A recent report by Moody’s affirmed Israel’s A1 rating largely on the basis of what it described as Israel’s “high-tech niche and entrepreneurial culture,” which the rating agency noted “have continued to underpin its latent dynamism.” A summer innovation summit sought to bring Israeli knowledge and technology to bear on...

There are credible arguments to be made that Turkish-Egyptian relations have literally never been worse since the two countries took shape as modern states. The two countries had exchanged ambassadors soon after WWII, signed a free trade agreement in 2005, and been declared by Ankara to be part of an...

An expose published yesterday in Foreign Policy by Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, outlines Turkish support for the Palestinian terror group Hamas which – among other things – has allowed Hamas operative Saleh al-Arouri to operate out of Turkish territory. Hamas’s domestic...

The official Palestinian position – registered in the Palestinian National Charter posted by the United Nation – is that “the claims of historic and spiritual ties between Jews and Palestine are not in agreement with the facts of history or with the true basis of sound statehood.” At the Camp...

Analysts have been warning for years that Turkey’s deep and sustained support for Middle East Islamists was undermining stability throughout the region. According to a range of analysts interviewed by Reuters, the region as a whole has had enough: Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan cuts an increasingly lonely figure in...

Iranian media today widely reported – Tehran Times, PressTV, Fars – that what it calls its 27th fleet had docked at Port Sudan along the Red Sea. The fleet includes the helicopter carrier Khark (also spelled Kharg) and frigate Sabalan – both British-built – and had previously visited China. The...

A Thai court today convicted a Lebanese national allegedly linked to Hezbollah for possessing bomb-making materials. The conviction comes a month after a different Thai court sentenced two Iranians to lengthy jail sentences for their roles in the attempted February 2012 attack on Israeli diplomats. The convict blames Israel for...

A series of car bombs Tuesday killed over 30 people and injured more than 100. They were followed today by more car bombs, with the attacks this time claiming the lives of at least 6 more. The Washington Post notes that Iraq’s Shiite-led government has launched a counter-insurgency campaign –...

Iranian officials Tuesday blamed technical glitch for the creation of a brief window Monday in which Iranian citizens were allowed to access banned social media sites, reimposing restrictions and pointedly warning that they would be “investigating to see which… companies” had lifted the filters. Early on Tuesday Reuters reported that official policy had...

Following repeated and explicit statements of support from Iran’s newly inaugurated President Hassan Rouhani, Iran is moving to dramatically deepen its activities on behalf of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime. The Wall Street Journal reports that Shiite recruits from across the Middle East are being indoctrinated to wage a sectarian war...