Reuters yesterday conveyed statements from U.S. Brigadier-General John Shapland, the chief American defense attache in Israel, suggesting that Israel could expand its anti-missile umbrella to protect Jordan and Egypt. “If we were able to build a regional defense capability in, say, Jordan, that capability could easily defend Israel, Jordan and even Egypt,...

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Iran and Hamas are scrambling to minimize the damage from Israel’s Wednesday interdiction of the Klos-C – a Panamanian-flagged Iranian arms ship carrying advanced missiles bound for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip – even as new details emerged throughout Thursday about intelligence operations that preceded the vessel’s capture. The intercepted cargo included M-302 missiles with ranges of...

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The Egyptian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday described Qatar as aligned against the bulk of the Arab world and emphasized that Cairo would not be returning its ambassador to the Gulf state, on the same day that three Gulf monarchies – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain – withdrew their own envoys from...

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An Egyptian court on Tuesday outlawed all activities by the Palestinian Hamas faction inside the country, the latest move in a campaign to isolate the terror group, which has been waged by Egypt’s army – and later by the country’s army-backed government – since well before the July 2013 overthrow of the country’s...

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Reports began to trickle out of the Middle East early Wednesday morning that elite Israeli commandos had stopped and boarded an Iranian vessel in the Red Sea carrying a massive arms shipment to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. A video quickly published by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) – and embedded...

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Both Egypt and Israel have reemphasized to Hamas that the Palestinian terror group will be held responsible for violence emerging from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, with various outlets having reported in recent days on signals sent by Cairo and Jerusalem designed to underline that sentiment. Egyptian security officials told Hamas...

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Egypt’s interim cabinet resigned on Monday amid widespread popular dissatisfaction over the country’s ongoing economic woes, with analysts widely reading the development as preparation for Egyptian army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to formally announce a Presidential run. The broadly popular military official is expected to declare his candidacy shortly, and the optics of...

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The Al Qaeda-linked jihadist group Ansar Jerusalem has claimed responsibility for the Sunday bombing of a tourist bus in the Sinai Peninsula. In a statement released to jihadist forums today, the Sinai-based jihadist group Ansar Jerusalem (Ansar Bayt al Maqdis) claimed responsibility for the bombing of a tourist bus in Taba yesterday....

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The State Department last week put itself on the defensive over the Obama administration’s policy toward Egypt’s army-backed government – which has ranged from a controversial aid freeze last October to a pointed diplomatic snub as recently as two weeks ago – with State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf being pressed for the second day in a row to...

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Egyptian Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s trip to Moscow – where he is discussing among other things a multi-billion dollar arms sale – is being read as evidence that Egypt is actively seeking to bolster its relations with Russia. Foreign policy analysts had worried for months that U.S. snubs were...

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