Middle Orient

Hundreds of people boarded trucks leaving the last scrap of the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” in eastern Syria on Wednesday as U.S.-backed forces prepared to deliver the final blow to holdout jihadists.

The Kurdish Peshmerga forces have opened a small museum at one of its bases in the Kurdistan Region to exhibit some of the explosive devices it confiscated from the Islamic State which were used against them during battles.

The United Nations says in the last three days some 9,000 people have evacuated the final piece of land still held by the Islamic State terror group in Syria.

The Islamic State group may have lost all its territory in Syria but a rival jihadist group has been making gains in the last remaining opposition stronghold in the north of the country – and it has got residents nervous. In a dramatic takeover last month, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned the United States and allies operating along the Syria border that any safe zone planned for the area should be under Ankara’s control.

Islamic State militants on Sunday attacked a village in the disputed province of Kirkuk and after an extended standoff, fled the area, a local source said.

A land mine left by the ISIS terrorist group struck a van packed with workers in eastern Syria on Sunday, killing more than 20 of them, Syria’s state news agency said. The agency earlier reported that 24 people were killed.

This February marks 40th anniversary of Iranian Revolution. 1979 Iranian Revolution—having overthrown the last king of Pahlavi dynasty Mohammed Reza Shah Pehlavi—had led to religious establishment. Iran became ‘Islamic Republic of Iran’. A lot is being talked about how ‘Islamic Republic’ has survived and lived a long period of forty …

“Talk to Iran!” This is the advice some Western politicians have bandied around since 1979, when the mullahs seized power in Tehran. The 40th anniversary of the Khomeinist regime has provided fresh opportunity for that slogan to be promoted again in the European Union and the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that his decision to leave a small number of U.S. troops in Syria did not constitute a reversal of his plan to withdraw all troops from the country. “I am not reversing course,” Trump told reporters at the White House.