Middle Orient

A UN-b acked tribunal will on Friday sentence a Hezbollah member convicted of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafic Hariri, with prosecutors demanding a life term. Salim Ayyash, 57, was found guilty in absentia of murder on August 18 by the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon over the …

A car bomb killed 16 people including two civilians and three Turkish personnel on Thursday at a checkpoint in the Turkish-held border town of Ras Al-Ain in northeast Syria, a war monitor said.

Germany said Friday it would allow deportation of Syrians to their war-ravaged homeland from 2021 if they are deemed a security risk, five years after a massive refugee influx. The EU’s biggest economic power and most populous member allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Syria’s devastating civil war …

Russia’s military will set up positions around the northeast Syrian town of Ain Issa as part of an agreement with the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to reduce attacks from Turkish-controlled areas nearby.

Ankara’s growing isolation and a combination of broader geopolitical factors, including Iran and the Caucasus, are driving a fresh bid to normalize Turkish-Israeli ties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this evening thanked President Donald Trump and Morocco King Mohammed VI for the announcement over normalizing ties with Israel.

Iran has made it clear that if the new US administration of Joe Biden wants to reenter the nuclear deal, no preconditions are acceptable to Iran. In his final weeks in office, outgoing US President Donald Trump is insisting on leaving his mark on the United States’ Middle East policy. …

The Iranian Foreign Ministry announced sanctions on Christopher Henzel, the US ambassador to Yemen. Iran on Wednesday slapped sanctions on the US envoy to Yemen, a largely symbolic gesture that followed the Trump administration’s sanctioning of the Iranian ambassador to the Houthi rebels.

Egypt appears to be leading Arab efforts to bring Damascus back to the Arab League and find a political solution to the Syrian crisis, in a bid to confront Turkey’s military ambitions in Syria.

Turkey and Azerbaijan deny that Syrian mercenaries were used in the recent offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh but four Syrians have told the BBC that after enlisting for sentry duties in Azerbaijan, they were unexpectedly thrown into battle on the front line.