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Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Sunday accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of conspiring with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group. “It’s very clear. Because whenever we make advances in some place, they attack in order to undermine the army. It’s very clear,” Assad told the American Foreign Affairs magazine in excerpts of an interview that will be published in full on Monday. “That’s why some in Syria joke, how can you say that Al-Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force,” he added.

Germany has decided to stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia because of “instability in the region,” German daily Bild reported on Sunday. Weapons orders from Saudi Arabia have either been “rejected, pure and simple,” or deferred for further consideration, the newspaper said, adding that the information has not been officially confirmed. The decision was taken on Wednesday by the national security council, a government body that includes Chancellor Angela Merkel, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and seven other ministers, it said. …

Soon after becoming House Speaker in 2011, Republican John Boehner started running the traps on inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to a joint meeting of Congress. But when Barry Jackson, then Boehner’s chief-of-staff, checked with President Barack Obama’s top advisers, Jackson said he was left waiting a month only to get no response. Ultimately the Netanyahu speech went ahead in May but soon after Jackson faced the opposite problem: the White House had promised South Korea’s leadership an appearance before Congress, he said, without checking first with the speaker. None of these slights justify what seems like...

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

Official PA daily: Israel was behind the terror attacks in France because Israel "was the only one to benefit from them" Israeli Intelligence Service Mossad planned the attacks because Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted - to encourage Jewish immigration from Europe - to take "revenge on European governments... because of their positions on the Palestinian cause" Poll: 84.4% of Palestinians think "Israel behind the murder of French [citizens]"   Nan Jacques Zilberdik    Following the terror attacks against the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish store in which Muslim terrorists killed 17 people in France earlier this month, columnists writing...

the split began during a power struggle of who would lead Islam after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD. A conflict developed between those who wanted the growing religion headed by qualified leaders and those who believed authority belonged to the direct heirs of Mohammed. The Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, ruled as caliph for five years before being assassinated. His sons, Hassan and Hussein, were excluded from the succession and both were later killed. Their adherents evolved into the Shia, whose name derives from the term shi’atu Ali, Arabic for “partisans of Ali,”... Shia devotees would see the...

The reporting on the latest Obama-Netanyahu tiff has failed to explore a decisive geopolitical likelihood: Israel has calculated that Iran absolutely will not develop nuclear weapons during the remainder of the Obama administration. For those who closely follow the relationship between Israel and the United States, specifically the tumultuous rapport between Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, it was assumed that the “chickensh*t” fiasco this past October was the climax of the Obama administration’s frustrations with Netanyahu. This assumption was obliterated however when Netanyahu accepted an invitation this week from Speaker John Boehner to address a joint session...

President Obama used his State of the Union address to urge Americans not to fear terrorists: “We lead best, when we don’t let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents.” But his words reached Americans when the Gallup Poll notes that 40 percent of Americans are very or somewhat worried that they will become a victim of terrorism — a higher percentage than when Obama took office in 2009. They have reason for concern. From Day One, this administration has downplayed the terrorist threat from Islamic extremists. It declared the terrorist attack at Fort Hood,...

Writing for the online Politico newsmagazine, Ross argues that American allies in the region are growing more apprehensive over what they see as growing Iranian influence in the region. Former US peace envoy Dennis Ross (L), seen here with late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2000 Former US peace envoy Dennis Ross (L), seen here with late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2000. (photo credit:REUTERS) Dennis Ross, the veteran Mideast hand and former peace envoy, criticized his former boss, US President Barack Obama, for “not being tough enough” with Iran in light of the stalled nuclear talks and the recent...

The former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, has called on Israel’s leaders “to stay out of America’s politics” – just hours after he urged the United States to interfere in Israel’s politics, something he himself has been doing for years. The latest events began with John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. The New York Times quickly sought a comment from Indyk, who is constantly quoted by the news media since the conclusion of his singularly unsuccessful term as the Obama Administration’s chief envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “Netanyahu...

Thou shall not cross Dear Leader. With their gutter sniping failing to stop Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned March speech before Congress, White House aides are unloading their full arsenal of bile. “He spat in our face publicly, and that’s no way to behave,” one Obama aide told an Israeli newspaper. “Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price.” It is pointless to say petty threats do not become the Oval Office. Trying to instruct this White House on manners recalls what Mark Twain...

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California says that inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress during an Israeli election period is “highly inappropriate” and that imposing new sanctions on Iran at this time is “reckless and dangerous.” Feinstein’s statement to Haaretz comes against the backdrop of the growing backlash against Netanyahu’s upcoming March 3 speech to Congress, which is already causing some Democratic lawmakers to rethink their support for the Iran sanctions bill proposed by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey and Republican Senator Mark Kirk from Illinois. According to journalist Laura Rozen of Al-Monitor, Menendez is trying to...

A video distributed Saturday on the Internet showed what appears to be a Japanese hostage saying that a fellow Japanese captive had been executed and outlining a new militant demand for his release. In the video, the hostage, a man identified as Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist, appears to be holding a photo of his countryman, Haruna Yukawa, who has been beheaded. The case has drawn a great deal of attention in Japan and spawned a crisis for the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who had vowed to do what he could to save the two men. Abe said...

At least three gunmen were killed in clashes with Lebanese soldiers close to the border with Syria on Friday, a Lebanese security source said, in an area that has seen regular incursions from Islamist militants fighting in Syria's war. A group of gunmen launched a large-scale attack on an army outpost close to the village of Ras Baalbek, near Lebanon's eastern frontier with Syria, wounding at least five soldiers, and the army responded with artillery, the source said. It was not immediately clear which group the attackers belonged to but Syria-based jihadist groups such as al Qaeda's Nusra Front and...

In the wake of this weekend's Israeli strike in the Golan Heights, which killed Hezbollah operatives and an Iranian general, Sunday's comments by Syria's information minister are particularly illuminating. Omran Zoubi said the "cost of maintaining regional security is much lower than that of a huge deterioration that develops in a negative way," which can be read as an appeal for the Israelis to avoid taking things further. In contrast, officials from Hezbollah and have spoken openly about retaliation, something that used to threaten after Israeli strikes in the past. This demonstrates that the Syrian regime exists on paper, but...

Hank Sheinkopf, former adviser to ex-US President Bill Clinton during his election campaign from 1995 to 1996, spoke with Arutz Sheva about the complicated political relations between Israeli and American leaders. Video Hank Sheinkopf, former adviser to ex-US President Bill Clinton during his election campaign from 1995 to 1996, spoke with Arutz Sheva about the complicated political relations between Israeli and American leaders. Speaking about the tense relations between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama, Sheinkopf remarked that how the world feels about Netanyahu is not important to Israelis, whereas it is very important to American Jews...

Obama: Is he irrelevant, or an advocate for Iran-backed terror? Even as President Obama gave his State of the Union address to the joint chambers of Congress Tuesday night, another domino was falling in Iran’s line-up of nation-state influence. Yemen’s leadership was on the brink of capitulation just as Obama was gloating over a failed foreign policy as being effective. Others have already pointed out how facts of Yemen and Somalia’s chaos contradict the president’s previous glorying in those states as testaments of his policy’s success. His idea as to what qualifies as success appear to deviate from that of...

Remember how Richard Nixon told us to watch what he does, not what he says? Good advice. Well, Barack Obama — our POTUS who makes Nixon and Clinton seem like Diogenes — thinks like a postmodern agnostic, professes to be a Christian, but acts like a Shiite. During Obama’s presidency the influence of Ayatollah Khamenei’s Iranian Shiite regime has spread across the world like the proverbial wildfire, reaching from North Africa into Iraq, Lebanon (via Hezbollah), Syria (via Assad whose red line on chemical weapons famously faded into invisibility), Gaza (via improved relations with Hamas) and now into Yemen (via...

LONDON — It has consumed more than eight years of maneuvering, obstruction and a widow’s dogged legal campaign, fought often on a shoestring. But finally, on Tuesday, a public inquiry is set to begin its quest for an answer to the question that has driven the whole process: Why did Alexander V. Litvinenko have to die? On Nov. 1, 2006, Mr. Litvinenko, a former officer of the Soviet K.G.B. in self-exile in London and a vocal critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, sipped tea from a poisoned pot, took sick and died 22 days later. Only after his death did...

When Alberto Nisman’s body was found inside his Buenos Aires apartment with a bullet lodged in his head, questions immediately arose about the circumstances surrounding his death and the investigation he had been conducting into a 1994 car-bomb attack on an Argentinian Jewish center by Iranian terrorists that killed 85 people. "The Argentinian economy is in really dire straits, and they’re shut out of almost every foreign market, and their economic lifelines are drying up," Jason Marczak, deputy director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Latino. "The Argentinians were forced to look...