Middle Orient

President Joe Biden said on Monday (January 31) he plans to designate Qatar as a major non-NATO ally, granting a special status to a key ally in the Middle East. Biden made the announcement as he met Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, in the Oval Office. The emir …

U.S.-backed forces in northeastern Syria are warning the latest attempt by the Islamic State terror group to break thousands of its followers out of prison was part of a bigger plot designed to take and hold territory – a capability most Western counterterrorism officials have assessed to be beyond the …

Israel says security forces killed three Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday who had been responsible for recent shooting attacks. The Shin Bet internal security agency initially said they were killed in a “clash,” but police later acknowledged that while the men had two …

After a long period of arduous negotiations with Iran, and after failure seemed closer than success, the parameters of the negotiations returned and changed, and the US was close to signing an agreement with Iran that would eliminate its ambitions to possess a nuclear weapon in exchange for the lifting …

Iran has announced that it stopped the flow of natural gas to Turkey for ten days, starting from 20 January, due to a “technical failure”. This resulted in an electricity crisis for factories in Turkey. Questions have been raised about the validity of the Iranian justification and the reality behind …

Israeli security agencies have rejected selling the Iron Dome and David’s Sling Weapons System to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel Hayom and Maariv reported military analysts revealing on Friday. According to Maariv, military analyst Alon Ben David said that the Israeli security agencies rejected the potentiality to sell developed …

The Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army is cracking down on the Islamic State cells, amid an uptick in suicide attacks in north Syria. The Turkish-backed Syrian opposition has waged a security campaign against Islamic State (IS) cells in Azaz in the northern Aleppo countryside since Jan. 20, leading to the arrest …

Ankara is expanding its influence in eastern Libya, deemed an area of Egyptian ​​influence. Following months of conflict and accusations between the two parties, the relationship between Turkey and the Khalifa Hifter-led Libyan National Army (LNA) has seen a relative thaw. On Jan. 20, Turkey’s Ambassador to Tripoli Kenan Yilmaz …

In the four decades since Iran’s Islamic Revolution, relations between Tehran and Washington have seen deep enmity offset by brief periods of rapprochement and tactical cooperation. As a new U.S. administration settles into office and asserts its intent to, in President Joe Biden’s words, “offer Tehran a credible path back …

No one in the Iranian government was sad to see U.S. and NATO troops leave Afghanistan. In fact, Tehran would prefer to have the Taliban next-door than often-hostile Western powers. But Shiite-majority Iran has also been a target of attacks in the past from the Sunni Islamist Taliban, and it …