Lebanese outlet Ya Libnan reported yesterday that Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is attempting to “increase control over [I]nternet access at a time when the government is also tightening its grip on the country’s legal institutions.” But some critics have alleged that the legislative initiative is part of a general trend in...

Reuters on Monday published photos taken earlier that day showing “Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif… lay[ing] a wreath at the grave of assassinated Hezbollah military commander” Imad Mughniyeh, a terrorist who was killed in 2008 after having spent literally decades killing Americans and others on behalf of his paymasters in Tehran....

BuzzFeed reported Friday that the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act – Senate legislation that would impose sanctions on Tehran should negotiations over its nuclear program fail – had secured a veto-proof majority and was in fact “well above 67 [votes],” per a Senate aide who spoke to the outlet. CNN’s Jim Sciutto had earlier...

Efforts to achieve reconciliation between the two largest Palestinian factions, which had been accelerating in recent days, may again be at risk of faltering. Hamas had made a series of goodwill gestures toward its Fatah rivals in recent days, and Fatah officials had announced that they would be traveling to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip for reconciliation talks....

Israel Hayom Friday published an interview with Israeli General Tamir Yadai, the commander of the Israeli military’s West Bank forces, in which the general confirms that Hamas’s terror attempts have increased in tempo and that the group’s campaign is being “directed from Gaza via Turkey.” “Between April and July, we really saw...

Pro-Iran, anti-sanctions groups call for Iranian impunity for terrorist attacks on the United States, oppose final deal that prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, funded by the famously soft-on-Iran Ploughshares Fund (which also underwrites the notorious pro-Iran lobby NIAC, and has spent millions of dollars to...

Empirical evidence is emerging on what had long been a central theoretical disagreement in the debate over the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), with multiple data points suggesting that the Obama administration has been over-optimistic in assuming that sanctions against Iran would largely hold in the aftermath of the JPA’s...

The Israel Project (TIP) made available today a range of resources highlighting the accomplishments – and, as importantly, the ongoing legacy – of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Tower’s own obituary is here, and the Tower Magazine’s more in-depth look at the Israeli leader’s life is here. Josh...

Al Jazeera’s story on the death of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon leads with two quotes, one from sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and one from Fatah senior official Jibril Rajoub. Netanyahu’s quote is circumspect and expresses “deep sorrow.” The quote from Rajoub, less so: But a senior Palestinian...

Ariel Sharon – the 11th prime minister of Israel, and a man who dominated the Jewish state’s political scene first as a pertinacious force from the right and eventually as a heterodox diplomat who oversaw broad Israeli territorial concessions – died today, eight years after slipping into a coma in...