September 1st, 20180MOSCOW — Russia will begin a major naval exercise in the Mediterranean on Saturday, the Ministry of Defense announced, a move the Kremlin said was justified by a failure to deal with militants in Syria’s Idlib province.
Idlib and areas surrounding it are the last major enclave held by rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar...
August 26th, 20180British Airways and Air France said on Thursday they would halt flights to Iran from September for business reasons, months after President Trump announced he would re-impose sanctions on Tehran.
British Airways said it was suspending its London to Tehran service “as the operation is currently not commercially viable.”
BA,...
August 22nd, 20180Iran warned on Wednesday that it would hit U.S. and Israeli targets if it were attacked by the United States after President Trump’s security adviser said Washington would exert maximum pressure on Tehran going beyond economic sanctions.
A U.S.-Iranian war of words has escalated since Trump withdrew Washington from the world...
August 13th, 20180Iran’s Supreme Leader Sayyed Khamenei on Monday rejected President Trump’s offer of unconditional talks to improve bilateral ties and he also accused the Iranian government of economic mismanagement in the face of reimposed U.S. sanctions.
The Trump administration reimposed the sanctions last week after pulling out of a 2015...
August 11th, 20180ADEN — Saudi-led coalition air strikes on Thursday killed dozens of people, including children traveling on a bus through a market, in Yemen’s Saada province, a Yemeni health official and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
The Western-backed alliance fighting the Houthi Yemeni group said in a statement that...
July 31st, 20180TEHRAN - The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Tuesday dismissed President Trump’s tentative offer of talks with Tehran, saying the Islamic Republic was not North Korea.
Trump said on Monday he would be willing to meet Iran’s leader without preconditions to discuss how to improve ties after he pulled the United States out...
July 29th, 20181Major-General Qassem Soleimani, a powerful commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, said on Thursday, July 26, that Donald Trump should address any threats against Tehran directly to him, and mocked the U.S. president as using the language of “night clubs and gambling halls.”
The comments by Soleimani, who heads the Quds...
July 22nd, 20180For nearly 80 years the U.S. and Russia (or the former Soviet Union) have held summits. In each case, it has been a forum for domestic political debate. The president’s supporters always say the summit took solid steps towards peace and understanding, even while the president remained forceful and unyielding. Meanwhile, the...
May 15th, 20180PARIS - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Tuesday described the situation in the Middle East as “explosive” and criticized the United States for unilateral acts in the region and Israel for what he said was an unjustified level of violence.
Thousands of Gaza residents turned out on Tuesday for the funerals of...
May 8th, 20180NEW YORK - Less than one third of Americans agrees with President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, according to a Reuters/Ipsos national opinion poll released on Tuesday.
The poll, conducted May 4-8, ahead of the Republican president’s announcement to end the deal,...
January 4th, 20180MOSCOW - Russia considers a U.S. proposal for an extraordinary meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the turmoil in Iran “harmful and destructive”, RIA news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Thursday.
“We see no role for the United Nations Security Council in this issue,” he said,...
December 5th, 20170WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM - President Donald Trump told Israeli and Arab leaders on Tuesday that he intends to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a decision that breaks with decades of U.S. policy and risks fueling violence in the Middle East.
Senior U.S. officials said Trump on Wednesday, Dec. 6, is expected to recognize...
October 24th, 20170NEW YORK - Russia cast a veto at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday preventing the renewal of the mandate for a mission that investigates the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
Russia wanted to discuss the report by the Joint Investigative Mechanism before voting on the extension of the mandate
The investigation by the...
October 3rd, 20170WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said on Tuesday the United States should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless it were proven Tehran that was not abiding by the agreement or that it was not in the U.S. national interest to do so.
Though Mattis deferred to President Donald Trump’s review of the...
August 30th, 20170GENEVA - President Donald Trump’s criticism of journalists amounts to an attack on the freedom of the press and could provoke violence against reporters, the United Nations’ human rights chief said on Wednesday.
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said Trump had also made worrying remarks about women, Mexicans and Muslims and went on to...
August 20th, 20170SANAA — Yemen suffered more airstrikes in the first half of this year than in the whole of 2016, increasing the number of civilian deaths and forcing more people to flee their homes, according to a report by international aid agencies.
The pace of clashes on the ground has also intensified this year, especially around Yemen's third...
August 16th, 20170BEIRUT — On Sunday, the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah dismissed the prospect of tougher U.S. sanctions against his group, which is backed by Iran, and said the U.S. administration had no way to harm it.
"The American administration, with all available and possible means, will not be able to damage the strength of the resistance,"...
April 18th, 20170The Federal Bureau of Investigation busted a planned mass attack by Steven Boehle, 50, on Tuesday.
A complaint obtained Monday that had been filed in a federal court said that a search warrant was carried out at Boehle's home, where 1,000 rounds of ammo were discovered.
The complaint added that Boehle displayed "sovereign...
April 18th, 20170A Georgian man has been reported imposing what he calls "the civil part of the sharia law" in the Minneapolis neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside by dictating to others how they should dress, what or what not to eat or drink, not to use drugs, or even interact with the opposite sex.
The man, who has been attempting to recruit others...
April 14th, 20170MOSCOW - Moscow and Washington have reached an understanding that further US strikes similar to the one carried out against Syria's Shayrat Air Base "should not occur again," the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
Lavrov emphasized that this issue was raised during his discussions with the US Secretary of State on...
