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The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog says Iran has nearly tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium over the last three months in violation of its deal with world powers, and is refusing to answer questions about three possible undeclared nuclear sites. VIENNA -- Iran has nearly tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium over the last three months in violation of its deal with world powers and is refusing to answer questions about three possible undeclared nuclear sites, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency made the statement in a confidential report distributed to member countries that was...

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said “a thousand no’s” Tuesday to the Mideast peace plan announced by President Donald Trump, which strongly favors Israel. “After the nonsense that we heard today we say a thousand no’s to the Deal of The Century,” Abbas said at a press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the Western-backed Palestinian Authority is headquartered. He said the Palestinians remain committed to ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a state with its capital in east Jerusalem. “We will not kneel and we will not surrender,” Abbas said, adding that the...

CAIRO - Egypt called on Tuesday on Palestinians and Israelis to carefully consider a peace plan announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, with a view to resuming negotiations. “Egypt calls on the two relevant parties to undertake a careful and thorough consideration of the U.S. vision to achieve peace and open channels of dialogue, under U.S. auspices, for the resumption of negotiations,” a statement said.

GAZA - The interim head of the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees on Thursday accused pro-Israel groups of lobbying foreign parliaments to stop donations, even as it struggled to recover from losing United States funding in 2018. Christian Saunders, in an interview with Reuters in his Gaza office, also said Israel was seeking to replace United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) services for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem with those of its own. UNRWA has faced budgetary difficulties since 2018, when the United States, its biggest donor, halted its annual aid of $360 million. The United States and...

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is considering a significant expansion of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, including dozens more ships, other military hardware and as many as 14,000 additional troops to counter Iran, U.S. officials said. The deployment could double the number of U.S. military personnel who have been sent to the region since the start of a troop buildup in May. President Trump is expected to make a decision on the new deployments as soon as this month, those officials said.

Fed on an anti-infidel diet from childhood, Pakistanis no matter where they are born, grow up ready for jehad. Even Muslims with a nominal Pakistani connection are beyond help. Pakistan is a country where the arrow of time is travelling backwards. In the 'Land of the Pure', Prime Minister Imran Khan promises to create a mythical seventh century Riyasat-e-Madina (1) yet Islamic demagogues such as Maulana Fazlur Rehman call him a Jewish agent. Rehman and hundreds of thousands of his frenzied followers are protesting nationwide, seeking Khan's resignation. With the corrupt, cowardly and jehadi generals of the Pakistan Army choreographing...

Pelosi and other senior members of Congress held talks in Jordan on Saturday with King Abdullah II and other top Jordanian officials. The U.S. delegation included the heads of key House committees including .. 'Eliot Engel', 'Bennie Thompson', 'Adam Schiff','Mac Thornberry'. Pelosi said in a statement the visit was at “a critical time for the security and stability of the region… With the deepening crisis in Syria after Turkey’s incursion, our delegation has engaged in vital discussions about the impact to regional stability, increased flow of refugees, and the dangerous opening that has been provided to ISIS, Iran and Russia.”

The US State Department website has deleted the Palestinian Authority from the list of countries and areas on its website. Until recently, 'Palestinians' appeared on the site under the name 'Palestinian Authority' and before that the 'Palestinian Territories'. Over the past year there has been a significant devaluation of the Palestinian status on the US side, with the State Department ordering to remove any reference that included the word 'occupied territories' in reference to the Palestinian Arabs. .....

The US justice department has issued a warrant to seize a detained Iranian oil tanker, a day after a judge in Gibraltar ordered it to be released. The Grace 1 supertanker, which is carrying 2.1m barrels of oil, was detained on 4 July on suspicion of illegally transporting oil to Syria. A last-minute legal attempt by the US to keep the tanker detained was rejected by Gibraltar on Thursday. Iran previously called the detention of Grace 1 an "illegal interception".

<p>Taliban fighters killed eight election commission employees on Saturday night inside a district centre in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, officials said.</p> <p>The employees of the Independent Election Commission were stationed at the government office in Maruf district to register voters when fighters of the hard line Islamist group launched an attack.</p>

Middle Eastern Christians have endured a long and violent history at the hands of radical Muslims. At the turn of the 20th century, Christians made up 20 percent of the population in the Middle East. Today, that number is only 3-5 percent. "Christians have been harassed in more countries than any other religious group and have suffered harassment in many of the heavily Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa," says the Pew Research Center's Katayoun Kishi. By 2050, it is estimated Christians will compose 3 percent or less of the population of the Middle East with Muslims...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chief executive and a managing partner of the collapsed Dubai private equity firm Abraaj Capital Ltd were arrested on U.S. charges that they defrauded their investors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a federal prosecutor said on Thursday. Abraaj founder and Chief Executive Arif Naqvi was arrested in the United Kingdom last Friday, while managing partner Mustafa Abdel-Wadood was arrested at a New York hotel on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Griswold said at a hearing in Manhattan federal court. Abdel-Wadood appeared at the hearing and pleaded not guilty to securities fraud, wire fraud...

Full title: DGCA lays down the law , says no Boeing 737 MAX aircraft will be allowed to enter, transit Indian airspace An official of aviation watchdog DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), on Wednesday, said that all Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in India will be grounded by 4 pm today.  According to news agency PTI, the regulator, which on Tuesday, decided to immediately ground the aircraft amid global concerns following the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people, including four Indians, shall ground all the Bowing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in India by 4 pm. The planes will...

President Donald Trump isolated himself from top allies and advisers with his unilateral decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, triggering a backlash in Washington and around the globe unlike any he has seen during past go-it-alone moves on foreign policy. At a White House meeting Thursday, Defense Secretary James Mattis handed Trump a blunt resignation letter that pointed to the president's failure to work with long-standing U.S. partners - and his empowerment of U.S. adversaries - as reasons for his departure. A fulminating phalanx of Republican hawks, led by onetime rival and now usually loyal ally Sen. Lindsey Graham...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — High above Yemen’s rebel-held city of Hodeida, a drone controlled by Emirati forces hovered as an SUV carrying a top Shiite Houthi rebel official turned onto a small street and stopped, waiting for another vehicle in its convoy to catch up. Seconds later, the SUV exploded in flames, killing Saleh al-Samad, a top political figure. The drone that fired that missile in April was not one of the many American aircraft that have been buzzing across the skies of Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001. It was Chinese.. Across the Middle East,...

...this time round, rejecting and violating U.S. sanctions may prove for China as well as the other signatories to be a trickier undertaking. Last time round, China and the other signatories were part of an international consensus that aimed to force Iran to accept restrictions on its nuclear program even if they at times circumvented the sanctions. China and other signatories are in the wake of the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions likely to be operating in a far more confrontational environment in which the subtext of Mr. Trump’s decision as well the positions of Saudi Arabia and Israel appears to...

BERLIN - Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet agreed on rules on Wednesday to allow a limited number of family members to join migrants in Germany, ending a long-standing dispute between the parties in her two-month old right-left coalition. The issue had dogged relations between Merkel’s conservative bloc and the Social Democrats (SPD) in the coalition talks and in government. There are also divisions among the conservatives, with the Bavarian CSU taking a harder line than Merkel’s CDU. Under the new rules, 1,000 close relatives of people with ‘subsidiary status’, who enjoy a lesser degree of protection than those granted full refugee...

It was well telegraphed in advance but that didn't make the punch of the US withdrawal from the Iran deal any less powerful. President Donald Trump has just sent an earthquake through the Middle East and risked alienating key European allies. Anyone who thinks there was a glimmer of optimism, and the door is left open for a new deal, wasn't really listening to what the President had just said. Virtually every aspect of the Iranian regime's foreign agenda was attacked. This was not just about the deal. This was about Iran's aggressive behaviour across the region. The problem with...

<p>This thread is a friendly collaborative place for FReepers to analyze information and share opinons. FReepers have a wide variety of reasons for investigating Q Anon content; this is not the appropriate place to criticize or badger those who choose to use some of their time in this manner.</p>

He may be the most effective presidential Middle East envoy in decades, but he doesn’t get much respect from the press. It is hardly an understatement to say that Jared Kushner, a baby-faced real-estate magnate and presidential son-in-law, didn’t send expectations soaring when he was named to supervise Israel-Palestine peace efforts. Lacking years of diplomatic experience and advanced degrees in Near Eastern politics, his appointment seemed more like favoritism than a confirmation of expertise, more a presidential gift to his daughter than a strategic decision. What little coverage Kushner has received has varied from skeptical to scornful. And, tellingly, he...