World News

U.S.-backed fighters in Syria are poised to capture Islamic State’s last, tiny enclave on the Euphrates, the battle commander said on Saturday, bringing its self-declared caliphate to the brink of total defeat as U.S. President Donald Trump spoke of ‘100 percent victory’.

It was almost a who’s who of America’s foes as Venezuela’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, was surrounded on Thursday by some of the world’s most notorious human rights violators. He was announcing the formation of a group of countries that he said would defend the United Nations Charter.

Moscow, Ankara and Tehran see the planned US withdrawal from Syria as a positive step, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after a summit with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts on Thursday.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday blamed the suicide bombing of a bus carrying Revolutionary Guards troops that killed 27 in southeastern Iran on Israel and the United States, vowing revenge against Jaish al-Adl, the ‘mercenary group’ that committed it.

Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that Iran is plotting a ‘new Holocaust’ to obliterate Israel.

Iran is capable of producing a nuclear weapon within two years, if it steps up work on its nuclear program and violates the 2015 deal with the West, according to a recent Israeli intelligence assessment.

A senior Iranian official said over the weekend that the Islamic Republic has the chemical and technical know-how to produce a nuclear weapon, according to Farsi language remarks independently translated for the Washington Free Beacon.

The US has escalated a clandestine program to sabotage Iranian missiles and rockets as part of an attempt to weaken the Islamic Republic’s military and cause economic damage, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Joint U.S.-Libyan forces raided an al Qaeda site in the Libyan city of Ubari on Wednesday, according to a statement by a Libyan official.

U.S. and Chinese negotiators began trade talks Thursday that President Donald Trump says will help decide whether he escalates a fight over Beijing’s technology ambitions by raising tariffs on $200 billion of imports from China.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday at a security conference in Warsaw that Iran is the top threat in the Middle East and confronting the country is key to reaching peace in the entire region.

U.S. fears about China and Russia’s growing influence in Central Europe will top Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s agenda as he heads to the region this week, Trump administration officials say.

The United States is seeking a United Nations Security Council resolution calling on Venezuela to conduct free, fair and credible presidential elections with international observers.

Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has been elected chairman of the African Union at the continental body’s summit in Ethiopia.

A spokesman for U.S.-backed Syrian forces says they have captured 41 positions held by Islamic State group militants and destroyed their fortifications in the last tiny pocket they hold in eastern Syria.

British Prime Minister Theresa May came away from a day in an increasingly impatient Brussels on Thursday with a pledge of renewed talks that held out some hope for a new Brexit deal, if no sign of compromise yet.

US President Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that the Islamic State group will have lost by next week all the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria.

A key House panel on Wednesday moved to block any U.S. military support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, in the first move by the new House Democratic majority to challenge President Trump’s close alliance with Riyadh.

The launchers of Russian-made S-300 missile defense systems deployed to Syria have been erected, new satellite images released on Tuesday showed.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says Moscow will push to develop two new land-based missile systems before 2021 in response to Washington’s planned exit from a landmark nuclear arms control agreement.