Israeli officials today announced that the Jewish state had gained membership in two international organizations, one focused on democratic norms and the other emphasizing trade liberalization, with the country’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, shooting down reports of the Jewish state’s international isolation: “Next time you hear reports of diplomatic isolation...

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The Associated Press reported yesterday that renewed peace talks between Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime and opposition groups stumbled almost as soon as they began on Monday, with each side blaming the other for a spate of violence that has seen hundreds killed in just the last few days. Both Damascus and extremist...

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Internationally sponsored talks between Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime and opposition elements seeking its overthrow ended Friday without any progress and with “the key positions… still very wide apart,” according to statements made by United Nations-Arab League Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi to a Geneva press conference. The New York Times noted that Secretary...

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The Daily Beast this morning published an extensive investigation, written by the outlet’s Eli Lake, describing the Obama administration’s efforts to lobby inside Israel on behalf of specific conditions outlined by a U.S.-backed peace deal. Special administration envoy Martin Indyk has been “quietly been meeting with Israeli reservist generals and...

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The United Nations announced Tuesday that it was ceasing to update the death toll in Syria’s nearly three-year war because it can no longer reliably keep track of those killed by the conflict. The Associated Press noted that the last official figures, which were current as of July 2013, estimated that at...

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The Wall Street Journal yesterday published an extensive report, based on previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence, assessing that Hezbollah is smuggling advanced anti-aircraft, anti-ship, and surface-to-surface missiles into Lebanon. The moves illustrate how both Hezbollah and Israel are using Syria’s civil war as cover for what increasingly is seen as a complex and...

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The United Nations late on Thursday confirmed that chemical weapons had been used in the almost three year Syrian conflict, with experts investigating more than half a dozen alleged uses of proscribed weapons and – in what CNN described as “the case that was most clear” – documenting an August incident...

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A statement issued last week by Yukiya Amano, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, emphasizes that the organization continues to be concerned about possible clandestine elements in Iran’s nuclear program oriented toward the production of a nuclear weapon: The Agency continues to verify the...

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Iranian dissidents, U.S. lawmakers, and analysts have all in recent days criticized what Roya Boroumand – executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, a human rights group that monitors abuses in Iran – described to the Daily Beast as “the fact that human rights and democracy have not been the subject of...

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Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Thursday that Washington would not offer sanctions relief to Iran in the absence of “concrete steps” to address international concerns over its nuclear program, which roughly half a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions have called for dismantling. “We are not contemplating anything that removes...

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