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Featured

The Lebanese military announced today that it had fired on Syrian aircraft violating Beirut’s airspace, a move that analysts speculated was designed in part as a public response to efforts – driven by both sides of the almost three-year Syrian conflict – to expand that war into Lebanese territory: The move suggests...

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Global Affairs

Iran is constructing what the Associated Press describes as ‘a new generation of centrifuges’ able to enrich uranium at a faster pace, potentially shortening the amount of time it would take Tehran to convert its enriched nuclear stockpile to weapons-grade purity, per statements made by Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi and...

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Europe

A top Lebanese leader prominent for his opposition to Iranian interference in Lebanon – and more specifically to attempts by Hezbollah and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime to dominate the country – was murdered Friday morning by a massive car bomb that ripped through central Beirut, killing him and at least five other...

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Featured

The domestic upheaval rocking Turkey – which has now slipped into open political warfare between the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the powerful Islamist movement led by U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, and which is threatening to bring down Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan – seems set to directly impact...

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Diplomacy

Egyptian authorities are intensifying their most recent crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood – Friday morning’s Reuters headline tersely noted “Egypt arrests more Brotherhood supporters, more protests anticipated” – days after the country’s army-backed interim government designated the Islamist group as a terrorist organization. At least 32 figures linked to the Brotherhood have...

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Diplomacy

Open political warfare between two powerful Turkish Islamist camps is shaking the country’s political institutions and will likely erode Ankara’s international posture, as the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) scrambles to uproot followers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen who are in turn scattered throughout the country’s state and...

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MidEast

Egypt’s army-backed interim government yesterday designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, a day after a massive bomb destroyed an Egyptian police station and killed at least 15 people. The Washington Post reports: The announcement was a stunning blow to the decades-old Islamist organization, which survived for years in the shadows and...

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Israel

Another forensic investigation regarding the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat – this time conducted by a Russian lab with access to the deceased terrorist’s remains – has concluded that he died of natural causes and not, as some conspiracy theorists have suggested, of polonium poisoning: Russia’s state news...

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Featured

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs took to Buzzfeed on Tuesday to outline what the article’s headline described as “20 Threats Iranian Leaders Made Against Israel in 2013,” with the subsequent story conveying an array of statements documenting that “Iranian leaders are consistent in their anti-Israel rhetoric, clear about their hostile intentions,...

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Featured

The Associated Press on Tuesday reported on what the outlet described as “the latest in a string of Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets in recent days,” after a Palestinian sniper that morning shot and killed an Israeli Bedouin defense contractor who was working on the border fence separating Israel from the Hamas-controlled...

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