Iran said its novel coronavirus caseload surpassed one million on Thursday, as the authorities consider easing restrictions in many parts of the Middle East's hardest hit country. The Islamic republic had recorded 49,348 Covid-19 deaths and 1,003,494 infections since announcing its first...

 The United States on Thursday imposed fresh Iran-related sanctions, blacklisting an entity and an individual as Washington continues to ramp up pressure on Tehran during U.S. President Donald Trump’s final months in office. The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement said that it had...

Iran will fully comply with a 2015 deal aimed at preventing it from developing nuclear weapons if both the United States and Europe honour their original commitments, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Thursday. U.S. President Donald Trump quit the pact in 2018, saying it...

Hundreds of civil servants yesterday demonstrated in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, in the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq, demanding the government pay their delayed salaries, Anadolu news agency reported. Eyewitnesses said the employees have not received their salaries for two months and...

There is a good chance that the European Union and Britain could strike a Brexit trade deal within days, Ireland said on Thursday, as the two sides race to avoid a turbulent climax to the Brexit divorce in less than four weeks. The United Kingdom leaves the EU's orbit on Dec. 31, when a...

Turkey’s health minister has announced a vaccination plan starting with an experimental "inactivated vaccine" later this month to combat the COVID-19 pandemic amid a surge in infections and deaths. Fahrettin Koca had previously announced an agreement with Chinese biopharmaceutical company...

Lebanon will not have enough hospital beds to cope with increasing COVID-19 cases, the health minister in the caretaker government warned on Thursday, saying compliance with a two-week lockdown that ended this week had been patchy. In a Tweet, Hamad Hasan said cases were on the rise and...

All armed elements have left the Sinjar district in Iraq's northern Nineveh province, the country's Joint Operations Command claimed on Thursday. "According to the agreement between the central government and the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government [KRG], the federal forces are responsible...

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake was recorded in Turkey’s southeastern Siirt province on Thursday morning, according to the country's disaster management agency. The tremor occurred at a depth of 14.02 kilometers (8.7 miles) in the Kurtalan district at 08:45 a.m. local time (0545GMT), the...

Iran's watchdog body approved a law on Wednesday that obliges the government to halt U.N. inspections of its nuclear sites and step up uranium enrichment beyond the limit set under Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal if sanctions are not eased in a month. In retaliation for the killing last week of...

Israel edged closer on Wednesday towards a fourth national election in two years after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main governing partner, Benny Gantz, backed an opposition move to dissolve parliament. Parliament gave preliminary approval to a dissolution bill, but the legislation...

Lebanon wants maritime border talks with Israel to succeed and difficulties that surfaced in the last session round can be overcome, President Michel Aoun told a U.S. mediator on Wednesday, after the latest round was postponed. The negotiations between the old foes were launched in October,...

US President-elect Joe Biden will insist Iran agrees to new demands if it wants the US to return to a nuclear deal and lift sanctions, The New York Times said Wednesday. The Times said the Biden administration would seek to extend the duration of "restrictions on Iran's production of...

 Israel handed over a backlog of billions of shekels in tax money to the Palestinian Authority Wednesday, both sides said, in another sign of warming ties between the sides after the US presidential election victory of Joe Biden. The taxes, managed by Israel under interim peace accords...

In September, a senior Iranian commander made an unannounced visit to one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites in the southern Iraqi city of Kerbala. Hassan Pelarak, a top officer in the Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force, had recently been sanctioned by the U.S. for weapons smuggling. He...

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday rejected a bill approved by parliament that would have suspended U.N. inspections and boosted uranium enrichment, saying it was "harmful" to diplomatic efforts aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear deal and easing U.S. sanctions. The tug-of-war...

President Emmanuel Macron will seek to revive a French initiative on Lebanon when he hosts an international aid conference on Wednesday, but with the country’s fractious political class bickering, hopes of a breakthrough appear slim. Four months after a massive explosion that killed more...

Occupied Palestine is facing “grim realities” as it confronts the decreasing possibility of a negotiated settlement to end the conflict with Israel, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday. “I address you today with a deep sense of worry about the grim realities in the Occupied...

The leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, on Tuesday tested positive for the novel coronavirus, which is spreading rapidly across the Palestinian enclave, the Islamist group said. "Yahya Sinwar, the head of the political bureau of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, was infected with the coronavirus...

A 40-strong Bahraini delegation arrived in Israel Tuesday for two days of talks on boosting economic cooperation and tourism after the two countries normalised relations in September. The Gulf state of Bahrain followed the United Arab Emirates in signing up to a US-brokered deal to...