Iranian police said Monday they had arrested people behind protests that broke out last week in the southwest of the country, state news agency IRNA reported. "All the perpetrators of an illegal and norm-breaking gathering in Behbahan (city) were identified and arrested," Khuzestan...

Iran on Monday executed a former translator convicted of spying for the US and Israel, including helping to locate a top Iranian general killed later by the Americans, the judiciary said. The killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport in January...

Abu Sleiman has been a public van driver for the past 15 years, taking the same lengthy route every day from Wadi Khalid in Lebanon's northernmost Akkar province along the Syrian border to the Cola Bridge in Beirut. Like other public transport drivers in Lebanon, he had to stop working and...

The Iranian judiciary has suspended the executions of three men linked to anti-government protests in November, one of their attorneys, Babak Paknia, said on Sunday. Rights activists had said the death sentences were aimed at intimidating future protesters. With hardship mounting...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial will resume in earnest in January, with thrice-weekly evidentiary hearings set to begin then, a Jerusalem court decided Sunday. It was not immediately clear if Netanyahu would be required to be present at each hearing, although...

Sudanese forces arrested around 160 people on the border with Libya who were en-route to the war-torn neighboring country to work as "mercenaries," a state-linked paramilitary group said Sunday. "The joint security forces stationed at the Sudanese-Libyan border arrested 160 people who were...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a surprise visit to Hagia Sofia on Sunday just days before the first Muslim prayers are due to be held at the Istanbul landmark since it was reconverted to a mosque last week. In a lightning visit billed as an inspection, Erdogan took stock of the...

Israeli police detained Jerusalem governor Adnan Ghaith on Sunday in a raid on his home, according to a local NGO. Police raided Ghaith’s home in Silwan neighborhood in Jerusalem and took him into custody, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center said in a statement. It was not yet clear the...

Iran's foreign minister Sunday stressed that Iran-Iraq relations would not be "shaken" ahead of the Iraqi prime minister's planned visit this week to regional rival Saudi Arabia. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's visit to Baghdad was the first since the American assassination...

An explosion occurred at a power plant in Iran’s central Isfahan province on Sunday but there were no casualties, the official IRNA news agency reported. The blast was caused by the wear and tear of a transformer at the power plant in Islamabad, the managing director of the Isfahan power...

Turkish police said Sunday they had detained 27 people with links to the Islamic State militant group whom they suspect were preparing for an attack. Police said they had learned that the people had been ordered to carry out an attack in retaliation for social media posts that insulted...

A United Nations agency acknowledged Sunday that a US-sought oil tanker "hijacked" off the coast of the United Arab Emirates after allegedly smuggling Iranian crude oil is back in Iranian waters. The International Labor Organization said that the MT Gulf Sky was hijacked July 5, citing its...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial resumed on Sunday, as the long-serving leader faces mounting discontent over his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Netanyahu is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of scandals in which he is...

The Libyan army dispatched several military vehicles Saturday to the west of Sirte province. A large number of military vehicles reached Abugrein as part of Operation Paths to Victory, that was launched to liberate the central city of Sirte and Jufra from warlord Khalifa Haftar’s...

Three more bodies were recovered on Saturday from a lake in eastern Turkey where a boat sank late last month, carrying dozens of irregular migrants. Rescue teams continue efforts to recover the remaining bodies from Lake Van, where a boat carrying up to 60 people sank on June 27....

Iran has sent the black box of the Ukrainian passenger jet that its armed forces mistakenly shot down in January to France for reading, an Iranian semi-official news agency said Saturday. Iran accidentally shot down the Boeing 737-800, killing all 176 people aboard, after mistaking it...

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi will travel to Saudi Arabia and Iran back-to-back next week, carefully balancing ties to regional rivals in his first foreign trip as premier, officials said Saturday. Baghdad has often found itself caught in the tug-of-war between Riyadh, Tehran...

Turkey sent between 3,500 and 3,800 paid Syrian fighters to Libya over the first three months of the year, the US Defense Department’s inspector general concluded in a new report, its first to detail Turkish deployments that helped change the course of Libya's war. The report comes as...

Lebanon’s financial adviser Lazard will see if a government financial rescue plan can be adjusted to reach a compromise workable for the International Monetary Fund, two sources said on Friday, after the plan hit resistance from politicians, banks and the central bank. The plan, which...

Iran reported 183 more fatalities from the novel coronavirus on Friday, raising the nationwide death toll to 13,791. A further 2,379 people tested positive for COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, bringing the overall count to 269,440, Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said. She...