Middle Orient

Iran sent thousands of Shi’ite militias to Syria during the Syrian war and, alongside Russia with its air power, enabled Assad to crush the insurgency and regain most of his territory. Russian and Syrian jets struck the rebel-held city of Idlib in northern Syria on Sunday, military sources said, as …

U.S. Navy destroyers shot down seven missiles and drones fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the warships and three American merchant vessels they were escorting through the Gulf of Aden. No damage or injuries were reported. U.S. Central Command said late Sunday that the destroyers USS Stockdale and USS O’Kane …

Israel said it had targeted militants headed to a rocket facility, but neither Israel nor Hezbollah seemed keen to immediately return to full-scale fighting. The uneasy truce between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah largely held through its second day in Lebanon on Thursday, although Israel conducted an airstrike that …

Hundreds of Iran-backed Iraqi fighters crossed into Syria on Monday to help the government fight rebels who seized Aleppo last week, while Lebanon’s Hezbollah has no plans for now to join them, according to sources. Iran’s constellation of allied regional militia groups, aided by Russian air power, has been integral …

The Syrian military rushed reinforcements to the northwest and launched airstrikes Sunday in an attempt to push back insurgents who seized the country’s largest city of Aleppo, as Iran pledged to help the government counter the surprise offensive. Iran has been a key political and military ally of Syrian President …

The Kremlin’s Middle East diplomacy is driven by its rivalry with the West, the imperative to defend deep-rooted Russian interests in the region, and a desire to project power and influence well beyond its periphery. For centuries, the Middle East has been an arena of competition between Russia and the …

For almost a decade, US troops have been on the ground in Syria to assist Kurdish-led forces in the defeat of the infamous Islamic State. These forces tamp down on the ISIS remnants in the northern and eastern regions they presently control, where tens of thousands of captured ISIS fighters, …

Devlet Bahceli also suggested that the conditions of the militant leader’s life sentence without parole be reconsidered if he agrees to make such a call. In a U-turn that came as a bombshell for Turkish politics, Devlet Bahceli, a top ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and leader of …

Latest Developments • UNRWA Pledged Cooperation With Iran’s Terror Proxies: Pierre Krahenbuhl, the previous head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), pledged to meet with Iran’s Palestinian terror proxies “a thousand times” to discuss policy decisions, the Geneva-based nonprofit UN Watch revealed on November 21. In 2017, …

They are blocking food. Essential needs. Medicine. They are using food as pressure tactics. A freezing winter is coming. It is going to be tough. Thousands have vanished. Refugee camps are bombed. Universities have been fully destroyed. There were 34 hospitals in Gaza. All destroyed Dr Abed Elrazeg Abu Jazer, …