White House officials announced Wednesday night that the Obama administration will substantially curtail assistance to Egypt, but that they aspired, according to the Washington Post, “to maintain a robust military and diplomatic partnership with Egypt.” Among other restrictions, the administration will withhold delivery on high-priority military items such as F-16...

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CNN last night announced that they had a bit of a scooplet about Egypt, and that the White House planned to cut off aid to Cairo in the wake of the army’s July move to depose the country’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked former president Mohammed Morsi. The news came as a surprise...

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Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, had until recently never visited the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Over the years there had been many justifications – a primary one being that it kept him beyond the Israelis’ range – but the upshot was always that he remained physically separated from...

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Recent weeks have seen Egypt expanding its campaign to uproot jihadist infrastructure in the Sinai Peninsula, seeking to stem a wave of violence that has targeted security forces and civilians, and which now seems to be expanding to the territory’s tourist-heavy southern areas. Meanwhile the army-backed government has doubled down...

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On Sunday at least 53 people were killed in clashes between supporters of opponents of Egypt’s former Muslim Brotherhood-linked president Mohammed Morsi. Today at least eight Egyptian security officials were killed over three specific attacks targeting Egyptian security forces. The New York Times described the recent attacks as indicating a...

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The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has scheduled rallies for this Sunday in support of the Egypt’s Brotherhood-linked former President Mohammed Morsi. As part of the Brotherhood’s efforts to mobilize supporters, they have taken to excoriating the Egyptian military that – amid mass nation-wide protests calling for his resignation – acted to...

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An October 2010 deal between Iran and Egypt to resume direct flights between the two countries was described by Iran at the time as part of “a prelude to the resumption of ties between the two countries.” Iran had been seeking to shrug off international efforts to isolate Tehran, and...

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Reconciliation between the Palestinian Hamas and Fatah factions has traditionally been treated as a prerequisite to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and Fatah controls Palestinian portions of the West Bank, and all are territories that the Palestinians reserve for a single Palestinian state....

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The Palestinian Hamas faction has spent the last few months in something of a freefall, finding itself almost totally isolated regionally and losing control inside the Gaza Strip. The Iran-backed terror group has sought to restore its visibility via spectacular terror attacks, and has sought to reassert domestic control by...

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Boko Haram – a jihadist group whose name literally translates to “Western education is sinful” – is suspected of being behind the mass murder of at least 40 students in north-east Nigeria. The university-aged students were asleep in their dormitories when the massacre began: Islamist insurgents have shot dead at...

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