Israel / Middle East

The Wuhan coronavirus spread further through Iran on Friday, with a total of 13 new cases reported in several other cities besides Qom, where the first infections were reported this week. There may also be an Iranian connection to what Canadian officials described as a “sentinel event,” the first confirmed case of infection in a person who has never visited China or had contact with people who did. The Canadian patient did recently travel to Iran.

Iranian despot Ayatollah Ali Khamenei implored the nation to participate in Friday’s parliamentary elections, calling them “response to the chicanery and deception” of the United States.

Australia is considering following the lead of the U.S. and U.K. in listing the military wing of Hezbollah in Lebanon as a terrorist organisation, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said Thursday.

Iran reported at least three more cases of the Wuhan coronavirus on Thursday, adding to the two cases confirmed on Wednesday. According to Iranian state media, two of the infected persons have died from the disease.

The New York Times on Thursday published an op-ed written by Sirajuddin Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban and a globally designated terrorist with a $5 million FBI reward on his head. Haqqani used the opportunity extended by the Times to recite Taliban propaganda and lay out the terrorist organization’s terms for peace in Afghanistan.

BuzzFeed News recently published an article outlining how Saudi Arabia infiltrated social media firm Twitter in order to identify Saudi dissidents. According to the report, Twitter was completely unprepared for foreign governments to spy on its users. According to one former employee, “Nobody told us that we would be approached, that we would be — I don’t know if ‘seduced’ is the right word — that we would be intimidated into giving any kind of Twitter information.”

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Thursday in a visit focused primarily on discussing shared security concerns about regional rival Iran.

CAIRO — Karim Hegazi spends his days in a Cairo clinic taking care of animals long considered a menace in Egypt.

All of “impotent” Israel’s military positions are now within range of Iranian attack, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, Major General Hossein Salami, warned Tuesday.

TEL AVIV – The Israeli government is “rightwing and racist” and the U.S. cannot just support the Jewish state while ignoring the Palestinians, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said Tuesday during a CNN town hall event in Las Vegas.

JERUSALEM – An online group purporting to be apolitical and calling on Israelis to get out and vote in the March 2 elections is being run by a group of leftwing activists and has received millions of shekels in funding by leftwing donors including a George Soros-affiliated foundation, an Israeli newspaper claimed Monday.

The United Nations Humanitarian Affairs office warned on Monday that nearly a million Syrian civilians from northwest Idlib province had been displaced in a Russia-backed offensive there by dictator Bashar al-Assad that began in December.

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, on Sunday called for a boycott of American goods to protest President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan.

The Arab world’s first nuclear power plant received official approval Monday from regulators in the United Arab Emirates.

As part of efforts to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri on Monday said Israel would ban all non-Israelis who were in four East Asian countries and territories in the previous 14 days.

French daredevil Vince Reffet has soared over Dubai after taking off from the ground and climbing to nearly 6,000 feet in a feat reminiscent of Marvel’s Iron Man.

TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that an Israeli plane made a historic first flight over Sudan only two weeks after he met with the Arab state’s leader in Uganda.

TEL AVIV – Several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sites in Syria have sustained massive damage or else have been destroyed entirely by airstrikes last week attributed to Israel, new images released Monday by satellite imagery firm ImageSat International (ISI) show.

JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his newly tapped candidate for finance minister, Likud MK Nir Barkat, on Sunday unveiled a wide-ranging financial plan that includes more hospitals and cheaper housing and food, set to be put into place if Likud wins next month’s elections. 

TEL AVIV – The IDF foiled a honeypot network with false social media profiles of attractive young women created by the Hamas terror group and designed to dupe IDF soldiers, the third such operation in as many years. 

Bernie Sanders’s new ad touts him as the potential “first Jewish president,” overlooking the anti-Israel policies and left-wing antisemites in his campaign.

Taliban militants attacked an Afghan military base in the northern Kunduz province on Sunday despite reports during the week that a ceasefire deal between the Taliban and U.S. is under negotiation.

Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah has called for Lebanese citizens to strike at the heart of U.S. global success and boycott its goods and products as “part of the battle” to prove Islamic superiority.

TEL AVIV – A delegation of 55 major U.S. Jewish leaders traveled to Saudi Arabia last week in what was hailed as a “big step forward” in the kingdom’s warming ties with Israel. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish

TEL AVIV – Israel’s economic growth last year exceeded all predictions, boding well for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who hopes his stewardship of the Jewish state’s strong finances will give him the upper hand against main political challenger Blue and White’s Benny Gantz, Bloomberg News reported. 

TEL AVIV – Hundreds of worshipers gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Sunday to pray for the recovery of people afflicted by coronavirus and to ask God to stop the outbreak of the disease.

White House adviser Ivanka Trump donned a hijab in a visit to a mosque in the United Arab Emirates, but went uncovered elsewhere.

According to a new investigation by Swiss media, a cell of jihadists based in Geneva plotted to bomb cisterns full of oil near the city’s airport in a major terror attack.

A group of Iraqi women joined ongoing anti-government protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on Thursday — a daring exercise given both cultural stigmas against women participating in politics and the proclivity of Iran-backed Shiite militia thugs and Iraqi government security forces for murdering demonstrators.

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Iran-backed Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah, lamented on Iranian television on Thursday that he could not trade his life for that of Major General Qasem Soleimani, eliminated in a U.S. airstrike in January.