Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon Qazanfar Roknabadi met yesterday in Beirut with Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour. Iranian media described the meeting as designed to “further expand the bilateral relations and mutual cooperation between the two nations.” The U.S. State Department in turn describes Iran’s relations with Lebanon as built on...

UN officials are formally condemning the incursion earlier this week of three Syrian tanks into the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates Israel and Syria. The incident – which constituted a breach of the 1974 disengagement agreement between the two countries – highlighted the degree to which the chaos of Syria’s...

The Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas, a designated terrorist entity that controls the Gaza Strip and remains publicly committed to Israel’s destruction, is being criticized by rights groups for abuses against protesters, journalists, and supporters of rival Palestinian factions. Last week Hamas security officials arrested and interrogated two journalists who were...

Turkish forces conducted a two-day ground operation in Iraq earlier this week, penetrating as far as 3 miles into Iraqi territory in order to target Kurdish groups. The Turkish military campaign comes as Iraq expelled Turkey’s state oil operator from an exploration contract, though analysts linked that move more to...

Israeli leaders from across the political spectrum congratulated President Barack Obama on his reelection victory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the center-right Likud party, noted that “the strategic alliance between Israel and the US is stronger than ever,” while center-left Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovich emphasized that Israelis “expect...

In what diplomats and officials are deriding as a “kangaroo court” and a “show trial,” Turkey has opened proceedings in absentia against four Israeli officials that Ankara blames for Israel’s 2010 interception of the terrorist-linked Turkish vessel which was trying to breach Israel’s legal blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip....

International Atomic Energy Agency head Yukio Amano is again emphasizing the dangerous lack of transparency surrounding the Iranian nuclear program. On Monday he blasted Iranian officials for failing to provide the United Nations organization with “necessary cooperation” and he reiterated that the U.N. “cannot conclude that all nuclear material in...

Gaza-based terror groups launched another round of attacks against Israeli troops and civilians this morning. Three IDF soldiers were injured by a likely roadside bomb along the border between Gaza and Israel, and terrorists also launched a rocket into southern Israeli towns. Palestinian terror groups in Gaza have fired 766...

Warning signs that the Syrian civil war may spill into Israel sharpened further Monday night as cross-border gunfire struck a routine Israeli army patrol on the Golan Heights. The worrying incident follows another from Saturday, in which three Syrian tanks entered a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between Israel and Syria, marking...

A weekend poll highlighting the potential benefits of electoral cooperation is unlikely to overcome the inter-party differences that have historically split Israel’s three main Arab parties. Those parties mainly compete to represent the 20 percent of Israel’s citizens who are Israeli-Arab, and polls show that they would be more successful...