A midnight purge of 350 Ankara police officers has deepened worries that the political warfare shaking the country – which has pitted the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) against judiciary and police figures linked to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen – will significantly erode the robustness and legitimacy of Turkey’s...

The United Nations announced Tuesday that it was ceasing to update the death toll in Syria’s nearly three-year war because it can no longer reliably keep track of those killed by the conflict. The Associated Press noted that the last official figures, which were current as of July 2013, estimated that at...

Last week’s strange episode in the Palestinian embassy in the Prague, in which the Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic was killed by an explosion inside the building, escalated over the weekend into a potential scandal as reports emerged that Palestinians may be using the country as a transit point...

Comments made last Friday by chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat – in which Erekat accused Israel of poisoning former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and expressed concerns that Jerusalem would similarly kill sitting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – became fodder for a tense exchange at today’s State Department briefing, with journalists pressing Deputy Spokesperson Marie...

The Jerusalem Post described over the weekend how the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) announced in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 global powers has “opened the investment floodgates for Western companies seeking to capitalize on a new business environment in Iran,” the latest in what has become a stream of analysis suggesting...

The Commerce Department scrambled yesterday to issue what Reuters described as “a rare emergency order” designed to block a Turkish-based company from illegally passing along two U.S.-built commercial jet engines to Iran’s Pouya airline. The broad order – which names multiple companies and would impose crippling consequences for any violations – comes amid...

Bahrain’s chief prosecutor has formally accused the Iranian military of training opposition fighters to conduct attacks inside the Gulf kingdom, after Manama announced earlier this week that it had seized a boat trying to smuggle explosives from Iran and Syria into the country. Chief prosecutor Osama al-Oufi said the intelligence service reported...

A study released last week by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center in Tel Aviv, which culled open source materials including jihadist web sites, has assessed that Shiite foreign fighters in Syria may outnumber Sunni jihadists battling in that country’s nearly three year war. The evaluation, which was conveyed last week by...

A top adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week posted to Twitter what observers described as thinly-veiled death threats against opponents of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, deepening concerns that the open political warfare which has been rocking the country may escalate further. Judiciary figures...

Analysis published last Friday in the National Post piles on doubts regarding the Obama administration’s figures for the immediate sanctions relief that the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) provides to Iran. The administration has insisted that the relief being provided to the Islamic republic will amount to roughly $7 billion,...