Iraqi forces announced on Thursday they had captured Islamic State’s last stronghold in northern Iraq, leaving the militant group holed up near the Syrian border as its self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ shrinks further.
Israel’s defense minister said on Tuesday President Bashar al-Assad was winning Syria’s civil war and urged the United States to weigh in as Damascus’s Iranian and Hezbollah allies gain ground.
Russia’s military says its airstrikes in eastern Syria this week killed more than 300 Islamic State militants.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Sunday of pushing the region to war in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and said nowhere in Israel would be safe if such a conflict were to erupt.
Israeli officials believe that Iran is winning its bid for dominance in the Middle East, and they are mobilizing to counter the regional realignment that threatens to follow. The focus of Israel’s military and diplomatic campaign is Syria. Israeli jets have struck Hezbollah and Syrian regime facilities and convoys dozens of times during Syria’s civil war, with the goal of preventing the transfer of weapons systems from Iran to Hezbollah. In an apparent broadening of the scope of this air campaign, on Sept. 7 Israeli jets struck a Syrian weapons facility near Masyaf responsible for the production of chemical weapons and the storing of surface-to-surface missiles.
The son of a prominent Hamas leader shocked members of the U.N. Human Rights Council, including representatives of the Palestinian Authority, declaring in testimony that the PA is the ‘greatest enemy of the Palestinian people.’
President Trump, in just eight months in office, has succeeded in upending U.S. refugee policy, cutting by more than half the 110,000-refugee target that the Obama administration had bequeathed him and dramatically shifting the demographics of who is accepted.
President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation imposing strict new restrictions on travelers from a handful of countries, including five that were covered by his expiring travel ban. Administration officials say the new measures are required to keep the nation safe.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu will make his first official visit to Israel in mid-October to discuss the Jewish State’s ongoing concerns regarding Iran’s presence in Syria.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly and reminded the world of Israel’s resourcefulness and courage.
Hezbollah has more than 10,000 fighters in southern Syria ready to confront Israel, a commander for the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group has said.
The Israel Defense Forces shot down an Iranian-made drone operated by Hezbollah on Tuesday afternoon after the drone entered the demilitarized zone along the border between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights. The Israel Air Force’s aerial defense command fired a Patriot missile and destroyed the drone.
‘The U.S. won’t let Iran gain control over Syria. The U.S. won’t leave Israel alone in the battlefield,’ a senior White House official quoted U.S. President Donald Trump as saying unequivocally in a meeting on the topic over the weekend, amid reports suggesting that Iran was cementing its foothold in Syria and building precision missile factories in the south of the war-torn country.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson discussed cooperation on the Syrian crisis, Middle East issues, and the agreement to bring peace to Ukraine in a meeting on Sunday, Lavrov’s spokeswoman said.
Deep in the rugged hills close to the Israeli border, two Hezbollah fighters crouched near a small fire, which heated a teapot. Despite the late-summer sun, they were both wearing full face masks to disguise their identity, because Hezbollah forbids its members from speaking with foreign reporters.
Malaysian police have arrested a 21-year-old Islamic State (IS)-linked suspect who received orders from Syria to launch attacks on non-Muslims and their places of worship.
Israel asked Russia and the United States to prevent an Iranian presence, or that of any Shi’ite militia operating under Iranian influence, in southern Syria near the Israeli border in any cease-fire agreement. Israel presented its demand during the talks that preceded the cease-fire agreement in July – but the Russians refused.
Russia has urged Syrian President Bashar Assad not to retaliate against Israel after an airstrike on the country’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, which the Syrian regime attributes to Israel, a senior Russia official dealing with Middle East affairs told Yedioth Ahronoth in an conversation in Moscow over the weekend.
The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State dropped 5,075 bombs during operations in August, the highest total of any month since the three-year campaign against the terrorist group began.
The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has some 11,000 blank Syrian passports that could be used to provide fake identities for jihadists, German authorities believe.