Middle Orient

The men partook in the 2014 attack by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra on the Lebanese army in the town of Arsal, according to the Lebanese military. A Lebanese military court sentenced a group of Syrian Jabhat al-Nusra fighters to death Tuesday for the killing of Lebanese soldiers. The Permanent Military …

IDF chief of staff responds to Iran’s demand that Israel’s attacks on nuclear sites stop if UN wants full inspection access to resume. The Israeli military’s chief of staff said operations targeting Iran’s nuclear program will continue, rebuffing a demand by Tehran that they halt if the United States and …

Israel has warned Egyptian intelligence that Hamas operatives in the West Bank are fueling demonstrations and conducting lone-wolf operations there. Hamas operatives seem to have renewed their activity in the West Bank in response to Israeli raids in the wake of the recapturing of six Palestinians who escaped an Israeli …

For much of the Syrian civil war, the southern city of Deraa and the surrounding Houran Plains, an agricultural region near the Jordanian border, were divided between government forces and armed rebels. Fighting raged back and forth, killing thousands. It was not until Russia backed a government offensive in 2018 …

Blinking under the garish lights of a hotel ballroom in southern Iraq, Wael Makhsusi argued his case to a young audience. Microphone in hand, the engineer in his 30s stood onstage in Basra with other novice candidates in Sunday’s parliamentary election. Among them were independents and hopefuls drawn from the …

“Karabakh belongs to the Republic of Azerbaijan and it is part of Islam”, “Karabakh belongs to the Republic of Azerbaijan and must be returned to it”; these are just some of the comments made by Iranian Shiite clerics last year who are close to government institutions in the Iranian political …

Tehran wants to send a message to Baku that “we know what you are doing.” And Iran has done this before. Iran’s media has begun to up the rhetoric against Azerbaijan, with a headline claiming that Baku has “denied the presence of the Zionist regime near the border with Iran,” …

The meeting followed recent tensions between Armenia’s rival, Azerbaijan, and Iran. The Iranian and Armenian foreign ministers met in Tehran on Monday. Iran’s Hossein Amir-Abdollahian discussed bilateral relations with his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan, who is on a two-day trip to Iran. They also spoke about roads connecting Iran and …

Turkey’s foray into the South Caucasus seems to be paying off, as the country nibbles away at Russia’s long-held hegemony in the region. It is only a year since Turkey demonstrated its new power in the South Caucasus, providing significant military and other help to Azerbaijan to achieve its irredentist …

What’s at stake in Iraq’s elections on 10 October? These elections are the first test of Iraq’s political institutions since countrywide protests paralysed the country in 2019-2020. Those protests forced the government elected in 2018 to step down and pass a new elections law, which brought the polls originally planned …