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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In the last few hours, the EU voted to increase sanctions on Iran aimed at convincing the regime to increase transparency on – and then halt – what is widely believed to be an illicit nuclear weapons program. Diplomats speaking in the lead-up to the EU vote identified the sanctions...

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Iran lashed out at the United Arab Emirates Tuesday over three disputed islands, marking an increasingly heated escalation in a war of words that has been growing between the two countries since the spring. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast threatened to downgrade ties with the UAE over competing claims to the...

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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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While sparring over an array of issues, Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan converged on the critical importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship to American interests and on the need to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The candidates’ stances, while differing sometimes sharply in claims and analyses, reflecting a...

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The Obama administration launched another round of financial sanctions against Iran earlier this week, with President Obama issuing an executive order implementing Congressionally-approved sactions. The announcement comes as the International Monetary Fund published an analysis predicting that sanctions would fail to collapse the Iranian economy, and that Iran would be...

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Iran lashed out at the United Arab Emirates Tuesday, marking an escalation in a war of words over three disputed islands that has been growing increasingly heated since last spring. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast threatened to downgrade ties with the UAE over competing claims to the islands, which...

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for elections on Tuesday, setting the country on a path for early elections as soon as January 15, 2013. Netanyahu explicitly cited deadlocked Knesset negotiations on next year’s budget as the reasons behind his decision, but analysts linked the move to the Prime Minister’s...

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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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A new report has dramatically reduced estimates of how far Iran is from nuclear breakout, declaring that the Tehran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to arm a nuclear bomb within two to four months. The report comes from the Institute for Science and International Security, a thinktank led by former...

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