Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and hardline rival Ebrahim Raisi were both approved to run in May's presidential election by a government vetting body, while former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was disqualified, state media reported on Thursday. The approval of Rouhani, a moderate, and...

A Russian marine major has been killed in combat in Syria, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday, confirming an earlier report that one of Moscow's highest-ranking officers there had lost his life. Major Sergei Bordov was killed during an attack by militants on a garrison, they...

The United States on Thursday urged the U.N. Security Council to devote less attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and make Iran's "incredibly destructive" activities a priority in the Middle East. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley branded Iran the "chief culprit" of conflicts in the...

The Syrian regime army advanced into the town of Taybet al Imam in Hama province on Thursday, expanding its territory along the strategic western highway between Damascus and Aleppo, the army and rebels said. The government forces were backed by heavy Russian aerial strikes across a...

By Rani Abdo (Zaman Al Wasl) A senior member of the British Labor Party said Iran ordered the allied Shiite militias in Syria to launch offensive on Khan Sheikhoun, almost three weeks since the deadly Sarin gas attack killed 90 people in the northern town. Speaking to Zaman al-Wasl, the...

Iraqi forces retook two more neighborhoods in west Mosul on Thursday, tightening the noose around extremists holed up in the Old City, commanders said. "The forces completed the liberation of Al-Thawra neighborhood," Sabah al-Noman, spokesman for the elite Counter-Terrorism Service, told...

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis met Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and top brass in Cairo on Thursday, pledging support for the American ally on his first regional tour. The brief visit, with Mattis later setting off to Israel, came after Sisi hit it off with Trump during a...

The U.N.'s chief humanitarian adviser for Syria says aid agencies have been able to reach fewer besieged people with relief this year compared to the same period last year. Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Jan Egeland said the front lines have shifted but civilian suffering has "remained the...

Iraq's Shiite ruling coalition would oppose Kurdish plans to hold a referendum on independence after the defeat of ISIS, its president, Ammar al-Hakim, has said. Speaking to Reuters in an interview in Cairo, Hakim advised the Kurds against any unilateral move to annex a disputed oil-rich...

The U.N. mediator for Syria said Thursday he would hold talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov in Geneva Monday and that the United States had declined to take part in any trilateral meeting for now. "The trilateral meeting that as you know was a possibility is being...

The Egyptian military said Thursday it killed a senior ISIS cleric and 18 militants in airstrikes in the Sinai Peninsula where the extremists are waging an insurgency. The announcement came after ISIS claimed a series of attacks, including a shooting near a monastery this week and twin...

Companies from China and Iran will this weekend sign the first commercial contracts to redesign an Iranian nuclear plant as part of an international deal reached in 2015 over Iran's nuclear program, China's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. The fate of the Arak reactor in central Iran was...

Twenty members of a suspected extremist network thought to have been behind a grenade attack on a Jewish grocery store in 2012 went on trial in France Thursday on terror charges. The "Cannes-Torcy cell," named for the towns where its members were based, is suspected of having planned several...

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- At least 52 Iranian-backed Shi'ite fighters have been killed by Free Syrian Army in the last four weeks in Hama province, activists and local monitoring groups said. Syrian rebel who launched major attacks on regime forces and allied militias las March have killed and...

(Zaman Al Wasl TV)- Fatih is an Istanbul neighborhood of the Constantinian peninsula bordered on the north by the Golden Horn and the Marmara Sea on the south. It extends west to the wall of Constantinople (Theodosian Wall). So then what is the face of Damascus doing here. In this...

Hundreds of frightened Syrian evacuees from two besieged government-held towns were stuck at a rebel-held transit point Thursday where dozens of their fellow townspeople were killed in a weekend bombing. The 3,000 evacuees, who had left their homes at dawn on Wednesday, spent the night...

A Russian and an American blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Thursday, the first two-person launch to the International Space Station in over a decade. The Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft carrying veteran Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA rookie Jack Fischer shot into...

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday accused Iran of 'alarming ongoing provocations' to destabilize countries in the Middle East as the Trump administration launched a review of its policy towards Tehran. Tillerson told reporters the review, which he announced on Tuesday, would...

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States was looking at ways to pressure North Korea over its nuclear programme as North Korean state media warned the Americans of a "super-mighty preemptive strike" and said don't "mess with us". U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a hard...

Britain will lose more than the European Union from its decision to leave the bloc, the EU's top diplomat said on Thursday, and talks with London were expected to be difficult. Prime Minister Theresa May formally began Britain's divorce from the EU last month, declaring there was no turning...