The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force, Esmail Ghaani, visited Syria last week to oversee a joint military drill, according to Iranian media reports. Ghaani, who was appointed following a US drone strike against his predecessor, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020, reportedly met senior Syrian officials in Read more…
Israeli security forces on Sunday arrested eight Palestinian students suspected of planning an imminent terror attack. The students, from Birzeit University near Ramallah, were arrested following an investigation into Hamas cells in Palestinian education institutions, the IDF said. The students were allegedly recruited by Hamas operatives in Gaza, and had Read more…
Last Friday saw Iran display what it claimed was the “longest-range drone in the world” during a military parade that also featured a number of banners threatening Israel. The drone, one of several unnamed aerial vehicles and missiles presented at an event marking the start of Iran’s war with Iraq between Read more…
As the UN General Assembly convened last week, longstanding speculation around the potential for a normalisation deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia has reached a fever pitch. What happened On Wednesday, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman claimed in an interview with Fox News that “every day we get closer” to his Read more…
London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s deputy mayor for business, Rajesh Agrawal, has today outlined his ambition for the capital’s business links with Israel to boom in the coming years. In an interview with Jewish News, Agrawal said that he has “spoken to many visiting entrepreneurs from Israel and I see huge Read more…
US secretary of state Antony Blinken claimed last week that any potential normalisation agreement between the Saudis and Israel would have to include steps towards a two-state solution with the Palestinians. Blinken stressed his view that if the Israel-Saudi normalisation process is “to move forward, the Palestinian piece is going Read more…
The UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland, reported that terror groups in the West Bank are currently better armed than the Palestinian Authority security forces. He told the World Summit of Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya that there is a “very significant uptick in the availability of very Read more…
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will reportedly meet Turkey’s recently re-elected president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the UN General Assembly. The two leaders were due to meet in July, but Netanyahu postponed his visit after undergoing surgery to have a pacemaker implanted. The visit would have been the first by Read more…
One year on from the death in Iranian police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, Iran remains an international pariah posing threats on numerous fronts. What happened Crackdown Meanwhile… International actionIn the absence of a revived nuclear deal with Iran – an ambition Joe Biden campaigned on in 2020, but which has been Read more…
This evening, a number of Labour parliamentarians attended a pre-screening in Parliament of ‘Golda’, Guy Nattiv’s upcoming film about the courageous leadership of Israeli Labor prime minister Golda Meir (1969-1973) during the 1971 Yom Kippur War. The event was organised by the UK-Israel APPG with LFI vice-chair Sharon Hodgson MP Read more…
In today’s House of Lords debate on UK support for the Abraham Accords, two Labour peers urged the UK government to more proactively support the Accords on the global stage. Lord Mendelsohn declared the Accords “one of the single most transformational moments in the Middle East”, and urged the UK Read more…
A rift is beginning to open within the coalition government. The non-haredi parties, Likud, Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit, are facing serious threats from the Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ), that would end the coalition government and lead to an election being called. The disagreement is over Read more…