Eighty-nine members of the United States House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday, expressing that they are “deeply concerned” about Turkish restrictions on the freedom of the press.  “A strong democracy,” the letter reads, “requires both tolerance and transparency in order to thrive, but...

The Turkish lira has continued to lose value over the past week as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his demand for more control over the Turkish central bank, hitting a new low of 2.448 to the dollar. It was also trading lower at 2.79 to the Euro. Erdogan is demanding...

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels dissolved Yemen’s parliament and issued a series of decrees calling for a transitional government for a two-year period. Al Arabiya reports: One of the decrees mandated the establishment of a transitional national council that would replace the Yemeni parliament. Supporters, who convened in the capital of...

President Barack Obama “suspects a bipartisan majority would oppose the deal he is prepared to make” with Iran, a staff editorial asserted today in The Washington Post. The editorial cited three concerns about the emerging deal identified by “authorities ranging from Henry Kissinger, the country’s most senior former secretary of state,...

An Iranian diplomat was expelled from Uruguay two weeks ago after a bomb detonated near the Israeli embassy there, according to a report published in Ha’aretz today. Investigations carried out by Uruguay’s intelligence services after the discovery of the device yielded information pointing to a possible involvement of someone at the...

Within a few years, you may be traveling in a car with nobody at the wheel. Whether you call it an autonomous, driverless, or self-driving vehicle, this automobile of the near-future needs a host of complex components, some now under development at Israeli companies and academic laboratories. “You will be...

The Palestinian bid to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) is damaging to the peace process and must be stopped, four expert witnesses told the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday. The four witness were Jonathan Schanzer, Vice-President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Eugene Kontorovich, professor at...

The recent decline in oil prices will not suffice as economic leverage against Iran, since sanctions relief stemming from the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) more than makes up the economic shortfall, according to a report written jointly by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and Roubini Global Economics...

President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy shows a consistent favoritism of Iran, according to an analysis written Monday by Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute. Citing the 2006 report of the Iraq Study Group, Doran’s central thesis is that Obama has embrace the report’s conclusion that Washington should work more closely...

Arab world experts and commentators predict that the execution of the Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) will prompt Jordan to intensify the activity of its military in the international coalition fighting the terror organization in Iraq and Syria. The pilot, Moath Al-Kasasbeh, is the latest captive...