The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood elected Saad al-Katani as its new leader, filling a slot left open when Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi formally resigned from the group in order to assume office. The vote is considered a relative victory for hardliners in the Muslim Brotherhood, with Katani defeating the more moderate...

Israel elections are now set for January 22, 2013 after Israel’s Knesset voted to dissolve itself earlier this week. The election will see Israel’s 5.5 million eligible voters go to the polls. Even more so than in other democracies, election season in Israel triggers political jockeying and intrigue. The beginning of the...

Increasingly pitched fears that the Syrian civil war will escalate into a regional conflict were heightened Friday as a deadly car bomb in Beirut’s predominantly Christian Ashrafiya district killed eight people, including an intelligence officer who was one of the most popular figures in Lebanon’s pro-Western and anti-Syrian March 14th movement. The...

Foreign Policy evaluates the latest round of European Union sanctions against Iran. While recognizing that “the economic toll that U.S. and EU sanctions have taken on Iran is breathtaking,” it finds that they “are still targeted, not broad-brush measures that could grind Iran’s economy to a halt.” The magazine links...

Palestinian local elections in the West Bank are slated to take place this weekend after several rounds of delays. The Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas is boycotting the polls, ensuring that the currently ruling Fatah party will dominate the results. Moreover, turnout is expected to be lower than in past Palestinian...

Syrian government forces demolished the northern Syrian town of Maarat al-Noaman, which had been taken over by rebels last week. The New York Times described the scene as a “horror”: “Men stumbled over rubble, carrying single bones nearly shorn of flesh and shredded body parts barely identifiable as human… ....

Intelligence officials in Cyprus have thwarted a massive terrorist attack on the Cypriot port Limassol, uncovering more than 100 grams of explosives. The terror plot was directed at Israeli tourists who frequent the port, and would have followed the recent suicide bombing against Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria that killed...

A massive car bomb shook Beirut this morning, exploding in the predominantly Christian district of Ashrafiya and killing at least eight. The explosion threatens to reignite the sectarian tensions that were behind the country’s destructive civil war and which continue to plague the country. The security situation in Lebanon has...

New parties in Israel have until October 23 to register to compete in the country’s January 22 ballot, giving Israeli politicians less than a week to add to the current crop of parties. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party announced it will hold its internal primaries, which will allow registered...

Western diplomats are declaring that Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment capacity at the underground IRGC military base in Fordow, near Qom. Reuters quotes a diplomat linked to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the effect that Iran is continuing to install centrifuges in the facility, describing the pace...