Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon Qazanfar Roknabadi met yesterday in Beirut with Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour. Iranian media described the meeting as designed to “further expand the bilateral relations and mutual cooperation between the two nations.” The U.S. State Department in turn describes Iran’s relations with Lebanon as built on...

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Western diplomats are expressing concern that Argentina is preparing to paper over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and wounded approximately 300 more, as part of a broader campaign by Argentina to boost ties with Iran and facilitate the Islamic Republic’s penetration of...

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Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi took credit Sunday for the drone dispatched by Hezbollah in early October. The unmanned aircraft penetrated Israeli airspace before being intercepted and shot down by the Israeli Air Force. Vahidi’s remarks echo those of Iranian parliamentary Defense Committee Chairman Esmail Kowsari, who said the drone...

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Fears that Syria’s civil war will engulf other countries are on the verge of coalescing into a dangerous reality, as the violence between foreign-backed forces inside Syria spills across the nation’s borders. Already a proxy war between Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, which provide troops and weapons in support of the...

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In addition to spilling over regionally into Turkey and Lebanon, the civil war in Syria is increasingly becoming an explicit proxy war between US-aligned Saudi Arabia and Turkey, on one side, and Iran-aligned Hezbollah and Syria, on the other. A senior Russian general is charging that the Syrian opposition has...

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Lebanese politicians are formally accusing the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah of killing Brig. Gen. Wissam Al-Hassan with a car bomb late last week, specifically highlighting similarities between the attack and the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Lebanese lawmakers are also demanding an investigation into Hassan’s...

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A bomb attack on the border between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip critically wounded an Israeli officer overnight, increasing tensions after weeks of escalating rocket and mortar barrages which have targeted Israeli civilians. The cross-border attack comes as disturbing parallels emerge between Hamas’s current campaign and its provocation of...

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The assassination of anti-Syrian Lebanon official Wissam Al-Hassan threatens to send Lebanon spiraling into another sectarian civil war, as rioting erupted in the aftermath of his Sunday funeral. Hassan, who was closely linked to the March 14 movement and the Cedar Revolution that expelled Syrian troops from Lebanon, was murdered...

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Increasingly pitched fears that the Syrian civil war will escalate into a regional conflict were heightened Friday as a deadly car bomb in Beirut’s predominantly Christian Ashrafiya district killed eight people, including an intelligence officer who was one of the most popular figures in Lebanon’s pro-Western and anti-Syrian March 14th movement. The...

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Intelligence officials in Cyprus have thwarted a massive terrorist attack on the Cypriot port Limassol, uncovering more than 100 grams of explosives. The terror plot was directed at Israeli tourists who frequent the port, and would have followed the recent suicide bombing against Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria that killed...

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