A car bomb exploded in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli this morning, slightly wounding Sheikh Saadeddine Ghiyeh, a pro-Assad figure in the area and in the country. The Lebanese army responded quickly to contain the scene, and issued a statement describing the explosive as having been placed under the...

A few weeks ago a group of seventeen Jews who fled from Yemen arrived in Israel, after having been secretly airlifted out of their home country amid what the New York Times described as “political unrest and threats to their safety.” There are now about 90 Jews left in Yemen....

France has been at the international forefront of emphasizing both that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime has used chemical weapons, and of calling for action against the regime. Some of the differences between France and its more cautious Western allies have been written off as Paris seeking to intervene in what...

Greens leader Christine Milne on the eve of the country’s election rushed to emphasize her party’s rejection of efforts to boycott Israel, after opponents made it a key issue. The Australian reported last week on the back-and-forth between the NSW Greens and the opposition, which had made the support by...

Analysts and lawmakers are heavily emphasizing the potential costs to American credibility should Congress decline to grant President Barack Obama authority to retaliate against what is widely considered to have been a mass chemical weapons attack against Syrian civilians. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel had already on Tuesday stated bluntly...

This week’s G-20 conference was overshadowed by the crisis in Syria, with both advocates and opponents of action against the Bashar al-Assad regime seeking to press their case. President Barack Obama had entered the summit hoping to garner momentum in what has become a bruising political fight to gain Congressional...

A controversy over a tweet sent out in the name of Iran’s newly inaugurated president Hassan Rouhani – which would have seen the revolutionary cleric wishing Jews a “blessed Rosh Hashanah” – was evaluated this morning with a blistering postmortem in the Wall Street Journal. The greeting was quickly denied...

A report published this morning by the Washington Institute (WINEP) seeks to provide some context for next week’s meeting in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) board of governors. The board will meet to discuss the IAEA’s recent report on Iran’s nuclear program. The co-authors of the WINEP...

Reuters reports this morning on the aftermath of a four-day show conducted last week by the Israel Diamond Exchange, which is looking to become a global hub for the industry. The outlet took pains to emphasize that the show was not a small event: Hundreds of companies crowded the world’s...

Egypt’s army-backed government has deepened its efforts to suppress the country’s Muslim Brotherhood, after weeks of violent clashes between security forces and Brotherhood supporters of the country’s former president Mohammed Morsi left over 1,000 people dead. The government has announced that it is moving to formally dissolve the group as...