“Top Egyptian intelligence officers met recently with senior Hamas officials from outside the Gaza Strip to discuss the poor relations between Egypt and the Strip’s Hamas regime, senior officials of the Islamist organization confirmed on Tuesday,” Israel’s Haarez wrote on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The growing Iranian influence in the Middle East has brought two historic enemies together, Israel and Saudi Arabia, officials from both countries revealed during a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) event.
(Reuters) Saudi-led air strikes killed a group of around 20 Houthi fighters outside the southern Yemeni port city of Aden on Wednesday and also shook the capital Sanaa in the north, militiamen opposed to the Houthis said.
Neither Iran nor the West are friendly with ISIS, but if an Iranian cartoon contest is any metric, their mutual enemy is not pushing the powers closer together.
The Speaker of Iran’s Majles [parliament] reiterated on Monday that Tehran continues its “unwavering” support of the Assad regime in Syria.
The Associated Press reports thousands of Shiites filled the streets in Saudi Arabia on Saturday to mourn the latest fatality from a pair of ISIS bomb attacks against Shiite mosques in the Kingdom.
The Associated Press cites a release from the official Saudi Press Agency to report a second suicide bomb attack against a Shiite mosque in the Kingdom. At least four people were killed in the Friday attack.
Muslim clerics gathered in Beirut on Wednesday to kick off the Khomeinist International Union of Resistance conference, where “scholars” discussed how to stand up against the “cancerous tumor of Israel,” according to reports from Lebanese and Iranian media outlets.
The rapidly growing number of Shiite cultural centers in Latin America have provided the Islamic Republic of Iran with a means to expand its covert recruitment operations throughout the western hemisphere, leading military officials and experts to provide Breitbart News with statements that directly contradict the Obama administration’s narrative that Iran’s influence in the region is “waning.”
Reuters reports that Sunni militia units have driven Iran-backed Shiite Houthi insurgents from the southern Yemeni city of Dalea, dealing the Houthis their “first significant setback” in two months of hot civil war.
The endless sectarian bloodshed between militant Islamists continues, with a deadly suicide bomb attack on a Shia mosque in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia that killed over a dozen people. According to the BBC, the Sunni fanatics of the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for the attack, with a Twitter message that included an image of the bomber.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) claims Saddam Hussein’s nephew Ibrahim al-Sabawi died near Baiji fighting for the terrorist group. The militants hope to capture a key oil refinery in the town.
U.S. State Department Spokesperson Alan Eyre gave an exclusive interview on Monday to Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency, according to the Tehran-based outlet.
The sectarian and factional chaos unleashed in Iraq by the ISIS invasion has neighboring tribes literally at each other’s throats, according to a report by the Associated Press. Some Sunni tribes initially welcomed the Sunni extremists of ISIS when they rolled across the border, thinking they might help change the balance of power in Shiite-dominated Baghdad. After watching ISIS turn northern Iraq into a torture chamber, some members of the al-Lehib tribe changed their minds, and ended up fighting alongside Iraqi military forces and the Kurds.
Saudi Arabia has now committed acts worse than those promulgated by the “Zionist regime” (Israel), Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani, who is Chief Justice of the Iranian regime’s Judiciary body, announced Wednesday, according to a report by Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency.
The Shiite Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Haider al Abadi has taken to criticizing the Saudi-led campaign–which the United States is a part of–against the Houthi militants in Yemen.
Ali Awad Asiri, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Lebanon, told terrorist group Hezbollah they should not be concerned about Yemen.
Republican Senator Jeff Flake wasted no time in enthusiastically embracing a White House declaration Tuesday removing Cuba from a United States State Department list of state sponsors of terror, despite the communist country’s ongoing harboring of terrorists and ties to terrorist organizations.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi is in Washington for his first visit in office, and is scheduled for a meeting with President Obama at which he will request a massive increase in military aid against the Islamic State. A senior Iraqi official told Reuters, “We’re talking about billions here… This is a new approach for us because of the scale of the challenge we have ahead. Mosul and Nineveh province and Anbar will cost us a lot.”
The Saudis have blamed the Iranian-backed Houthis for the large number of civilian casualties, while the Iranians and their allies have blamed the Saudis for the same deaths.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that his forces are readying for war against Israel in an interview with Syrian state-television on Monday.
A new video produced by an Iranian opposition group documents how the Ayatollah’s regime in Tehran has proliferated its Khomeinist revolution into 60 countries, graduating 50,000 Mullahs at its Al Mustafa International University in the past seven years.
Kurdish and Iraqi forces drove out the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) militants from Jalawla, which is 90 miles northeast of Baghdad, on November 23, 2014. While it should be a joyous occasion, residents cannot enter because a fight over the town is brewing between the victors.
ISIS released another beheading video through social media on Sunday. The new film is notable in two respects: the victims were captive Shiite Muslims in Syria who were described as “impure infidels” by their captors, and a group of teenage boys were employed as assistant executioners, continuing the Islamic State’s trend of working children into their murder videos.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels vow to transform Yemen into a “graveyard of invaders” if the Saudi Arabia-led airstrikes are followed by a ground offensive.
A coalition of over ten countries, with the backing of the United States, has commenced a full-scale military operation against the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.
A horrific coordinated suicide bomb attack on two Shiite mosques in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa has killed at least 100 people and injured hundreds more, according to Fox News. ISIS militants have claimed responsibility for the attack, which targeted members of the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi tribe which overthrew Yemen’s American-backed Sunni elected government in January.
Iran has established 80-plus “cultural centers” across Latin America and the Caribbean to promote Shiite Islam, counter U.S. influence in the region, and increase its own, according to the U.S. Southern Command’s 2015 posture statement submitted to Congress.
Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, at the behest of Iran, is expected to send around 800 of its elite militants to fight alongside Iraqi forces and Shiite militias to retake Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), reports the London-based al-Araby al-Jadeed newspaper.
The common cause of repelling the Islamic State from Iraq has brought about a sectarian team-up that was considered unthinkable before: Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a Shiite militia in Iraq, picked up 250 Sunni recruits and formed the first Sunni unit in its history.
WASHINGTON — Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command, warned lawmakers that Sunni extremists are radicalizing converts and other Muslims in Latin America, adding that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) may exploit trafficking organizations in the region to infiltrate the United States.
In a demonstration of close ties between Tehran and the Palestinian terror group, Hamas chairman Khaled Mashaal, who has made a home in Qatar, met with Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larjani on Wednesday during his visit to Doha.
A video recently surfaced that shows Iraqi soldiers executing a small child at close range in Tikrit in Anbar province, where the army launched an offensive against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). The Shiite soldiers accused the 9-year-old boy of fighting with the terrorist group.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was hospitalized on Wednesday and is in critical condition, according to Israel Hayom, which cited Arab sources in the region.
An Iranian flight touched down on Sunday in Yemen’s capital city in Sanaa, which comes just one day after it was announced that Iran and the now Houthi-led Yemeni coup government leaders had signed an aviation agreement to help facilitate the Shiite groups’ partnership.
The leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah urged the Middle East to unite and join the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif resorted to screaming at his counterpart, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, when conducting negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the Associated Press reports from comments provided by Iran’s Shargh news.
According to comments from a U.S. Central Command official to CNN, a major ground offensive to dislodge ISIS from Mosul could be coming in April, and American ground forces could be part of it.
Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels announced today that they have dissolved the Yemeni parliament and installed their own “transitional national council of 551 members” plus a five-member “presidential council” to rule the country for at least two years, as reported by CBS News. A new national constitution is to be drafted by the revolutionary government.
When trying to make sense of Barack Obama’s foreign policy, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that a great deal of it has been meant to reward, placate, or at least avoid angering Iran.
