U.S. acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Monday he had approved sending a carrier strike group and bombers to the Middle East because of indications of a “credible threat by Iranian regime forces,” but did not provide any details on the underlying intelligence. U.S. national...

Wednesday marks a year to the day since US President Donald Trump dramatically withdrew from the 2015 agreement between Tehran and world powers on Iran's nuclear programme. But it is the UN's Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has had the...

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday the United States has seen activity from Iran that indicated a possible “escalation,” one day after the United States said it would send a carrier strike group to the Middle East to counter a “credible threat by Iranian regime forces.” “We...

Turkey’s High Election Board started evaluating on Monday an appeal by President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party to annul and re-run elections in Istanbul that saw the opposition win control of the country’s largest city, local TV broadcasters said. The main opposition Republican People’s Party...

Iran may announce retaliatory moves against the United States on the one-year anniversary of the U.S. pullout from the nuclear deal Wednesday, the semi-official news agency ISNA reported. The U.S. unilaterally withdrew on May 8, 2018 from the 2015 multilateral deal known as the Joint...

The grandparents of two children stranded with their French jihadist mother at a camp in Kurdish-held Syria are to file a lawsuit Monday at Europe's top rights court over France's refusal to allow them home, lawyers said. It is the latest challenge to the French government's opposition to...

A state of cautious calm prevailed in the Gaza Strip on Monday, two days after an Israeli military onslaught against the blockaded territory left 25 Palestinians dead -- including two infants and three women -- and scores more injured. On Saturday and Sunday, the Israeli military pounded...

Israel will resume gas production from offshore Tamar field after a ceasefire brought an end to a surge in violence in the Gaza Strip, the energy ministry said on Monday. Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz had frozen operations at Tamar, Israel’s main natural gas source, on Sunday when the...

The United States said Sunday it is deploying a carrier strike group and bombers to the Middle East in response to troubling "indications and warnings" from Iran and to show it will retaliate with "unrelenting force" to any attack. With tensions already high between Washington and Tehran, a...

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday threw his support behind Israel amid ongoing airstrikes in the blockaded Gaza Strip. "Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens," Trump...

Some 320 sites across the blockaded Gaza Strip were targeted since Saturday by the Israeli army, according to a statement. Avichay Adraee, spokesman of the Israeli army claimed that reconnaissance points, underground warehouses and military centers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were targeted....

Rockets from Gaza killed three people in an Israeli city while five Palestinian militants died on Sunday in surging cross-border fighting that included a return by Israel to singling out enemy commanders for attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered the military to...

Iran has mobilized all its resources to sell oil in a “grey market”, bypassing U.S. sanctions that Tehran sees as illegitimate, state media quoted Deputy Oil Minister Amir Hossein Zamaninia as saying on Sunday. The United States, which last year withdrew from a 2015 Iran nuclear deal with...

Israel killed a Hamas commander in the Gaza Strip on Sunday in what the military described as a targeted strike and Palestinians said was the first such action since the 2014 war in the Palestinian enclave. A military statement said that Hamed Ahmed Abed Khudri had been responsible for...

Turkey on Sunday dismissed US threats of sanctions if it went ahead with a Russian missile purchase, saying it would not renege on a pledge to Moscow. Washington has warned its NATO ally for months that Ankara's adoption of Russian S-400 missile technology alongside US F-35 fighters would...

Israeli airstrikes killed four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, including a baby and her pregnant mother, as militants fired over 200 rockets at Israel in a major escalation of violence. The health ministry in Gaza said in a statement that Falestine Abu Arar, 37, had died...

Turkey called on the international community to act on the "disproportionate actions" by Israel in Gaza, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Sunday, after Israeli airstrikes hit a building where Turkey's Anadolu state news agency is located. Gaza fighters fired more than 250 rockets into...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he had ordered the military to keep up "massive strikes" in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, as an escalation entered its second day. "I instructed the [military] this morning to continue its massive strikes on terror...

Washington is considering blacklisting the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, but experts warn the move would risk radicalising its members and further destabilising the Arab world. A grassroots Islamist movement with affiliates in several countries including Turkey's ruling...

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday called for the opposition's local election victory in Istanbul to be declared invalid and the vote re-run, increasing the pressure on the country's electoral authorities. "Clearly, there were irregularities and corruption," Erdogan said in...