After months of battlefield stalemate in Syria , a flurry of reports from Washington, Jerusalem, Amman and the Gulf suggests a major new clandestine effort is under way to open up a "southern front" against the regime of Bashar al-Assad . Central to the mooted plan is a renewed...

 Israel said it intercepted a ship Wednesday carrying an Iranian shipment of advanced rockets bound for Palestinian militants, claiming it proved Tehran could not be trusted in international nuclear talks. The announcement came hours after Israel said it struck two Hezbollah...

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon urged on Monday for the need to re-launch the Syrian peace process, stressing that Damascus in particular must return to Geneva with a more “constructive position,” Agence France-Presse reported. The U.N. secretary general calling to reinstate the peace...

Syrian troops seized control Monday of a village near the strategic rebel bastion of Yabrud as they pushed closer to the town near the border with Lebanon, state television said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, meanwhile, said the army, backed by Lebanon’s...