Middle East, Wars | featured news

Our expert panel gauges the odds that the United States or Israel will strike the Islamic Republic in the next year. The probability of conflict with Iran is now at 40 percent, according to The Atlantic's Iran War Dial.

The U.S. military said on Monday it was disciplining U.S. troops over two incidents that provoked outrage in Afghanistan early this year, one involving a video depicting Marines urinating on corpses and another over burned copies of the Koran.

A persistent group of anti-war protesters gathered in front Israel's Ministry of Defense in Central Tel Aviv on Thursday, chanting "We don't want another war!" and warning the government against striking Iran's nuclear facilities.

More foreign fighters claiming allegiance to al-Qaida have reportedly joined rebels in war-torn Aleppo, deepening the regional implications of the conflict in Syria. According to Zeina Khodr, a journalist with news channel Al Jazeera, "Arab fighters from Saudi Arabia and Egypt who didn't want to be filmed" were operating in the city. Some reportedly claimed allegiance to al-Qaida.

The death toll from fighting between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in Tripoli climbed to at least 10 overnight, medical sources said on Wednesday, in clashes that the city's residents described as some of the heaviest since Lebanon's civil war.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the West on Tuesday against any unilateral action on Syria after President Barack Obama said U.S. forces could act if the Syrian leader deployed chemical weapons against rebels trying to topple him.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad performed Eid prayers in a Damascus mosque on Sunday, state television showed, in his first appearance in public since a July bombing in the Syrian capital that killed four top security officials.

Syria's government and rebels have "chosen the path of war", a U.N. peacekeeping chief said as the world body ended its doomed monitoring mission to Damascus and deadlock persists among world powers over how to contain the spreading conflict.

War with Iran would probably turn into a month-long conflict on various fronts with missile strikes on Israeli cities and some 500 dead, Israel's civil defense minister said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Syrian forces have pushed rebels back from a strategic district of Aleppo, but skirmishes continued in the city and the United Nations said the conflict engulfing Syria would have no winner.