Last week the Egyptian government extended an asset freeze against the leadership of the country’s Muslim Brotherhood, including against the assets of the group’s Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie and his two deputies Khairat al-Shater and Rashad Bayoumi. The moves came amid an arrest sweep that Washington Institute fellow Eric Trager described...

Iran on Sunday paraded through Tehran dozens of advanced missiles with ranges of up to 2,000km. Iranian media made clear what the take-away was supposed to be: The naval chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards was meanwhile quoted as saying that Iran has the capability to strike US warships in...

Top officials from Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned Iranian diplomats over the weekend that they were courting danger by diplomatically engaging the United States. A statement issued by the IRGC was not very subtly directed toward “those who favor interaction”: “Historical experiences make it necessary for the diplomatic...

Two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinians in recent days, renewing criticism of Palestinian leaders accused of inciting violence and failing to prepare the Palestinian public for co-existence with the Jewish state and rattling U.S.-backed peace negotiations: In a statement concerning both attacks, the United States said such incidents “undermine efforts to establish...

Israeli personnel joined the efforts of Kenyan officials seeking throughout the day to end a bloody three-day jihadist assault on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. Early news reports were conflicted as to the level of Israeli involvement: According to a Kenyan security source, Israeli forces entered the mall, where a...

Hamas is scrambling to prevent widening domestic unrest from escalating into a genuine threat to the Palestinian terror group’s control over the Gaza Strip. Al-Monitor this weekend surveyed an array of crackdowns initiated by Hamas officials, from the targeting of activists who support Hamas’s rival Fatah to the harassment of...

Reports are slowly beginning to leak about the speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will give next week at the United Nations. In addition to reviewing how the North Koreans strung along the West while developing nuclear weapons, Netanyahu will make specific arguments about Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Both Iran’s...

Last month Iranian diplomats who spoke to Al-Monitor floated rumors that Hamas was seeking to reestablish close ties with Tehran, after a period that saw the Palestinian terror group drift toward Sunni extremist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s decline in Egypt had, according to both those diplomats...

Simultaneous attacks on Yemeni army targets killed at least 40 people early Friday, underscoring the challenges that Sana’a faces as it attempts to weaken Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Security and military officials in Yemen told The New York Times they believe AQAP was behind the series of...

Intelligence officials and world leaders are expressing renewed doubts about the potential for Syria’s chemical arsenal to be safely secured and destroyed, amid newly published figures describing Syria’s stockpile and political maneuvering by actors involved in the crisis. The Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,...