Middle Orient

Italian police recently announced that they had disrupted a terrorist plot by an Italian far-right violent extremist group planning to bomb a NATO base. Italian authorities, like their counterparts throughout Europe, are increasingly concerned about far-right violent extremism and terrorism.

The regime’s efforts to ensure the election of a president closely allied with Iran’s Supreme Leader succeeded with the victory of Ibrahim Raisi in Friday’s vote. The low voter turnout indicates widespread resentment at the regime’s narrowing of the candidate field to favor Raisi, foreshadowing potential future unrest. As president, …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday held a groundbreaking ceremony in Istanbul for a massive, highly controversial $15 billion, six-year infrastructure project which will include the digging of a new canal parallel to the Bosporus, a strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. “Today we are …

Iran has refused to engage with the United Nations’ watchdog tasked with monitoring its nuclear facilities, after an interim pact between the two that temporarily extended oversight over Iran’s activities following the Iranian parliament’s ending of a previous agreement, expired over the weekend. The International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday …

The next battle over Jerusalem will be a “regional war”, a senior member of the Islamic Jihad Movement’s political bureau warned yesterday.

Iran’s president-elect staked out a hard-line position Monday in his first remarks since his landslide election victory, rejecting the possibility of meeting with President Joe Biden or negotiating Tehran’s ballistic missile program and support of regional militias. The comments by Ebrahim Raisi offered a blunt preview of how Iran might …

Hundreds of Palestinians on Saturday held their third day of violent protests in the West Bank against the Palestinian Authority, following last week’s death of Nizar Banat, a well-known critic of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Banat reportedly died in custody after being violently arrested and beaten by Abbas’ security forces …

U.S. President Joe Biden did not secure a commitment from his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday to renew a U.N. cross-border aid operation into Syria, a senior administration official said ahead of an expected showdown over the issue at the United Nations Security Council next month. Washington and several …

In one of his first speeches as PM, leader says that while Israel will defend itself, it will also work with allies to block an Iranian bomb, breaking from Netanyahu’s policy Prime Minister Naftali Bennett appeared to hint at Israel’s role in a recent attack on an Iranian nuclear site …

Summary Over the past year, intensifying political and economic conflicts between the Kurdistan Region’s two hegemonic parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have challenged the legal and institutional order in which the Kurdistan Regional Government operates. A new generation of leadership within the parties, a …