Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani, commander of the foreign operations Quds Force unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), paid an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Sunday for meetings with Iran-controlled politicians and militia groups — a clear attempt by Iran to influence the new government that is taking shape in Iraq.
The kingdom of Bahrain is threatening to strip citizenship from people found to have jeopardized national security during attacks by Iran during Operation Epic Fury.
Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani, head of the foreign-ops Quds Force division of Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), surfaced in Iraq on Saturday for meetings with Shiite militia groups loyal to Tehran.
The Iran-backed Houthi insurgency in Yemen announced on Wednesday it has launched an operation called “Holy Jihad Battle” against Israel.
Israel is reportedly planning a “massive” ground invasion of Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah’s weapons and push the terror group away from the border, so that it can no longer shower Israeli cities with rockets. As one Israeli official put it: “We are going to do what we did in Gaza.”
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are growing increasingly vocal in denouncing Iran for its wanton attacks on their cities and oil infrastructure, although they have yet to commit to aggressive military action against Tehran.
Protests broke out in Syria’s coastal cities after a video showing an Alawite shrine attacked by unknown militants appeared on social media.
Members of Syria’s Alawite community — a small but formerly influential Shiite sect whose members included dictator Bashar Assad — are fearful of persecution at the hands of the Sunni Muslim extremist groups that deposed Assad in a swift attack on Damascus last week.
The Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen have apparently decided music and singing will no longer be tolerated in areas under their control.
Opposition-run Iran International says Iranians are growing more sympathetic to Israel and pushing back against regime propaganda.
Influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his supporters to stop violent riots in Baghdad on Tuesday after 24 hours that left at least 30 dead and hundreds wounded in the Iraqi capital’s “Green Zone.”
Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, nominal Supreme Leader of the Taliban and its “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” regime, made his first public appearance since the fall of Kabul on Sunday.
Devout Muslim Shiite followers in Iran fought their way into two major shrines closed over coronavirus fears, Iranian state media reported Tuesday, as they demanded the right to continue worshipping practices that include kissing, touching and in some cases licking sacred public objects.
Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose coalition won the country’s latest parliamentary elections, called for the dissolution of Saraya al-Salam (Peace Brigades), the militia wing of his movement, for the sake of “public interest” on Thursday as he seeks the formation of Iraq’s next government.
Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, expected to be named the victor when Friday’s final Iraqi election results are published, is reportedly seeking to ally his Sairoon coalition (On the move) with several allied blocs in Iraq to form a government.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced a bid for re-election on Sunday with the support of anti-American, Iran-backed Shiite militias that have turned their guns on the pro-U.S. Iraqi Kurds following the demise of the Islamic State in Mosul.
The BBC reported “fierce clashes between Kurdish and Iraqi troops north of Kirkuk city” on Friday, indicating the Iraqi offensive is proceeding well beyond its originally stated goal of preventing independence-minded Kurds from absorbing Kirkuk and its oil fields into a prospective new state.
Despite skepticism from both Israel’s security network and Palestinian organizations that the Islamic State terrorist group was somehow involved in the deadly Jerusalem attack Friday night, IS members and supporters have been celebrated the attack in an internal Telegram chat and threatened that more such attacks were to be expected.
The Islamic State group threatened Iran for its role in the region’s conflicts, in a rare Farsi-language propaganda video released on Monday.
Violent protests, featuring a rocket launch targeting Baghdad’s government Green Zone, killed five protesters and a policeman in the Iraqi capital this weekend. The incident triggered yet another protest Tuesday as throngs of supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr carried their colleagues’ coffins through the city streets.
Iraqi military officials uncovered a trove of over one hundred artifacts that experts have traced back to the Nimrud archaeological site at the former home of an Islamic State terrorist leader in eastern Mosul.
Representatives of a variety of United Nations (UN) agencies and non-governmental organizations have warned that the conditions in liberated areas of Mosul, Iraq, have made civilians extremely vulnerable to disease, dehydration, and famine, as the Iraqi military continues to barrel deeper into the city’s Islamic State strongholds.
Shi’ites worldwide have been enraged at the assassination of a high-profile activist in Gaza who has been blacklisted by the Hamas government.
Conversations on an encrypted chat application used by the Islamic State and its jihadist supporters provide insight into the group’s morale during the battle of Mosul against the Iraqi army and Kurdish militias.
Two weeks since announcing the start of the operation to liberate the city of Mosul from the Islamic State, the Iraqi army has crossed the city limits, and authorities claim troops are progressing steadily in capturing the city’s dense urban neighborhoods.
The battle to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State has entered its second day, with the Iraqi government reporting that 20 villages surrounding the regional capital have been liberated, but the gates of the metropolis itself remain far from participating militias.
JERUSALEM – A Kuwaiti journalist slammed a local imam in a recent column for cursing Jews and Christians who, he wrote, were the ones who discovered the Arab world’s oil and invented the tools necessary to extract it from the
Kurdish Peshmerga forces fighting alongside the Iraqi military on the mission to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State warn that the Iraqi army is “too weak” to fight ISIS, even with its advanced weaponry, while the peshmerga is better trained but ill-equipped to fight alone.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Secretary of State John Kerry, under mounting pressure, has determined that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis, Shiite groups, and other minorities in areas it controls.
Yemeni Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Nasir al-Tahiri is accusing the Shiite Houthi rebels that have run the official government out of the nation’s capital of hiring African “mercenaries” to fight in the nation’s ongoing civil war.
Shiite militia groups in Iraq are threatening to attack Turkish troops unless they are withdrawn within 48 hours, according to a Reuters report.
Iraqi and Kurdish officials have met to plan the long-delayed Battle of Mosul, an effort to push ISIS out of the city they have been using as their base of operations in Iraq.
According to the Yemeni government-in-exile, United States diplomats are in discussions with Yemen’s Houthis, a Shiite rebel group which seized control of the Gulf country earlier this year.
After American-armed troops from the American-supported Iraqi central government were routed from the city of Ramadi by an inferior ISIS force, the head-choppers embarked on what the Kurdish Rudaw news service describes as a “bloody purge.”
