Secretary of State John Kerry met Sunday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu amid increasing concerns that Ankara is backsliding on commitments it made to Israel during a phone call arranged last month by President Barack Obama to facilitate rapprochement between Turkey and the Jewish state: Eager to smooth the path...

Six Egyptians have been killed and almost 100 injured over the last four days in sectarian violence of a kind that activists and analysts tell The Tower is unprecedented in modern Egypt. Four Christians and a Muslim were killed in sectarian clashes in a Cairo suburb on Saturday. A Muslim...

Zero progress: Negotiations over Iran’s disputed nuclear program broke off on Saturday without signs of even incremental progress… The failure to reach any accord was a serious setback for the talks… After the conclusion of two days of tense bargaining, Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that...

One needn’t romanticize this week’s West Bank unrest. It wasn’t exactly a spontaneous outburst of rage – rather, the three funerals held recently were a pre-planned set piece for the stone-throwing that followed. Near Tulkarem, and in Hebron, two teenagers were laid to rest, having been hit by IDF fire while throwing...

Israeli soldiers yesterday shot and killed two Palestinians who were hurling firebombs at them, amid the outbreak of riots across the West Bank. Palestinians burned tires and threw rocks at IDF soldiers in outrage over the death of then-imprisoned Hamas terrorist Maysara Abuhamdia, who was serving a life sentence for his...

Today’s P5+1 talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan ended without progress, as Western diplomats expressed frustration not just over Iranian intransigence but over what appears to be a kind of unseriousness regarding the details of the P5+1’s offer. A Western diplomat described to The Tower gaps not just in agreeing...

The United Nations agency responsible for distributing aid in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has suspended much of its activity after its headquarters was stormed by Palestinian protesters.  Robert Turner, who heads Gaza operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) blasted the “apparently pre-planned” incident, calling it “completely unacceptable… unwarranted and unprecedented.”...

Syria is lashing out at Turkey and Jordan, accusing both countries of providing material and logistical assistance to opposition forces seeking to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime. The accusation is more or less accurate inasmuch as Turkey and Jordan are assisting the rebels. Syria state television, citing reports in The New...

The P5+1 began its latest round of talks with Iran today in Kazakhstan. Analysts worry that Iran will agree to temporarily suspend its enrichment – some leaks have indicated that the target timeframe is for six months – only to use the time to build up its critical nuclear infrastructure. The result...

The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has issued a renewed warning that Iran may currently be secretly developing a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned about possible clandestine nuclear weapons work being conducted by Tehran — a November 2011 report highlighted [PDF] “the possible...