The latest round of talks between Iran and the UN’s nuclear watchdog have ended without progress. Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency will now pause “to reflect” on the situation: “We will work hard now to try and resolve the remaining differences, but time is needed to reflect on...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced plans to launch a new initiative to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power. The Secretary of State has recently emphasized that direct engagement of Assad and his regime by Syrian rebels, coupled with assurances regarding the security of the Iran-backed president and Syria’s...

The head of Russia’s state arms supplier declared Wednesday that Russia will continue to supply weapons to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, even as new U.N. figures indicate that the death toll in the country’s two-year civil war is approaching 70,000. Russia considers Syria to be inside its sphere of influence...

Talks between the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog and Iranian officials – aimed broadly at increasing the transparency of Iran’s atomic program, and specifically at securing access for investigators to Iran’s military facility at Parchin – have again ended without a deal being reached. Iran is widely suspected of having conducted work related...

A top Iranian military official was reportedly killed by Syrian opposition forces Tuesday while traveling between Syria and Lebanon. Gen. Hassan Shateri, identified by Iranian opposition groups as a member of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, is thought to have been the chief IRGC leader in...

Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai, the doyen of Israeli war correspondents, sat down with a top Hezbollah expert to unpack the likely tactics that the Iran-backed terror group will use in its next war with Israel. Extrapolating from three assumptions – (1) that Israelis are largely resiliant to rocket and missile...

Syrian opposition figures are claiming that a car bomb that ripped through a Turkish border crossing on Monday was an assassination attempt targeting their delegation. Fourteen people were killed in the blast at the Bab Al-Hawa crossing on the Syrian-Turkish border. Analysis is now pivoting to speculation regarding Ankara’s reaction to the bombing,...

Inspectors from the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog are in Iran for another round of talks aimed at decreasing opacity around Tehran’s atomic program. Iranian officials are lowering expectations and signaling distrust in the agency, which seeks access to the Iranian military facility at Parchin where it is widely suspected the Islamic...

The Palestinian Authority government is again facing criticism for suppressing civil liberties in the West Bank. David Keyes, executive director of Advancing Human Rights, has described the Western-backed government as becoming “worryingly similar” to the Iran-backed Hamas government in the Gaza Strip that “shuts down social media conferences, represses women, tortures dissidents...

Lebanese Parliament Vice President Farid Makari is predicting that the European Union will resist mounting pressure from both within Europe and abroad to blacklist Hezbollah after the Iran-backed terror group was linked by Bulgarian investigators to the July 2012 Burgas, Bulgaria bombing that killed six civilians. The U.S. State Department has emphasized the care and...