Eurasia

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …