Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov has announced that Bulgaria will push for sanctions against Hezbollah after Bulgarian investigators linked the Iran-backed terror group to the July 2012 bombing in Burgas that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian. Meanwhile, Bulgarian officials will present details of the investigation to European counterparts in the coming...

Egypt has begun flooding the smuggling tunnels that run between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The tunnels’ destruction is among the terms of an Egyptian-brokered agreement to end Israel’s eight-day Operation Pillar of Defense, which the Jewish state launched in November 2012 after weeks of escalatory rocket and missile...

Iran will cancel visa requirements for Egyptian merchants and tourists seeking to enter the country, according to statements made last week to Egyptian state news by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi. The move will be read against the backdrop of Iranian efforts to create what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has...

Brushing aside Iranian denials, Yemen’s president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has now formally blamed Iran for a seized ship filled with weapons believed to be intended for Shiite insurgents fighting the country’s government: But government official Abdel-Rashid Abdel Hafez said President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi had contacted Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to...

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag has told U.S. ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone to “mind his own business” after the ambassador criticized Ankara for imprisoning journalists, military officers, lawmakers, and others. The unusually undiplomatic language comes amidst analyst worries regarding renewed attempts by Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party to centralize...

Egypt’s interior minister has upped security for leaders of the political opposition in the country after religious hardliners issued fatwas calling for their murder. A video clip from the religious al-Hafez channel shows Muslim cleric Mahmoud Shabaan calling for former IAEA head Mohamed El Baradei and former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi to...

Turkey has blocked NATO initiatives designed to enhance the alliance’s cooperation with Israel, according to statements made this week by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Substantively, the claims are likely to cause frustration in Washington and elsewhere, as NATO cooperation with regional allies is seen as crucial to the U.S.’s ability...

Yemen is demanding that Iran stop arming and supporting insurgents in the country, blasting Tehran for interfering in the state’s internal affairs. Sanaa has also asked the U.N. Security Council to investigate an incident last month in which a ship carrying a cache of suspected Iranian-made “anti-aircraft missiles [and] C4 high explosives materials”...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has again launched an attack on the “Judaization” of Jerusalem, calling on Islamic countries to wage a “fierce and brutal” campaign against Jewish control of the Jewish state’s capital city: He also called on these countries to invest in various projects in east Jerusalem and...

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected proposals for direct negotiations with the United States after U.S. Vice President Biden floated them last week.   Khamenei’s refusal reflects the known and explicit position of Iranian hardliners, explicitly expressed in the context of mass protests as recently as November. Prominent U.S....