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U.S. officials have confirmed to Fox News Thursday that a U.S. Navy warship intercepted Iranian-made weapons from a vessel in the Arabian Sea earlier this week. Crew members from the USS Normandy seized a huge cache of weapons from a dhow – a small vessel with lateen sails – on Sunday while conducting maritime security operations in the U.S. Central area of operations. The weapons and weapon components were intended for the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to officials.

The current feud between Egypt/Turkey has caused many to draw comparisons between how the two states conduct their policies in the ever-turbulent region of the MEIn its response to Turkey’s provocative practices, Egypt has maintained a policy of resilience and followed the guidelines of international law while at the same time showing a firm stance towards the acts of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan has deliberately and repeatedly insulted Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi at forums and in speeches using ad hominem tactics. From the way Erdogan has described him, it might have been thought that Al-Sisi was standing for election...

SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT: Some Arab countries are trying to get the Jews they forced out to return FEBRUARY 7, 2020 BY BARENAKEDISLAM More than 850,000 Jews lived in Arab countries in the 20th century. With the creation of Israel in 1948, all but a few thousand Jews were forced to leave the Arab countries where they had lived for generations and centuries. But today, there is a palpable longing in most Arab states for the Jews to return. Many believe that only with a Jewish presence will their countries blossom and develop as they did in the past. World Israel News...

Four US Senators, including Ted Cruz, penned a letter on February 6 to Jack Dorsey asking him to ban Iranian leadership from using Twitter as part of the US sanctions against Iran. Republican senators led by Ted Cruz in a letter Thursday suggested Twitter may be violating U.S. sanctions by letting Iranian leaders maintain accounts, which they asked company CEO Jack Dorsey to ban. The big picture: Twitter has become a major political target for Cruz and other Republicans, who claim the company and other Silicon Valley giants are biased against conservatives and the Trump administration. "While the First Amendment...

When Syria’s civil war erupted, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) recruited, trained, and deployed thousands of Shi’ite fighters to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Among them was the Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised mainly of Afghans from the country's Shi'ite Hazara minority. From 2011, the IRGC recruited thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders and covertly drafted hundreds of Shi'a inside Afghanistan. The majority of Muslims in Afghanistan are Sunni, but around 15 percent of its population -- mainly Hazara -- are Shi’a with religious links to the Shi'ite majority in Iran. With the...

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the U.S. at his direction has conducted a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen that killed Qassim al-Rimi, an al-Qaida leader who claimed responsibility for last year's deadly shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola, where a Saudi aviation trainee killed three American sailors. Al-Rimi is a founder of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The affiliate has long been considered the global network’s most dangerous branch for its attempts to carry out attacks on the U.S. mainland. Trump said the U.S. and its allies are safer as a result of his death. “We will continue to protect...

 NATIONAL SECURITY & DEFENSE    Issued on: February 6, 2020   At the direction of President Donald J. Trump, the United States conducted a counterterrorism operation in Yemen that successfully eliminated Qasim al-Rimi, a founder and the leader of al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and a deputy to al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.  Rimi joined al-Qa’ida in the 1990s, working in Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden.  Under Rimi, AQAP committed unconscionable violence against civilians in Yemen and sought to conduct and inspire numerous attacks against the United States and our forces.  His death further degrades AQAP and the global al-Qa’ida...

President Trump has just laid out a visionary plan for achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Rather than trying to reconcile the fundamentally conflicting priorities of the two sides, he came up with a practical solution that reflects realities on the ground in the fairest way possible. Every American president since Lyndon Johnson has tried — and failed — to resolve the conflict, usually by sitting down with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to negotiate toothless agreements that have done nothing to ease tensions or prevent bloodshed. These well-intentioned efforts all made the same fatal mistake: they treated the Israeli...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that he has decided to severe all relations with Israel and the US in protest against President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled plan for Mideast peace. “We have informed the Israelis and Americans of this decision through two letters,” Abbas said in a speech at an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo.

Go back over 40 years, to the start of Iran’s long conflict with the United States. On April 1, 1979, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had returned to Iran from exile to assume command of the revolt, became Supreme Leader in December of that year. His rise was accelerated by the seizure on Nov. 4 of 52 American diplomats and citizens, and citizens of other countries, at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The hostage crisis became the means by which the Ayatollah crushed political opponents in Iran. Dealing with the hostage taking became...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of a number of top Democrats to rip into President Trump’s decision to expand the travel ban to include six more countries on Friday -- with Pelosi describing it as “discrimination disguised as policy.” “The Trump administration’s expansion of its outrageous, un-American travel ban threatens our security, our values and the rule of law," she said in a statement. "The sweeping rule, barring more than 350 million individuals from predominantly African nations from traveling to the United States, is discrimination disguised as policy." [cut] The initial seven countries have restrictions on both immigrant and...

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s president stepped in to appoint a new prime minister after the Parliament failed to do so for two months, leaving the country largely rudderless at a time of multiple political crises. The premier, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, is hardly a new face — he is a former member of Parliament and former minister of communications. But he is not tarnished by the corruption allegations that dog many other Iraqi political figures. In his first comments upon accepting the nomination, Mr. Allawi paid homage to the anti-government protesters who have been out on the streets since October and he...

Former Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once said the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Within minutes of President Trump proposing his Middle East Peace Plan, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had rejected the plan with “a thousand no’s” coupled with a string of epithets rarely seen in international diplomacy.This abject lack of vision and leadership by Palestinian President Abbas is tragic, for the children and grandchildren of Palestinians and Israelis alike.The state of Israel comprises a minuscule portion of land in the Middle East, yet it has become a global center of democracy, culture, commerce, and innovation....

The United Nations special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has called for immediate de-escalation as a drastic surge in fighting threatens to exacerbate the country's long-running war and further complicate a fragile peace process. Some say it might jeopardise two years of efforts by the UN negotiators to secure peace between Houthi rebels and the UN-recognised government. The government has been fighting the rebels since 2014, when they overran the capital Sanaa. The conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead and triggered what the UN says is the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Al Jazeera's Mohammed al-Attab reports.

The United States carried out an airstrike in January that killed a leader of Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen after months of tracking him, according to current and former government officials. Qassim al-Rimi, 41, was killed in the January strike but officials had been waiting to confirm the information before making public statement, the New York Times reports. The Yemen branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has been keen to attack the U.S. and Europe. Confirmation of al-Rimi's death would mean a significant blow for the group.

The United States is working to get the Iraqi government's permission to put Patriot missile defense systems in the country to protect U.S. forces there from possible Iranian attacks, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday. “One of the things we need to do is make sure we have permission from the host government, and that’s one of the matters we have to work on and work through,” Esper told reporters at a Pentagon press conference. “We need the permission of the Iraqis.” The U.S. military did not have Patriots deployed at al-Asad airbase in Iraq, which houses American troops, during...

For the fourth time in recent weeks we have an upwards revision of the number of Americans injured in the Iranian missile strike at the Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq on January 8th. First the number was 11, then it was 34 and then it was 50. But now the number is 64..... The United States lifting sanctions against a unit of a Chinese company COSCO..... The impeachment trial of President Trump rolling forward on Newsdump Friday with a vote to not call any witnesses.... A woman who figured prominently in the House impeachment inquiry is retiring..... The United States...

The November 2019 uprising of the Iranian people in 191 cities that began under the pretext of protesting rising gas prices showcased the dislike of the Iranian people for a regime marked by repression, discrimination, looting, and corruption. The November uprising was a strategic blow to the regime and was instrumental in cornering it internationally. The killing of Qasem Soleimani, too, was a serious blow to the regime's credibility beyond its borders. The mullahs employed an array of propaganda tactics to portray Soleimani as a national hero and organized funeral ceremonies in different cities. By magnifying Soleimani's loss, the regime's...

For the second straight year, U.S. Navy veteran Michael White spent his birthday suffering in a horrible Iranian prison. The Iranian regime must release all American and foreign hostages!

Audio message from spokesman says focus is now on ‘fighting the Jews and reclaiming what they have stolen from the Muslims’; urges sabotage of Trump peace plan The Islamic State group vowed Monday to shift its focus from the remnants of its “caliphate” toward making Israel the main target of its attacks. It also called to sabotage a peace plan US President Donald Trump is due to unveil, according to a purported audio message from its spokesman. Abu Hamza al-Quraishi said IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi encourages the group’s fighters to launch “a new phase” and vowed major operations...