Analysts had already begun worrying months ago that political authoritarianism was damaging Turkey’s already battered economy, putting the country at risk of what The Tower described in September as “a downward spiral where political authoritarianism fuels economic instability, and economic instability fuels more political protests that are put down through...

Hamas spent weeks in fall 2012 deliberately escalating the amount and sophistication of rockets and missiles it launched against Israelis. The result was an eight-day bombing campaign by Israel that severely degraded the group’s command and control infrastructure and highlighted Hamas’s ability to penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome-based missile shield. To...

A heavy-water plutonium reactor that Iran has committed to bringing online would become “invulnerable to military attack” once Iranian scientists activated it, according to analysis conveyed today by TIME. The explanation is straightforward: Because it is not yet up and running, the Arak heavy-water reactor has remained in the background...

Abu Dhabi media yesterday described “regular clandestine flights between Tehran and Damascus” allegedly being conducted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which transport among other things “fighters to help regime forces battle rebels”: Up to three supply flights occur each week between the two cities, none of them appearing...

The Hill reported today on heightening bipartisan Congressional criticism of the Obama administration’s decision to temporarily freeze some military assistance to Egypt, a move made in response to – albeit months after – mass anti-government protests led the Egyptian army to depose the country’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked former president Mohammed Morsi....

Egypt has for months moved to degrade Hamas’s infrastructure and weaponry. Cairo blamed Hamas for facilitating the movement of personnel and materials used by jihadist groups operating in the Sinai – groups which target both Egyptian and Israeli targets – and has sought to close off both the Palestinian terror...

The government of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced overnight Sunday that it was proceeding with the second of four goodwill releases of Palestinian terrorism convicts, part of a package of concessions that Jerusalem is offering the Palestinian Authority (PA) in order to entice PA officials to continue engaging in...

Last summer the Lebanese army, backed by Hezbollah, stormed a Sunni mosque where a radical cleric and his followers had holed up. The cleric was seeking to exploit sectarian tensions generated by Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian conflict, and the Iran-backed terror group – was widely blamed the unrest that...

Iran has insisted that it will not give up its 3.5% low enriched uranium (LEU), and this weekend an Iranian MP this weekend also foreclosed concessions on Iran’s enrichment technology, specifically its underground enrichment military bunker at Fordow. The stance is likely to complicate efforts to reassure the international community...

A controversy over foreign funding of NGOs that attack Israel – including a Palestinian group that publishes material glamorizing suicide bombers and promoting anti-Semitic libels – has been rekindled by a wide-ranging watchdog group report outlining German funding for such groups. Titled “German Funding for Political Advocacy NGOs Active in...