“Killing sprees” in Iran and Iraq were responsible for a global rise in capital punishment in 2013, according to a new Amnesty International report described Thursday by a range of outlets. At least 778 executions were known to have been carried out globally in 2013, 538 of them in Iran...

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The Arab League conference opened in Kuwait with rifts among its members expected to be a major focus of the annual meeting. Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Nabil Fahmi, alluded to these divisions when he acknowledged that he would not meet with his Qatari counterpart due to the “deep issues” dividing the...

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Former Lebanese President Amine Gemayel has issued a stark warning about the fate of Christians in the Middle East, endangered by what he called “the rise of religious extremists.” Speaking last week at an event sponsored by Christian Solidarity International (CSI), Gemayel, who is himself Maronite Catholic, called on the international community...

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Analysts and journalists spent Wednesday assessing the geopolitical, diplomatic, and military significance of the overnight interdiction of an Iranian vessel carrying advanced missiles bound for the Gaza Strip, after reports began to trickle out of the Middle East early in the morning that the Panamanian-flagged Klos-C merchant ship had been boarded by elite Israeli commandos...

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Top Iraqi officials on Wednesday deepened their efforts to stem the damage from a recently published Reuters report revealing that Baghdad had inked a weapons deal with Iran worth $195 million, breaking a U.N.-imposed arms embargo on the Islamic republic and fueling concerns that the Obama administration had allowed Iraq to slip into the...

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Both Washington and Baghdad continued to scramble on Tuesday in the wake of a Reuters expose documenting a $195 million security deal, spread across eight different contracts, which would see Iraq purchasing weapons from Iran. The move would be violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting trading arms with the...

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State Department officials found themselves on the defensive Monday, after an expose published by Reuters revealed that Iraq has signed a $195 million arms deal with Iran for the delivery of weapons to Iraq. Baghdad sources told the outlet that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had been moved to seek arms from the...

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Iranian news is boasting that the Syrian army has regained control of the strategic border town of Jarajir near Lebanon. The reports are contested – the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the town is still contested – but the Syrian army has been pounding the area, including the town...

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Sectarian violence in and around Bahgdad killed seven people on Tuesday, extending bloodshed that in January had claimed more than 1,000 lives – the worst monthly figure in nearly six years – and deepening fears that Iraq may be entering into a cycle of instability that risks outright state failure. Monday had seen violence...

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A raid on a Baghdad government building killed at least 18 people today, bringing the country’s death toll this month to to over 900 and putting Iraq on pace to exceed 2013’s death tool. Nearly 8,000 lives were claimed last year by spiraling, largely sectarian violence in Iraq. The large-scale...

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