Middle Orient

Fatah leaders are scrambling to convince imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti to run in the Fatah list for the legislative elections, and renounce his bid to run for the presidency. When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued the election decree Jan. 15, many expected that his Fatah party’s biggest challenge would come …

Tensions with Iran appear underpinned by similar discussions about deterrence Iran could move up to 200 long-range missiles to Iraq, a report noted earlier this week, a move that would be designed to put in place missiles that could reach Israel. The reason Iran might do this is to prevent …

The Arrow system serves as the upper layer of Israel’s multi-tier missile defense array and is aimed to protect Israel’s skies from long-range missiles. In the face of Iran’s continued development of long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, the Defense Ministry announced on Thursday that it has …

If Iran can legally get to the nuclear weapon threshold with no limits in 2030, then the whole game could eventually be up. The joint US-EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) statement issued on Thursday night moved both major parties closer to Israel in their positions on Iran in significant ways. …

Russia and the UN have discussed the strategy to create normal living conditions in Syria, writes SANA. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin has met with UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen. “The two sides exchanged points of view on the situation in Syria within the framework of the …

Regime forces have restarted bombing Turkish-backed militias in Idleb, reports North Press. On Thursday, Syrian government forces renewed their ground bombardment on the posts of the Turkish-backed armed opposition groups, south of Idleb, after the region witnessed a relative calm for the last 48 hours.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has monitored Russian flying over the Syrian desert, after suspension of aerial operations for more than 48 hours. Where six Russian jets executed more than 40 airstrikes since the morning, targeting ISIS positions in the desert of Deir ez-Zor and the Aleppo-Hama-Raqqa triangle. Meanwhile, …

SOHR sources from inside eastern Ghouta say that members of the branch “277”, known as “Military Security”, have seized hundreds of apartments, shops and farms again in several areas in eastern Ghouta, under the decision of “provisional seizure.”

Syria continues to offer the ground where Russia and the United States compete over control of oil and gas fields and the transportation routes that bring energy to consumers. Russia seeks to expand its energy footprint in Syria to build influence over rebel-controlled areas in Northeast Syria that are backed …

SOHR sources say that gunmen, believed to be ISIS cells, targeted with machine guns a military patrol of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the village of Al-Zar in eastern rural Deir al-Zour, but no casualties have been reported so far. Yesterday, Syrian Observatory activists documented the death of an SDF …