The Middle East that President-elect Donald Trump will inherit when he assumes office in two months is, as a foreign policy advisor to the last two presidents told The New York Times last month, “seemingly in free fall.” Among the challenges that Trump will have deal with: wars in Syria,...

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989, criticized the American presidential election in a series of tweets last week while commemorating the 37th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Khamenei criticized the two leading U.S. candidates for president, calling them “unethical.” In US presidential #debates...

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On October 17, the Iraqi government officially declared its plans to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State, more than two years after the city was captured. Unfortunately, winning will require cooperation many different parties. The Shiite government of Iraq, as well as the country’s Shiite militias, both want to be...

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Iran Extends Its Global Reach This week The Tower reported on numerous signs that Iran is strengthening its position across the Middle East and even the world. Monday’s election of Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun as president of Lebanon was hailed by several senior Iranian officials. “The election of Michel Aoun as president shows new...

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High-ranking Iranian officials have hailed the election of Lebanon’s new president Michel Aoun as a boon for the Islamic Republic, with a top adviser for Iran’s parliamentary speaker saying that Aoun will advance “the resistance against the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state-owned PressTV reported on Wednesday. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also claimed that Aoun’s election will...

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Iran is commanding a “foreign legion” of about 25,000 Shiite militiamen in Syria, the former head of the Shin Bet said on Wednesday. The Shiite fighters, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, “are fighting in Syria only against the rebels and not against ISIS,” Avi Dichter, now the chairman of the...

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Thousands of Iranians commemorated the takeover of the American embassy in 1979 by marching through the streets of Tehran shouting “Death to America” and “Death to the House of Saud,” Agence France-Presse reported Thursday. Speaking to the crowd outside the former American embassy, Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of Iran’s...

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An Iranian general said that his country’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), will be in the United States and Europe “very soon,” the Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday, citing Iranian media. “The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very...

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A European plan to allow an Iranian airline sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury to fly commercial routes to European and Asian cities has drawn sharp objections from Washington, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. European officials have pushed back against requests to join the U.S. in blocking Mahan Air’s financial network, a U.S. Treasury official...

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Iran-backed militias in Iraq are raising flags identifying their Shi’ite loyalties in the battle to oust the Islamic State from Mosul, raising concerns among local leaders in the Sunni-majority region, Reuters reported Sunday. The militias, also known as Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), mostly includes “groups trained by Iran and loyal to its Supreme...

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