US President Donald Trump will seek to rebuild relations with the Muslim world on his first foreign trip starting Saturday in Saudi Arabia as political scandals mount at home. Trump can expect a warm reception when he arrives in the oil-rich kingdom for talks with King Salman, but the...

President Hassan Rouhani has an unbeatable lead in Iran's presidential election, an Iranian official source told Reuters on Saturday, citing an early unofficial tally, and is set to defeat his hardline rival Ebrahim Raisi and win a second term. In a briefing for reporters, interior ministry...

By Jonathan Spyer ( Foreign Policy )- On my last night in Damascus, some younger members of the Information Ministry-sponsored delegation in which I was taking part decided to have a drink. It was late April, and the bars and restaurants were doing good business in the cool and breezy...

U.S. President Donald Trump arrives in Saudi Arabia Saturday on his first foreign trip that will be closely watched in capitals the world over. From Riyadh to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Rome, Brussels and Sicily, Donald Trump left a swirl of domestic woes behind. Trump’s extraordinarily dense...

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces took Friday three villages from the Islamic State east of Raqaa city after heavy clashes with  the radical group, activists said. Two villages left east of al-Balikh River under ISIS control. Its fall means all eastern...

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- The last batch of Waer neighborhood’s evacuees to leave the last rebel stronghold in Homs city on Saturday, heading northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, as Russia's military police entered al-Waer Friday due to an evacuation deal reached in April, local reporter said....

Yemen's armed Houthi movement said on Friday it had fired a ballistic missile towards the Saudi capital Riyadh, just ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, but the claim could not immediately be confirmed. The Iran-allied Houthis launched a Burkan-1 missile, a...

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura ended four days of Syria talks on Friday, saying there had been "incremental progress" and he planned to reconvene negotiations in June. But the warring sides still showed no sign of wanting to be in the same room, let alone on the same page in terms of...

A pro-regime convoy that was struck by U.S.-led warplanes inside Syria this week likely was directed by Iran, Pentagon chief Jim Mattis said Friday. The strike on the convoy heading toward a coalition garrison near the Jordanian border was "necessitated by offensive movement with offensive...

Iraq's president said the scale of destruction in Mosul is "horrendous" and that his country will need help from investors and international donors to rebuild its second-largest city. Iraqi troops backed by a U.S.-led coalition have been advancing in Mosul since the fall, pushing back ISIS...

The Trump administration plans to announce $110 billion in advanced military equipment sales and training to Saudi Arabia this weekend as President Donald Trump visits the country, officials said Friday. U.S. officials familiar with the package said it would include Abrams tanks, combat...

A suicide car bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint on a highway near oilfields in Iraq's southern province of Basra on Friday, police sources said. Several people were killed in the blast at the Rumeila checkpoint, including two soldiers and a number of civilians in a bus, the sources...

Syrian man has been convicted in Germany of membership in a terrorist organization for serving in ISIS in his homeland and later helping plan an attack in Berlin that was never carried out. Twenty-year-old Shaas al-Mohammad was sentenced under youth guidelines to five years in prison on...

Before voting had even concluded in Iran's presidential election on Friday, the head of the opposition campaign complained of multiple "infractions" and called for an intervention by authorities. The campaign chief for hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi said there had been "propaganda actions by...

Cholera has killed two people in the Kenyan capital this week and another five are receiving treatment in hospital, a Nairobi county public health official said on Friday. The diarrheal disease which is carried in food and water tainted by human faeces can kill within hours unless treated...

Syria's warring sides entered a final day of U.N.-backed talks on Friday with little sign of progress towards ending the conflict and with negotiations overshadowed by swelling tensions on the ground. The sixth round of talks in Geneva was the latest effort to bring a political solution to...

( The Middle East Eye )- US presidents tend to either sink or swim during forays to the Middle East. So when the current commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, boards Air Force One for his first foreign presidential venture to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, he may benefit from a recap of his...

( The New Arab )- Sexual violence continues unabated in Syria as a tactic used by the Assad regime and the so-called Islamic State group to terrorise, coerce, and control the civilian population, the United Nations has said in a recent report. The UN Security Council's report on...

A military source on the Syrian government side said on Friday that a U.S. air strike against a Damascus-backed militia the day before hit "one of our military points", without elaborating, state media outlets reported. The air strike late on Thursday killed several people and caused...

By Abdulsalam Haj Bakri (Zaman Al Wasl)- Al-Bustan Association (ABA), a pro-regime charity owned and run by Rami Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and Syria's tycoon, has been listed as one of the organisations under sanction for its crimes against Syrian people. ABA was a delivery partner...