A massive car bomb shook Beirut this morning, exploding in the predominantly Christian district of Ashrafiya and killing at least eight. The explosion threatens to reignite the sectarian tensions that were behind the country’s destructive civil war and which continue to plague the country. The security situation in Lebanon has...

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Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar pled guilty yesterday to attempting to murder the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The plot, which would have constituted a “significant terrorist attack in the United States” was, according to Arbabsiar “directed by high-ranking” Iranian officials. The United States has linked the plot to a larger...

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U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice insisted at a United Nations Security Council meeting yeserday that Hezbollah is part of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad’s “killing machine” and must be countered firmly by the international community. The ambassador’s stance echoes that of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor,...

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Former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora lashed out against Hezbollah on Sunday, blasting the Iranian-backed organization for trying to drag Lebanon into another war with Israel. Siniora critized Hezbollah for dispatching a drone to penetrate Israeli airspace “at an Iranian behest.” The still-developing controversy threatens to become a replay of...

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Hezbollah claimed responsibility yesterday for the unmanned aircraft shot down over Israel last weekend, with the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah boasting on Hezbollah TV that he was trying to “surprise the Zionist enemy.” He also vowed that the group would launch more drones in the future. An Iranian proxy that Lebanese opposition figures...

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The civil war in Syria is increasingly turning into a proxy war between regional powers, with Saudi Arabia and Turkey backing the opposition and Iran backing the regime, and it increasingly threatens to expand beyond Syria’s borders. The BBC reports that one of its teams found a cache of weapons...

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Iran’s Lebanon-based proxy Hezbollah raided Israeli airspace with a drone over the weekend, which was intercepted and destroyed by Israeli jets. Based on the debris from the interception, which the IDF published and can be viewed here, the drone does not appear to have been armed.The IDF responded to the...

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The United States is sanctioning several Lebanon-based charities that fundraise for Hamas, including Al-Waqfiya and Al-Quds, which according to the Treasury Department “exist to support the families of Hamas fighters.”  Hamas is a designated terror organization and has consistently targeted Israeli civilians with rocket and mortar fire. The organization violently seized...

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The post-Arab Spring Middle East is coalescing into new and potentially destabilizing camps, according to analysts commenting on Hamas’s move out of the Syrian-Iranian orbit and into that of Egypt. Syrian state television lashed out at Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, a former ally of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, after Mashaal attended...

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Two months of attacks on Aleppo by the Assad regime have left the historic Syrian city in ruins. Municipal services have been cut, leaving neighborhoods without electricity or drinking water, health centers closed, and police stations abandoned. Reports have consistently noted uncollected corpses left uncollected in the open. On Monday, a mortar...

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