Analysis

More than two years of civil war have led to continually compounding disasters in Yemen. Fighting rages on in a deadly stalemate. The economy has been bombed into ruins. Hunger is widespread, and a new misery has been added: the world's biggest current outbreak of cholera, with more than 200,000 cases.

Israel's Mossad is launching an investment fund for start-ups developing "groundbreaking" technologies that could be used by the spy agency.

Hamas has begun work on a buffer zone along Gaza's border with Egypt, the Islamic militant group said Wednesday, as part of an effort to assure Cairo that it's serious about preventing the cross-border flow of weapons and militants.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that the United States has detected “active handling of chemical weapons” at Syria’s Shayrat air base, which prompted the White House to warn President Bashar Assad that he would “pay a very heavy price” if those weapons are used.

Saudi Arabia is demolishing centuries-old homes in a Shiite town, leveling a historic district that officials say has become a hideout for local militants. The destruction has sparked shootouts in the streets between Saudi security forces and Shiite gunmen and stoked sectarian tensions that resonate around the region.

The Trump administration threatened Tuesday that Syria will pay "a heavy price" if it follows through on what the U.S. says are preparations for another chemical weapons attack — warning of action that could plunge America deeper into a civil war alongside the fight against Islamic State militants.

Iran is accusing U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of "a brazen interventionist plan" to change the current government that violates international law and the U.N. Charter.

As the fight against the Islamic State moves beyond its de facto capital in Raqqa, the Pentagon is readying itself for an increasingly complex battlefield in northern Syria, where U.S.-backed forces, pro-Syrian government troops and Russian jets will likely all be fighting near one another.

Counterattacks by Islamic State militants on the western edge of Mosul have stalled Iraqi forces' push in the Old City, the last IS stronghold in the battle, an Iraqi officer said Tuesday.

The White House issued a stern warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday night as it claimed "potential" evidence that Syria was preparing for another chemical weapons attack.

In Afghanistan's turbulent Helmand province, U.S. Marines are rekindling old relationships and identifying weaknesses in the Afghan forces that the Trump administration hopes to address with a new strategy and the targeted infusion of several thousand American forces.

ANALYSIS

With soccer sponsorships, record-setting skyscrapers and wintertime golfing, the United Arab Emirates has projected an image of comfort and opportunity in a volatile region. But the quiet expansion of its military footprint is drawing a different kind of attention to the Gulf federation as it wades into some of the region's messiest conflicts.

Islamic State fighters launched a string of counterattacks in a western Mosul neighborhood that had recently been declared free of the militant group, setting off clashes that continued overnight, Iraqi officials said Monday.

An influential Republican senator said Monday that he'll withhold approval of U.S. weapons sales to several Middle Eastern allies until there is a clear path for settling a diplomatic crisis with Qatar.

Two high-profile groups of Jewish leaders on Monday canceled meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protest his government's decision to scrap plans for a mixed-gender prayer area at Jerusalem's Western Wall.

The Russian Foreign Ministry says Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson talked Monday about the need to secure a cease-fire in Syria, fight extremist groups and prevent the use of chemical weapons.

The 470-acre site, known as Kol-e-Hashmat Khan, is one of the rare recognized wetland areas in central Afghanistan. Once it drew wealthy sightseers and royal hunting parties, but during four decades of war and turmoil it lay abandoned and neglected. The water filled with sludge, unauthorized settlements sprang up around the edges, and fewer birds stopped to rest or breed in the desiccated marsh.

Turkey's president on Sunday rejected a demand by major Arab states to remove Turkish troops from Qatar, among a sweeping list of ultimatums that the United States has described as "difficult to meet."

The Israeli military on Sunday said it attacked a series of targets belonging to the Syrian military, after several projectiles from neighboring Syria landed in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights for a second day.

ANALYSIS

The long war has generated repeated examples of wasted funds, which may be inevitable in a country such as Afghanistan, where the military has been built from scratch, is plagued with corruption and relies almost completely on U.S. money for even the most basic things, including salaries and uniforms.

Alerted by an announcement over a mosque's loudspeaker that an overturned tanker truck had sprung a leak, scores of villagers raced to the scene with fuel containers Sunday to gather the oil.

The Israeli government froze a long-overdue plan Sunday to open a mixed-gender prayer area at Jerusalem's Western Wall, a major policy reversal that infuriated the liberal streams of Judaism that represent most Jews in the United States.

An Afghan official says the Taliban have attacked a security post in western Afghanistan, killing at least 10 police and wounding another three.

China's foreign minister says Beijing will hold a dialogue with Afghanistan and Pakistan to help improve relations between the two South Asian neighbors.

A suicide bomber blew himself up near the Grand Mosque in Mecca as police disrupted a plot to target the holiest site in Islam just as the fasting month of Ramadan ends, Saudi security forces said Saturday.

The Trump administration has moved to close the standalone State Department office devoted to policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan that was the brainchild of diplomat Richard Holbrooke, current and former State Department officials said.

A prominent independent newspaper in Bahrain earlier shut down by the government as part of a crackdown on dissent has laid off its staff.

The 1,800-mile border between Pakistan and India has long been treated as a hostile red line between neighboring, nuclear-armed rivals. Its sole official crossing is a heavily guarded military post. In contrast, Pakistan's 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan has always been more porous and politically complicated. Thousands of cargo trucks traverse its two major crossings every week. Now, with thousands of steel posts and scrolls of deadly razor wire, Pakistan is trying to remove all such ambiguity.

China's Foreign Minister called for a political solution to end Syria's six-year crisis on Friday, saying that once the country's security conditions begin to improve refugees will start returning to their country.

Egypt's president on Saturday ratified a disputed 2016 agreement under which his country would transfer control of two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, following through on his assertion earlier this week that the matter was closed.

Israeli aircraft struck various positions in Syria Saturday, destroying two tanks, in response to more than 10 projectiles that landed in its territory, the military said.

The Syrian government released Saturday hundreds of detainees including some who backed the insurgency against President Bashar Assad on the eve of a major Muslim holiday.

Yemen's internationally-recognized government on Saturday ordered the creation of a committee to investigate allegations of human rights violations, following reports that U.S. military interrogators worked with forces from the United Arab Emirates who are accused of torturing detainees in Yemen.

A top United Arab Emirates official said Saturday the Arab countries isolating Qatar do not seek to force out the country's leadership over allegations it supports extremist ideology but are willing to cut ties altogether if it does not agree to their demands.

The death toll from twin blasts in the northwestern town of Parachinar climbed to 55 overnight, bringing the overall death toll from three separate attacks in Pakistan on Friday to 73, with several others in critical condition, officials said.

A Swiss journalist has died of injuries suffered from a mine blast in Iraq earlier this week while covering a military operation to root out Islamic State extremists from Mosul.

In a key step toward reform, the kingdom is now poised to abolish a provision that exempts a rapist from punishment if he marries his victim. Jordan's parliament is expected to do so in a special session sometime after the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan next week.

Analysis

For Muslims, Ramadan is the holiest month of the year. Those who show righteous behavior during Ramadan will be rewarded manifold in the afterlife, the Koran promises. But in recent years, Islamic State leaders have twisted the meaning of Ramadan to encourage their followers to kill civilians.

ANALYSIS

Russia launched a flurry of cruise missiles into Syria Friday, targeting Islamic State fighters with a strike that also demonstrates Moscow’s ability to use its muscle to advance the interests of a Syrian government hostile to U.S.-backed militias.

Pressure mounted Friday on the Defense Department after multiple U.S. senators called for investigations into reports that U.S. military interrogators worked with forces from the United Arab Emirates who are accused of torturing detainees in Yemen.

A blacklisted top Islamic State financier was killed last week in an airstrike by the U.S.-led, anti-ISIS coalition inside one of the group’s final strongholds along the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, the Pentagon said Friday.

The Pompeo-Mamlouk call would represent the highest-level communication between the two governments in years. It also is surprising given the widespread allegations of Mamlouk's culpability in human rights atrocities in Syria's civil war.

Analysis

Donald Trump may be uniquely suited to push for Middle East peace: the Israelis as well as key Arab players, each for their own reasons, are all looking like admirers who seek to please. But out-of-the-box thinking will be needed nonetheless.

With just days to decide, Qatar on Friday weighed an onerous list of demands by its neighbors as a way out of a regional crisis, and a top Emirati official warned the tiny country to brace for a long-term economic squeeze unless it is willing to acquiesce.

Israel has filed a complaint with the U.N. Security Council accusing the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of setting up observation outposts along the border on land purportedly used by an environmental advocacy group.

The U.S. military coalition fighting the Islamic State would welcome a concerted effort by the Syrian government or its Iranian-backed partner forces to defeat IS in its remaining strongholds in eastern Syria, a U.S. spokesman said Friday.

The leader of the Afghan Taliban said on Friday that a planned U.S. troop surge will not end the protracted war in the country and vowed to fight on until a full withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan.

At least 40 people were killed and nearly 100 wounded Friday in four separate bomb and gun attacks in three major Pakistani cities, officials said.

A Canadian Special Operations sniper shot an ISIS fighter from nearly 2.2 miles away in Iraq, the Globe and Mail reported. Canadian Special Operations Command confirmed that one of its soldiers hit a human target from 3,540 meters away.

They call it the "grill": The victim is tied to a spit like a roast and spun furiously within a circle of fire. It is just one of the terrors inflicted by interrogators on detainees in Yemen who are routinely beaten with wires and were kept in filthy shipping containers, blindfolded for months — all by one of America's closest counterterrorism allies.

Analysis

There was a time when the mention of the Persian Gulf brought to mind images of pampered societies ruled by aging monarchs content to preside quietly over their oil money and fantastical skyscrapers while the U.S. kept the peace.

GALLERY

Afghan officials are hoping to alleviate some of the depression associated with war by literally brightening up the country’s capital.

Trump administration officials, anticipating the defeat of the Islamic State in its de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa, are planning for what they see as the next stage of the war.

A 13-point list demands that Qatar sever all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and with other groups including Hezbollah, al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

A suicide car bomb exploded Thursday at a bank in Afghanistan's Helmand province as Afghan troops and government workers waited to collect their pay ahead of a major Muslim holiday, killing at least 29 people, officials said.

Gov. Roy Cooper has ordered that all U.S. flags at state facilities be lowered to half-staff in remembrance of a North Carolina soldier killed in Afghanistan.

The U.S. military says an American airstrike in Yemen has killed a top commander for the al-Qaida affiliate there and two of his associates.

The Taliban released a new video on Wednesday showing an American and an Australian captive they abducted last August, the second such footage of the hostages.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's King Salman elevated his 31-year-old son to be the kingdom's crown prince, replacing the king's 57-year-old nephew, Mohammed bin Nayef. The formal ascension of Mohammed bin Salman establishes the young royal as the most important political figure in the country, given the widespread suggestions that his father is ailing and infirm.

Turkish officials said U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has written to his Turkish counterpart, reassuring him that arms provided to Syrian Kurdish fighters would be taken back once ISIS militants are ousted from their main stronghold in Syria.

Fighters for the Islamic State group are targeting children in Mosul to prevent civilians from fleeing the city as Iraqi forces push into the last stronghold held in Iraq by the militants there, the United Nations said Thursday.

Half a world apart, in a theocratic monarchy and a democracy, a king and a president are relying on their thirty-something son and son-in-law to help consolidate power and push their policies.

The Defense Ministry first made the claim Friday, adding that al-Baghdadi's death in the May 28 strike was still "being verified through various channels." Syromolotov similarly said that the checks were continuing.

Lawyers for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl said Wednesday they want to ask prospective jurors in the soldier’s court-martial about their opinions on President Donald Trump to ensure their client receives a fair trial.

A questionable uniform choice by the Afghan military has probably cost taxpayers an unnecessary $28 million since 2008, according to a new watchdog report released Tuesday.

In a series of royal decrees carried on the state-run Saudi Press Agency, the monarch stripped Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who had been positioned to inherit the throne, from his title as crown prince and from his powerful position as the country's interior minister overseeing security.

With their control of Mosul slipping away, Islamic State militants decided to send a message of defiance: They blew up the 12th century al-Nuri Mosque, along with its famous leaning minaret.

James Moriarty, a trial lawyer in Houston, had initially been critical of Jordanian authorities. Now he says he has more faith in the kingdom's legal system after attending court this week.

A crime scene investigator told a military court Tuesday that three U.S. military trainers killed at the gate of a Jordanian air base had come under heavy fire, including from inside a nearby guard house.

Turkey bolstered its ground forces in northern Syria in a possible lead-up to renewed battles between the Turkish military and local Kurdish forces, a monitoring group and a Syrian opposition commander said Wednesday.

Australian warplanes will soon resume airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria after operations were suspended as a precaution because a U.S. fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane earlier this week, the defense chief said Wednesday.

A French video journalist and an Iraqi colleague have been killed in a mine blast while covering the operation to root out Islamic State extremists from Mosul.

Afghan authorities on Tuesday arrested a teenager who had threatened to blow himself up at Bagram Air Field, officials said.

A U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle has shot down a second Iranian-made drone in two weeks that was threatening U.S.-led coalition forces in southern Syria, a Pentagon official said Tuesday.

Syrian government troops and their allies have steadily positioned themselves in key areas on the flanks of the U.S.-led coalition battle for the Islamic State's self-declared capital of Raqqa.

Pakistan said Tuesday that it has begun building a fence along its border with Afghanistan to improve security, a move that has angered authorities in Kabul.

Afghans who scratch out a living by removing some of the country's countless land mines have long had to contend with rugged terrain, accidental explosions and the threat of kidnapping — but these days they face the added risk of being laid off.

After nearly 16 years of war against the Taliban, the Afghan government is starting to develop a "road map" for breaking a battlefield stalemate that has been prolonged by the insurgents' ability to use Pakistan as a sanctuary.

At least eight Afghan security guards were killed when gunmen opened fire on them in the country's northern Parwan province, a provincial official said Tuesday. The Taliban later claimed the attack.

Australia has suspended its airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria as a precaution after a U.S. fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane earlier this week.

Afghan security forces opened fire on demonstrators armed with sticks, killing one, as they cleared away a protest camp in the early hours of Tuesday that had occupied a busy avenue for the last three weeks.

The Islamic State group is in retreat across Syria and Iraq, and the contours of a new conflict among the array of parties battling it are already starting to appear.

Drug addiction in Afghanistan, once mostly limited to men, has exploded into a nationwide scourge that affects millions of people, including a growing number of women and children.

Saudi Arabia's Information Ministry said in a statement the three were onboard a boat carrying a large number of explosives headed toward the Marjan oil field, located off the kingdom's eastern shores between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

“I’m confident that we are still communicating between our operations center and the Russian Federation center,” Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the National Press Club in Washington. “I’m also confident that our forces have the capability to take care of themselves.”

ANALYSIS

The U.S. shoots down a Syrian fighter jet for the first time. Syria attacks America's allies against Islamic State militants. Iran fires missiles into Syria. Russia threatens to target U.S. coalition planes.

EU foreign ministers said in a statement Monday "that unilateral steps must be avoided, and that all open questions must be resolved through consensual positions" based on Iraq's constitution.

Jared Kushner is traveling to the Middle East this week to continue work toward a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Four more witnesses testified before a Jordanian military court Sunday morning in the fourth hearing of a Jordanian soldier charged with murder in the shooting of three U.S. military trainers.

Syrian troops and allied militias met up with Iraqi forces at one crossing point along their shared border Sunday for the first time in years, in a step described as a major achievement by the Syrian military in their fight against the Islamic State group.

The U.S. military on Sunday shot down a Syrian Air Force fighter jet that bombed local forces aligned with the Americans in the fight against Islamic State militants, an action that appeared to mark a new escalation of the conflict.

ANALYSIS

As American military officials complete plans that are likely to send several thousand additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, a flurry of setbacks in the war have underscored both the imperative of action and the pitfalls of various approaches.

Efforts to end a two-week-old crisis in the Persian Gulf shifted to the U.S., as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson canceled a trip to Mexico to try to end a Saudi-led coalition’s isolation of Qatar.

Seven U.S. servicemembers were wounded and at least one Afghan soldier was killed on Saturday in the second insider attack in Afghanistan in a week, NATO and Afghan officials said.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Sunday it launched missiles into eastern Syria targeting Islamic State militants in response to an attack on Iran's parliament and a shrine in Tehran, warning that it would similarly retaliate on anyone else carrying out attacks in Iran.

U.S.-backed Iraqi troops pushed into the last Islamic State stronghold in Mosul on Sunday, an Iraqi commander said, formally launching the final major battle of an eight-month campaign to drive the militants from Iraq's second largest city.

The Taliban stormed a police headquarters in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday after striking it with two suicide car bombs, killing at least five police, officials said.

The facts aren't in dispute. On Friday, a small group of assailants launched an attack near Jerusalem's Old City. Wielding guns and knives, they killed a female police officer and wounded three other people. What happened next, though, is a source of controversy.

Iran's navy has conducted a joint exercise with a Chinese fleet near the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

A U.S. airstrike has killed a senior media official belonging to the Afghan branch of the Islamic State group, the U.S. military said Friday.