Middle Orient

The UN’s Middle East envoy warned Thursday that Israel’s aim to annex parts of the occupied West Bank may fuel extremism and ignite a regional conflict.

Iraqi security forces raided a stronghold of a powerful Iran-backed militia in southern Baghdad late on Thursday and detained more than a dozen members of the group, government officials and paramilitary sources said.

U.S. and Kurdistan Regional Government officials discussed ways to increase coordination between Kurdish and federal military forces in the disputed territories of Ninewa, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din and Diyala. Crisis Group expert Lahib Higel says that the multiplicity of competing regular and irregular forces in these areas has fueled local tensions, …

Despite strong religious and cultural ties and a long shared border, Iran has a somewhat complicated relationship with Afghanistan. Revolutionary Iran’s tumultuous birth coincided with the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan some four decades ago. Since then, Iran’s attempts to preserve its interests in conflict-ridden Afghanistan have not received much …

Officials in Tehran have a lot to worry about. But they are particularly irked at the speed by which Asian states have dropped Iran as a trading partner. Iran had hoped that the East would save the country’s economy from the barrage of sanctions enacted by the administration of U.S. …

A British aid worker has been kidnapped in Syria by members of a Sunni Islamist militant group in rebel-held Idlib, it emerged on Monday night. Tauqir Sharif, 31, from Walthamstow in East London lives and works in the north-west Syrian city, which has a large number of other British humanitarian …

Israel’s project to annex 40 per cent of the occupied West Bank is hanging in the balance. Without the long-awaited green light from the Trump administration, it will remain stalled. After his abysmal mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, recent polls show the president is consistently …

It is dead wrong to assume that if Israel abandons its plan, most Muslims would give up their desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an extremist Iran-style Islamic state.

Special Operations forces used a secret weapon designed to limit civilian casualties to strike the Qaeda veteran this month.

The US accused the Iranian government of sheltering members of Al Qaeda. In its annual terrorism report issued on Wednesday, the US State Department said Iran remained unwilling to convict Al Qaeda members living in the country and refused to publicly identify members in its custody.