The head of Iran’s parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy said Sunday that Tehran will never halt its atomic program but suggested that talks between his country and the international community continue anyway: Alaeddin Boroujerdi said the talks were “considered effective and a step forward,” but he added,...

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The Syrian government has redeployed as many as 20,000 troops from areas around the country’s Golan Heights border with Israel. The troops are being moved closer to Damascus in what is the largest Syrian redeployment in 40 years. They’re leaving behind an increasingly chaotic power vacuum: “They [the Syrian government] have...

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Secretary of State John Kerry met Sunday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu amid increasing concerns that Ankara is backsliding on commitments it made to Israel during a phone call arranged last month by President Barack Obama to facilitate rapprochement between Turkey and the Jewish state: Eager to smooth the path...

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The State Department has seemingly confirmed speculation, first reported yesterday by The Hill, to the effect that Secretary of State John Kerry is traveling to the Middle East this weekend in part to bolster fraying reconciliation efforts between Israel and Turkey. Journalists yesterday pressed State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland over...

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A document leaked to an Israeli newspaper outlines a series of temporary moves being made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in anticipation of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s upcoming trip to the Middle East: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to suspend all unilateral measures vis-à-vis the United Nations agencies to...

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Israeli and Palestinian sources have confirmed to The Tower that Israeli Air Force jets last night struck Hamas-built tunnels in the Gaza Strip intended to be used in attacks on Israel. Hamas announced Israel had struck “open areas” near the border – one east of Gaza City and the other...

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Israeli troops on the Golan Heights took cross-border gunfire and at least one mortar from Syria yesterday. IDF forces returned fire. While insisting that Israel would not intervene in the Syrian war except in cases where Israel’s “red line” against the transfer of advanced weapons was at stake, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon...

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The White House is dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to “smooth things over” between Israel and Turkey, after statements and threats made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised “worries that the Obama administration’s newly brokered friendship between [the two countries] risks unraveling.” The administration is concerned about Turkish...

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Analysis to the effect that political responsibility over the Gaza Strip would moderate the Iran-backed Islamist terror group Hamas — a mainstay of certain strains of foreign policy reasoning — were undermined this week when the group sought to enforce gender segregation on boys and girls starting in grade four....

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II have signed an agreement pledging to cooperate on protecting Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. The agreement will be read against a series of moves by Abbas to implicitly and explicitly declare that Israel is endangering Muslim holy sites in...

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