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...

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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”...

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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....

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Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has rejected the possibility, proposed earlier this month by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, of direct bilateral negotiations between Washington and Tehran. The prospect of bilateral negotiations – and their status – has been a contentious issue. It was explicitly argued during a 2012 presidential...

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European leaders appear to be taking halting steps toward designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the aftermath of a Bulgarian announcement that investigators had discovered links between the Iran-backed terror group and the July 2012 bus bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria. German officials released a statement late yesterday emphasizing that...

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The expected arrival of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Cairo – the first of an Iranian president since the 1979 Islamic Revolution – has the air of a historic occasion. After 32 years of diplomatic disconnect between the two countries – initiated by Iran after Egypt made peace with Israel – an...

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The visit of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Egypt, the first by an Iranian leader since Cairo and Tehran broke off relations in 1980, has not entirely succeeded in conveying a sense of rapprochement between the two long-time rivals. Over the course of the trip, Egyptian officials have publicly condemned...

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U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro is declaring that an upcoming trip by President Barack Obama to Israel will “strengthen the ties” between the two strong allies. Shapiro emphasized the “special bond” shared by the two countries, grounded in among other things Israel’s status as the “only democracy in the...

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Analysts are positively comparing the political resolve shown by Bulgarian officials – who yesterday announced that they had discovered links between Hezbollah and the July 2012 bombing of a tourist bus in Burgas, Bulgaria – with recent Argentinean moves that have been criticized for papering over Iran-backed terrorism. Buenos Aires...

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Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Cairo on Wednesday, marking the first time an Iranian leader has visited Egypt in three decades. Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi publicly welcomed the Iranian leader, with other Egyptian officials and parts of the Egyptian public criticized Iran. One unidentified assailant even pelted the Iranian...

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