Middle Orient

Last year, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei admitted for the first time that his country was supplying the Palestinian terrorist groups with weapons….”Iran realized Palestinian fighters’ only problem was lack of access to weapons” — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Reuters, May 22, 2020. The [earlier] denial exposes …

Israel’s founders had a vision—a vision that defied millennium-old persecution, discrimination, oppression, and death. A vision of a country, free and democratic, anchored on moral values, signified by its social equality and justice. A compassionate and caring country that offers a home—a refuge—for every Jew to live in peace and …

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis ran to shelters over the night as sirens blared warnings of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. One person was killed this morning and two more injured when a Kornet anti-tank guided missile was fired at an Israeli jeep near the northern Gaza border. The …

Israel was unprepared for the nightmare scenario of simultaneous rioting in the country and massive rocket attacks from Gaza. These lines are being written under fire. Israel is engaged in a bizarre war that it did not want, sparked by a dispute between Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and …

Hamas fires rockets at Israel in response to the violence in Jerusalem, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seems relegated to the sidelines. The situation in the Gaza Strip has snowballed into a full-blown military confrontation between Hamas and Israel, following Israeli provocations in Jerusalem, namely the increasing settler incursions into …

Syrians have established nearly 14,000 companies in Turkey. Syrian investors pumped approximately 58.7 million Turkish liras (about $7 million) into 124 companies during the first quarter of this year, according to statistics published May 1 by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey. While this was only a …

Escalation with Hamas arrives exactly at the moment when the anti-Netanyahu bloc is trying to cobble up a “government for change.” The current round of violence that erupted May 10 between Israel and Hamas has two unusual aspects. The first is unprecedented. For the first time ever, a relatively minor …

In a meeting with a powerful parliamentary commission on the recently leaked audiotape of himself, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he would not run for president. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif spoke at parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee meeting regarding the leaked audio that has …

The murder of a prominent activist in Karbala has triggered protests and calls for answers. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala on Sunday, with some targeting the Iranian Consulate following the assassination of a well-known Iraqi activist by unknown gunmen. Ehab Wazni …

Ahrar al-Sham, which was once one of the largest factions of the Syrian armed opposition in Idlib, has formed a new leadership council that is being perceived as a coup against the movement’s political leaders, who fear the group’s integration into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Ahrar al-Sham, which is affiliated with …