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Honestly, I think it is now only conjecture to say that World War III is not underway.  Just as the world didn't recognize the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as the beginning of World War I, so the world didn't immediately recognize the invasions of Austria and Poland as the beginnings of World War II. The tumultuous uprisings in the Arab world that began in 2010 have only grown more tumultuous until now.  I believe the massive Arab coalition invasion of Yemen may later be seen as the beginning of World War III.  The wars and rumors of wars all across...

CAIRO — The Arab states said on Sunday that they had agreed to form a combined military force to counter both Iranian influence and Islamist extremism, a gesture many analysts attributed in large part to their drive for more independence from Washington. The agreement came as American and other Western diplomats in Lausanne, Switzerland, were racing to beat a self-imposed deadline of Tuesday to reach a deal with Iran that would restrict its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of economic sanctions. In response, Saudi Arabia and other American allies in the region have made clear that they are...

Speaker slams Obama, says Iran has ‘never kept their word about anything’Promises new sanctions will ‘come quickly’ if no agreement reached House Speaker John Boehner says Iran has ‘no intention’ of adhering to a nuclear deal. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP Dominic Rushe in New York @dominicru Sunday 29 March 2015 10.34 EDT Last modified on Sunday 29 March 2015 13.13 EDT

One wonders if U.S. President Barack Obama will campaign as vigorously to defeat Prime Minister Stephen Harper this fall, as he did, unsuccessfully, to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in that country’s recent election. It’s no secret Obama despises Netanyahu, who heads Israel’s right-wing Likud party and favoured Mitt Romney over Obama in the 2012 presidential race. The U.S. president has also talked since the beginning of his administration about the need to “put some daylight” between the U.S. and Israel, so he would have more influence with Arab and Muslim countries in his pursuit of an Israel-Palestine peace...

Members of Turkey’s Jewish community attend the reopening ceremony of the Great Synagogue in Edirne on March 26 after a five-year government restoration project. REUTERS Photo Just a week before Passover, Turkish Jews woke up to a morning full of excitement and hope. They got on the buses waiting to take them to Edirne, to the city that their families once had to leave following the Thrace pogroms in 1934. It was the reopening day of the Great Synagogue, which had been left in ruins for decades. “I was the last rabbi that had served in the synagogue,” said David...

There are different opinions on how to deal with the Iranian regime over their nuclear proliferation, whether its contention between the Obama administration and regional partners including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, or even between lawmakers on the right and left here in the U.S.There may never be agreement over the level of uranium enrichment, the number of centrifuges or a timeline Iran should adhere to, but the one thing we can all agree on is mistakenly being left out—the Mullahs’ 36-year egregious human rights record.The barbaric crimes against women, the youth, journalists, dancers, musicians, Christians, Baha’is and others will...

Lausanne (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a dire warning Sunday about a possible nuclear accord with Iran as talks in Switzerland towards the outline of a deal intensified days before a deadline. He said the "Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis" was "dangerous for all of humanity" and that combined with Tehran's regional influence, a nuclear deal could allow Iran to "conquer" the Middle East.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said the United States should not be attempting to tell Israel how to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, and he wouldn’t do so if elected president. “Israel is a sovereign nation, and I trust the leaders of Israel to determine whether they want to adopt a one-state solution or a two-state solution,” Cruz said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The Obama administration has “demonstrated an arrogance that America’s going to dictate the terms of security in Israel. It’s not our place to do it,” Cruz said. …

In a tweet, Middle East reporter Laura Rozen discussed a friend’s meeting with Kerry at a Lausanne chocolate shop. “Friend of colleague ran into @JohnKerry at chocolate shop tdy. She said friends in #Iran are looking forward to deal. He said ‘inshallah,'” Rozen tweeted. “Inshallah,” for those of you not up on your Arabic, means “Allah willing.” “Inshallah,” of course, may come to be the 21st century version of Neville Chaimberlain’s “Peace in our time.” It’s clear that Kerry has been sent on a blatant appeasement mission that he seems to be carrying out flawlessly. It’s so bad that we’ve...

Saudi Arabia accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of hypocrisy on Sunday, telling an Arab summit that he should not express support for the Middle East while fuelling instability by supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. In a rare move, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced that a letter from Putin would be read out to the gathering in Egypt, where Arab leaders discussed an array of regional crises, including conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Libya. "We support the Arabs' aspirations for a prosperous future and for the resolution of all the problems the Arab world faces through peaceful means, without any...

WW100: When Jerusalem Met Gallipoli 100 Years Ago; When Turks Met Jews on the Battlefield Ottoman Imperial Archives Image image/mapWorld War I began in Europe in the summer of 1914 with major battles between the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary versus the Triple Alliance of the United Kingdom, France and Russia. The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) joined with the Central Powers and attacked the British at the Suez Canal in January 1915. In an attempt to put pressure on Germany and Turkey, Britain sent warships to the Dardanelle Straits in April 1915, planning sail up the narrow, 60-mile-long waterway...

If the Supreme Leader gets what he wants the prospect for war in the Middle East would increase immeasurably. The threat level to the U.S. and Israel would be off the charts. What Americans have a hard time understanding is that, for all the Iranian negotiators, the outcome of the nuclear arms deal that the United States is leading all comes down to just one man, Sayyed Ali-Khamenei, otherwise known as the Supreme Leader of Iran. In the 21st century, it is hard to comprehend that a nation could be ruled by a man whose powers supersede that nation’s president,...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with with US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency on Sunday described President Obama's Middle East policy as one of "willful ignorance," saying the administration needs a clearer strategy for dealing with conflicts emerging across the region. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said during an interview on "Fox News Sunday" that recent developments in the Middle East are moving in a bad direction for the United States, with Iran "clearly on the march" to influence events in a "regional sectarian war." “At the end of the day, we have just this incredible policy confusion — never mind what our strategy is to...

AMMAN, March 24. /TASS/. Jordan and Russia on Tuesday signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Jordan. According to a TASS correspondent, the document was signed by chief of Russia’s state-run corporation Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko and Jordan Atomic Energy Commission Chariman Khaled Toukan. "I would like to stress that Rosatom and the entire Russian nuclear sector take Jordan’s invitation to build its first nuclear plant as big trust," Kiriyenko said. He pledged that the Russian side would use "its entire experience to build the most state-of-the-art and safest nuclear plant." Apart from...

Obama is insisting on the creation of Palestine with a border separating it from Israel based on the ’67 lines plus swaps. In doing so he is ignoring UNSC resolution 242 which grants Israel the right to secure and recognized borders and does not demand a full retreat to the ’67 lines. He is also threatening to allow the UNSC to impose such borders on Israel thereby circumventing his oft stated insistence that all matters are to be negotiated between the parties. Ben-Dror Yemini, writing in YNET, which is left of center and Netanyahu's arch enemy, makes the case, "Given...

A close media aide to Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, has sought political asylum in Switzerland after travelling to Lausanne to cover the nuclear talks between Tehran and the West. Amir Hossein Motaghi, who managed public relations for Mr Rouhani during his 2013 election campaign, was said by Iranian news agencies to have quit his job at the Iran Student Correspondents Association (ISCA). He then appeared on an opposition television channel based in London to say he no longer saw any “sense” in his profession as a journalist as he could only write what he was told. “There are a...

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry cancelled plans to fly to Boston for a ceremony in honour of his late friend Edward Kennedy as talks on Iran's nuclear programme intensified in Switzerland, with two days left to a deadline. Kerry's spokeswoman said on Sunday he regretted missing the dedication ceremony for an institute named after the U.S. senator, who was a mentor to him. Officials close to the talks said the French and German foreign ministers, Laurent Fabius and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, were considering delaying a planned joint trip to Kazakhstan in order to focus on clearing...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign manager is predicting a wave of outside spending in future Israeli elections. "I think in every election campaign from this point onward, you'll see external groups slugging the market. It'll be very interesting," Netanyahu's top strategist, Aron Shaviv, told The Hill. "This precedent, I think that we're about to see in Israeli elections, is the same effect that Citizens United vs. FEC had in the United States," Shaviv said, referring to the controversial Supreme Court ruling that allowed nonprofit groups to make unlimited independent political expenditures. In light of the precedent, Shaviv is considering...

House Speaker John Boehner said Iran would not hold up its end of any agreement over its nuclear program, and that he was ready to ratchet up sanctions on the country if needed. Boehner said on CNN's state of the union that Iran's leaders "have no intention of keeping their word," and the fact that they are even negotiating is evidence current sanctions on Iran are working. Boehner opposes an agreement the Obama administration and other countries are negotiating to try to convince Iran to curtail its nuclear program in return for an easing of economic sanctions.