Middle East

Saudi authorities have detained Prince Faisal, the son of late King Abdullah, and are holding him incommunicado, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Saturday. HRW, citing a source close to the royal family, said security forces arrested Prince Faisal bin Abdullah from a family compound northeast of Riyadh on March …

The United States has reportedly established a new military base in Syria’s oil-rich eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr after bringing in reinforcements to the war-torn country. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) quoted reliable sources as saying on Friday that the new US base is located in Day …

A Saudi tribe has been hit by bloody forced eviction measures employed to make way for the construction of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)’s visionary utopian city. The so-called smart city known as NEOM is planned to be constructed in the Tabuk region of northwestern Saudi Arabia on …

Two people died and 38 were injured when a 5.1 magnitude earthquake struck northern Iran in the early hours of Friday and people fled their homes in panic, state television reported. There were at least 40 milder aftershocks, but no serious damage from the quake that struck after midnight on …

Iran’s Health Ministry says the coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of 55 people in the country over the past 24 hours with the death toll standing at 6,541, the lowest daily increase since the outbreak of the disease over 11 weeks ago. Kianoush Jahanpour, the head of the public …

Iran says the United States must stop seeking to secure its short-term interests at the cost of other nations’ long-term prosperity. “JCPOA is neither the first nor the last of the multilateral achievements Trump withdrew from,” said Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi in a tweet on Friday, referring by …

Kuwait will enact a “total curfew” from 4 pm (1300 GMT) on Sunday through to May 30 to help to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, the Information Ministry said on Twitter on Friday. Further details of the curfew will be announced soon, it said. Kuwait on April 20 …

Prosecutors in Turkey have charged seven people in connection with ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn’s escape from Japan in December. Four pilots, two other flight attendants, and an airline executive are accused of helping him flee to Lebanon via Istanbul. The pilots and executives are charged with “migrant smuggling” and the …

Members of the Daesh terrorist group have killed 11 Syrian government soldiers and their allied fighters, a monitor says. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday that the government and pro-government forces were killed when their vehicle came under an attack by Daesh terrorists between al-Sokhna and …

Turkey’s lira briefly fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar on Thursday as investors fretted about depleted currency reserves and the need for foreign financing as the coronavirus pandemic drains the economy. Thursday’s fall to near 7.27 pushed it beyond the record low hit during a 2018 currency …

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has warned the United States that Iran will not accept any violation of the UN Security Council resolution that mandates the lifting of an arms embargo against the Islamic Republic, saying the country is absolutely entitled to the ban’s cancellation. “The United States and other countries …

Israel announced a plan for thousands of new Jewish settlement homes in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday as Washington voiced readiness to back de facto Israeli annexations there. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to visit Israel next week, a source said, a sign that he is weighing …

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has lashed out at the United States for intensifying its illegal sanctions against the Iranian nation at a time when the country is fighting a deadly coronavirus outbreak, saying Washington should first lift the bans to prove its sincerity in offering help to the Islamic Republic …

A number of terrorists have been killed as forces with Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) carried out a security operation in the western province of Kordestan, which borders Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. A statement by the IRGC’s Hamzeh Seyed al-Shohada Base said several “counter-revolutionary’ terrorists were killed during clashes …

Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was reported by The New York Times as mulling plans to invoke a provision in the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA), which the Trump administration pulled out of in 2018, to either seek the extension of an arms embargo on Iran or reimpose even …

A US news agency reported that IAEA inspections of Iran’s nuclear program had reached a record high over the past year. According to this agency, the number of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Iran’s nuclear program last year was a record. According to the Bloomberg News …

The Minister of Public Health in Yemen, Dr. Taha Al-Mutawakkil, announced today, Tuesday, the registration of the first confirmed case of a Corona epidemic in the capital, Sanaa, for a Somali immigrant. The Minister of Health said in a press conference held in the capital, Sanaa: We received a report …

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has hailed British lawmakers’ opposition to Israel’s land-grab scheme to annex more Palestinian territories. In a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday, 127 current and former MPs from across the political spectrum voiced their outrage at the Israeli regime’s West Bank annexation scheme. They …

Lebanon has summoned the German ambassador to protest Berlin’s recent decision to blacklist the Hezbollah resistance movement, a highly popular political and defense force in the Arab country. Berlin on Thursday designated Hezbollah as a “terrorist organization,” banned all its activities in the European country and ordered raids on sites …

The Iranian parliament has approved plans for launching five new free trade zones (FTZ) in north and east of the country. The parliament on Monday allowed the government to prepare the required conditions for developing two major FTZs in Sarakhs and Dogharoun, areas on the border with Afghanistan. Dogharoun, the …