Middle Orient

The coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world will turn global economic growth “sharply negative” in 2020, triggering the worst fallout since the 1930s Great Depression, with only a partial recovery seen in 2021, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said.

Since Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014, the United States has spent billions on Black Sea security. Assistance has been insufficient in real terms however, given Russia’s continued aggression and land grabs. US support for the Black Sea and the Middle East has been …

The global chemical-weapons watchdog has for the first time directly blamed the Syrian government for three chlorine and sarin nerve-gas bomb attacks in late March 2017 on the central town of Lataminah.

Iraqi President Barham Saleh has officially tasked prime minister-designate Mustafa al-Kadhimi with forming a government after the intelligence chief received the endorsement of the majority of the country’s top political figures.

A U.N. investigation says it is “highly probable” that the Syrian government or its allies were responsible for attacks on five facilities in the last opposition stronghold in the northwest in 2019.

A shadowy Hezbollah intelligence operative in Iraq has close ties to what the US refers to as a key money-laundering network by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, an investigation by The National has found.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic that has consumed the attention of both Iran and the United States, as well as that of Iraq, Iran has continued to try to ensure that it maintains preponderant influence in Iraq. Iran views U.S. forces in Iraq as the spearhead of U.S. influence there, as …

Bottom Line Up Front While news headlines on COVID-19 are focused largely on its spread in the developed world, the virus has reached many countries ravaged by conflict with large populations in need of humanitarian aid. The lack of clean water, sanitary facilities, and space in many locations hosting displaced …

A new video released by the League of the Revolutionaries (LoR), a likely Iranian-backed front group, warned of a future attack against the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

Palestinian militant groups the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) recently praised the Iranian-backed Houthis for their offer to exchange prisoners with Saudi Arabia.