

Analysts and officials say a Taliban victory is far from guaranteed, pointing to the resources of Afghan defence forces, who remain in control. The Taliban now controls about half of Afghanistan’s districts, after lightning pace offensives in the months since foreign troops began their final withdrawal from the country. But …

Taliban overruns cities of Farah and Pul-e-Khumri in fresh setbacks for Afghanistan’s government. The Taliban has captured two more cities in Afghanistan, taking the number of provincial capitals the group has seized since Friday to eight. Farah city of the eponymous southwestern province and Pul-e-Khumri of the northern province of …