Both Egypt and Israel have reemphasized to Hamas that the Palestinian terror group will be held responsible for violence emerging from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, with various outlets having reported in recent days on signals sent by Cairo and Jerusalem designed to underline that sentiment. Egyptian security officials told Hamas...

Israelis overwhelming favor pursuing a regional peace deal, and would even support an Israeli prime minister who formed a new political party aimed at securing such an accord, according to a new poll conducted by the Israeli Peace Initiative Group. According to the survey, a majority of the respondents – some 72...

Israeli officials have put Lebanon on notice that the country will be held responsible should Hezbollah launch attacks against the Jewish state, after the Iran-backed terror group declared that it would “choose the time and place and the proper way to respond” to what it said was an Israeli Air Force (IAF)...

USA Today last week catalogued a range of indications that “Iran [is] advancing its nuclear program despite [a] pact with West,” describing how the Islamic Republic was “moving ahead with a nuclear program that U.S. officials said would be frozen” even as the sanctions relief granted under an interim agreement was eroding Washington’s...

Descriptions of Iranian abuses in the State Department’s annual human rights review – unveiled at a Thursday press conference alongside particularly grim evaluations from Uzra Zeya, acting assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor – risk consolidating deepening concerns that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is either unable or unwilling...

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly “exploded with rage” at Secretary of State John Kerry over what he termed “insane” proposals from Washington designed to facilitate a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, according to descriptions of a meeting between the two published in the leading Palestinian...

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime retaliated against family members of Syrian opposition leaders who came to Geneva for recent peace talks, detaining them after having designated the delegates themselves as terrorists, according to a State Department statement issued on Wednesday by spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “The United States is outraged by reports that the...

Reuters reported on Thursday that had U.N.’s nuclear watchdog last year planned and then suspended efforts to compile a report revealing “more of [Iran’s] suspected atomic bomb research,” with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seemingly calculating that the evidence would complicate Western efforts to strike an agreement with Tehran over its...

Veteran French-Lebanese journalist Mona Alami on Wednesday published an assessment in USA Today detailing recent military campaigns by Hezbollah on behalf of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime, broadly concluding both that the Iran-backed terror group has taken the lead in counter-offensives against rebel elements and that those counter-offensives “now appear to be tipping...

Reuters reported on Wednesday that February figures will show Iranian oil exports having risen for the fourth consecutive month. The increase in shipments is around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to one tracker company, which would take Iranian exports to at least 1.30 million bpd for February. A second tracking source familiar...