Middle Orient

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls Idlib in northwestern Syria, is supporting development projects in various economic sectors. A food market has been opened in the city of Sarmada, north of Idlib, under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The opening ceremony, which was held Dec. 12, was attended by …

Relocating its weekly meeting to the Golan Heights Kibbutz Mevo Hama, the government approved a 1 billion-shekel plan for the development of the region. Israel’s Cabinet approved Dec. 26 a 1 billion-shekel ($317 million) plan for encouraging demographic and economic growth in the Golan Heights. Aiming at doubling the Israeli …

A Yemeni rebel attack on Saudi Arabia’s southern border town of Jizan killed two people and wounded seven more late Friday, Saudi state-run media reported. Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a projectile that killed a Saudi citizen and Yemeni resident in the southwestern Saudi province of Jizan, the official Saudi Press …

Turkey froze the assets of 770 Turkish nationals and a Chicago-based foundation, according to a decision published Friday in the country’s official gazette. The list of targets includes 454 people with alleged links to Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the United States. The Turkish government accuses Gulen and …

When the news broke on December 7 that the Syrian port of Latakia had been bombed, and that an Israeli military spokesperson had declined to comment, a natural first reaction was that this air strike was the latest of hundreds over the past few years, targeting Syrian government facilities in …

Taliban officials in Afghanistan confirmed Friday that they had discussed plans with a joint delegation from Turkey and Qatar for firms from the two countries to run airports in Kabul and other Afghan cities. The talks came as the international community looks for ways to scale up delivery of urgently …

America Must Decide Which Nuclear Steps Merit a Military Response Iran’s expanding nuclear program and foot-dragging at the negotiating table have imperiled U.S. plans to revive the Iran nuclear deal, forcing Washington to consider alternatives to diplomacy. In June, President Joe Biden promised that Iran will “never get a nuclear …

Iranian support for Arab militias has long threatened Iran’s detractors, unable to develop an effective counterstrategy. Now, the tide may be turning. A string of events suggests that the usefulness of at least some of the militias in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Palestine is waning as their popularity diminishes and …

While much of the bandwidth of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) summit in Islamabad this month was reserved for the Afghanistan crisis, with the Taliban attending, another window of diplomatic restart was achieved within the Arab Gulf narrative as Syria’s heavily-sanctioned private airline, started direct flights between Damascus and …

A range of drone-launched smart bombs and precision strike missiles were used in a military exercise that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps has staged along the southern coasts of Iran. During the main stage of “Payambar-e Azam 17 (The Great Prophet)” war game on Tuesday, the drone division of the …