Iranian warplanes last week attacked a U.S. Air Force Predator drone conducting routine maritime surveillance in international airspace over the Persian Gulf. The two jets, Iranian Su-25 fighters piloted by members of Iran’s elite revolutionary Guard Corps force, failed to hit the drone despite repeated passes. The incident, which elicited...

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Belgium is blocking efforts to place Hezbollah on the European Union’s terror list, despite explicit and repeated requests from U.S. counter-terrorism officials. Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy that has been linked to past and ongoing terror operations on five continents – in the Middle East and central Asia, in North...

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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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The Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas, a designated terrorist entity that controls the Gaza Strip and remains publicly committed to Israel’s destruction, is being criticized by rights groups for abuses against protesters, journalists, and supporters of rival Palestinian factions. Last week Hamas security officials arrested and interrogated two journalists who were...

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International Atomic Energy Agency head Yukio Amano is again emphasizing the dangerous lack of transparency surrounding the Iranian nuclear program. On Monday he blasted Iranian officials for failing to provide the United Nations organization with “necessary cooperation” and he reiterated that the U.N. “cannot conclude that all nuclear material in...

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Austria has become a “hub” for Iranian-linked money laundering, according to experts at the Simon Wiesenthal Center quoted by the Jerusalem Post. The Telegraph further reported that entities identified by U.S. Treasury officials as “support[ing] a range” of Iran’s weapons procurement objectives have been allowed to travel through Europe with...

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Lines between opposing groups in the Syrian civil war sharpened further over the weekend, as ethnic Kurds emerged as opponents to both the Bashar al-Assad government, which is backed by Iran and its proxies, and to Syrian rebel groups, who are backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Syrian Kurds have...

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Controversy erupted in Tunisia this week when A-Sahbi Atiq, head of the parliamentary faction of the country’s ruling Islamist Ennahda party, suggested that Hamas leaders opposed inserting a clause in the Tunisian constitution that would criminalize relations with Israel. Iran-backed Hamas quickly issued statements insisting that its leaders do in...

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Developments this week highlighted the destabilizing role played by Iran’s conventional arsenal, in regions far beyond the Islamic Republic’s immediate neighborhood and in contexts independent of its military and terrorist efforts against Israel. Inside Syria, opposition leaders stressed to CNN that Iran’s military coordination with Bashar al-Assad’s regime has escalated, and that...

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Iran’s Fars News Agency (FNA) and Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) have signed what the organizations term a “media cooperation program aimed at sharing the media services and expertise.” Both agencies are state-controlled, and disseminate what is widely considered to be disinformation on behalf of the regimes in Tehran and...

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