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Saudi Arabia has announced that it is severing diplomatic ties with Iran following Saturday's attack of its embassy in Tehran during protests. Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi foreign minister, made the announcement on Sunday as the foreign ministry announced that it would ask the Iranian diplomatic mission to leave the kingdom within 48 hours. The Saudi foreign ministry has also announced that the staff of its diplomatic mission have been evacuated, and are now on their way back to Saudi.

BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday and gave all Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the kingdom, as escalating tensions over the execution of an outspoken Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia marked a new low in relations between the two Middle Eastern powers. The surprise move, announced in a televised news conference by Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, followed harsh criticism by Iranian leaders of the Saudi execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran by protestors in response. Mr. Jubeir said that the kingdom would not allow...

A series of Iranian officials vowed on Friday to expand Tehran's missile capabilities, a challenge to the United States which has threatened to impose new sanctions even as the vast bulk of its measures against Iran are due to be lifted under a nuclear deal. "As long as the United States supports Israel we will expand our missile capabilities," the Revolutionary Guards' second-in-command, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. "We don't have enough space to store our missiles. All our depots and underground facilities are full," he said in Friday Prayers in Tehran....

Saudi Arabia's mass execution of 47 prisoners — including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr — triggered unrest across the Middle East on Saturday, particularly in Iran, where protesters stormed and ransacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Photos and video footage posted on Twitter by Iranian journalist Sobhan Hassanvand showed a mob of angry demonstrators smashing windows and setting fire to the Saudi diplomatic outpost in the Iranian capital. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi also condemned the executions. "I'm shocked & saddened at Sheikh Nimr's execution by Saudi authorities," he wrote on Twitter. "Peaceful opposition is a fundamental right. Repression does...

Saudi Arabia has faced global condemnation after it was revealed on 2 January, that 47 people at prisons around the country, including 56-year-old al Nimr, were executed. Most of the detainees had been captured after a series of attacks by al Qaeda between 2003 and 2006. Mr Nimr, who was a driving force behind the anti-government protests, was found guilty of a number of terrorism-related charges in 2014, including incitement of vandalism and sectarian strife, failing to obey or pledge allegiance to King Abdullah (then monarch of Saudi Arabia), calling for the collapse of the state, and insulting relatives and...

Iranian protesters ransacked and set fire to part of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran on Saturday after Saudi Arabia executed an outspoken Shiite cleric who had criticized the kingdom’s treatment of its Shiite minority. Protesters broke furniture and smashed windows in an annex to the embassy, said a witness who was reached by telephone from Tehran. The protesters also set fire to the room, said the witness, who would provide only his first name, Abolfazl, because he had been involved in the protest. The police arrived and cleared the embassy grounds of protesters and extinguished the fire, he said.

Turkey must accept that it needs Israel, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday, as the two countries seek to thrash out a deal on normalizing ties. NATO member Turkey was a key regional ally of Israel until the two countries fell out over the deadly storming by Israeli commandos in 2010 of a Turkish aid ship, the Mavi Marmara, bound for Gaza. AFP reports that Erdogan further raised hackles in Israel with his sometimes inflammatory rhetoric towards the Jewish State. But the atmosphere has transformed following the revelation last month the two sides were making progress in secret talks to...

Iranian protesters broke into the Saudi embassy in Tehran after launching several Molotov cocktails into the building. The rally in front of the embassy was triggered by Riyadh’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Vatican City (AFP) - The Vatican's first accord with the Palestinians -- an agreement that Israel has attacked as counter-productive to the Middle East peace process -- has come into force, the Holy See announced Saturday. The accord was signed in June, just over two years after the Roman Catholic Church recognised the Palestinian territories as a sovereign state in February 2013. The accord covers the operation of the Church in areas of the Holy Land under Palestinian control but its significance has been seen in broader terms as a symbol of growing international backing for a Palestinian state. "With...

Tehran (AFP) - Iran's Revolutionary Guards have so many missiles they don't know where to hide them, a senior commander said at Friday prayers, after the United States threatened to impose fresh sanctions. "We lack enough space in our stockpiles to house our missiles," said General Hossein Salami, the Guards' deputy, as a row with the US over Iran's ballistic missile programme deepened. "Hundreds of long tunnels are full of missiles ready to fly to protect your integrity, independence and freedom," he told worshippers in Tehran, promising to never "stop developing our defence deterrent". Iranian state television aired in October...

A day after reports that US President Barack Obama is planning new sanctions on companies taking part in Iran's ballistic missile program, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani came out swinging Thursday, giving an order to escalate the missile program. Rouhani issued a decree to Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan to accelerate Iran's production of "various types of missiles," reports the Iranian state-run PressTV. According to the report Wednesday, the potential new sanctions would target about 12 companies and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates for their suspected role in developing Iran's ballistic missile program, which...

They joined to fight Israel in Lebanon, but after multiple combat tours in the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, and around Damascus, Hezbollah reservists tell The Daily Beast that they are no longer willing to die in Syria's unending, bloody civil war. As a result of their refusal to continue volunteering to prop up the embattled government of Bashar al-Assad, they say that the Shia Party of God has cut off the money they were accustomed to receiving: reservist paychecks and permanent family benefits packages. What other consequences there may be remain to be seen. Imad, as we'll call...

Russia has struck a deal with Egypt to deliver 46 Kamov Ka-52K navalized attack helicopters, the director-general of the state-run Russian Helicopters aircraft maker said Wednesday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Ka-52Ks were designed for French-made Mistral helicopter carriers that were to join the Russian Navy last year, before France cancelled the deal over Ukraine. The warships are now being bought by Cairo. "In the outgoing year, new contracts were signed with Russian and foreign helicopter users," Russian Helicopters Director-General Alexander Mikheev said in a statement published in the corporate magazine. He added that a major sale of Kamov naval helicopters were...

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz has claimed that the Islamic State (Daesh) militants are Israeli soldiers and the Saudi-led 34-nation military alliance of Islamic countries will defeat it. The statement came after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the secretive leader of the terror group, called for an uprising in Saudi Arabia and pledged to attack Israel, in an audio recording released Saturday and attributed to him, AFP reported.Terming the extremist group's threat to attack Israel a 'lie', Aziz alleged that IS is a part of the Israeli army.

Leading a new wave of incitement, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction has called on Palestinian children to "water (the ground) with blood" to destroy Israel. Security Forces official spokesperson Adnan Al-Damiri put a post on Facebook last week from the Fatah Shabiba youth movement addressed to Palestinian children, as translated and revealed by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) on Tuesday. "Teach your children to love the land; Teach them that we live a life of suffering; Teach them that there is a seed in the ground; If they water it with blood, a revolution will flower; Teach them...

Border Police officers came under fire by Arab terrorists on Tuesday night near Beit Horon in Samaria, to the northwest of Jerusalem. Reportedly the officers identified several Arab terrorists armed with guns driving in a car adjacent to the village of Tira along Highway 443, in a section of the road in Samaria to the northwest of the capital. The officers are said to have approached the terrorists to check them, but one of the terrorists opened fire. In response the soldiers shot back back, although the attackers were able to escape in their car. No soldiers were wounded in...

Surging Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz is laying out what would be the most aggressive first day in office ever for a new president, starting with the elimination of "every single illegal and unconstitutional" executive action taken by President Obama.In an epilogue to his father Rafael Cruz's upcoming autobiography, the Texas senator also said that he would rip up Obama's controversial deal with Iran, open an investigation into Planned Parenthood's abortion practice, end the IRS's "persecution of religious liberty," and shift the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem."All of that is on day one. It is an example of...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday said Iran made “significant progress” in keeping up its end of the nuclear deal with world powers, after it was reported that the Islamic Republic sent a major shipment of low-enriched uranium materials to Russia, AFP reports. Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told the local ISNA news agency, "The fuel exchange process has taken place." The Russian foreign ministry confirmed the report, according to AFP. SNA's report said Iran had sent 8.5 tons of low-enriched nuclear material to Russia and received "around 140 tons of natural uranium in...

Concerning the war on terror, or as the Obama administration calls it, "overseas contingency operations," Americans don't feel it's going well. In fact, a new CNN/ORC poll found that more Americans "are more likely to say that terrorists are winning the war against the United States than they have been at any point since the September 11 attacks." Moreover, 74 percent are not satisfied by how the war on terror is going, with three percent saying they're very satisfied (who are these people?). Sixty percent disapprove of the way Obama's been handling the issue of terrorism, while 52 percent disapprove of...