A Ukrainian military plane was shot down overnight Friday, killing all 49 people on board, a spokesman said. It is likely one of the bloodiest single events in that nation’s current period of turmoil.
If Iraq’s oil supply goes offline, crude prices could hit $150-$200 a barrel, T. Boone Pickens, founder of BP Capital Management, told CNBC on Friday.
The menu of options available to President Barack Obama in Iraq is a familiar one: Share intelligence, give tactical advice, launch airstrikes. But the president’s decision is complicated by the difficult relationship with Baghdad since U.S. troops left, and the amorphous nature of the enemy.
As NATO refocuses on its eastern borders after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the U.S. is quietly deploying more troops to train special forces in former Soviet bloc states anxious about Moscow’s intentions.
Shi’te Muslim Iran is so alarmed by Sunni insurgent gains in Iraq that it may be willing to cooperate with Washington in helping Baghdad fight back, a senior Iranian official told Reuters.
Al Qaeda’s ultra-extremist Syrian offshoot known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) is stepping up efforts to recruit Americans and other westerners for jihad in Syria and possibly for future domestic terror attacks, according to U.S. officials.
The Islamic extremist group that has captured several Iraqi cities and pushed the country into chaos has now begun issuing a “code of conduct” to all residents living in the seized territories, which are now under strict Islamic control.
Failure to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program would force Tehran to resume uranium enrichment activities, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was quoted as saying on Thursday.
The US has resumed its drones program in Pakistan, with two strikes on militant strongholds in the North Waziristan tribal region overnight, the BBC reported.
The Obama administration’s failure to secure a status-of-forces agreement with the government of Iraq, or to take decisive action in Syria to end that civil war, has provided al-Qaida an opportunity to fulfill its dream of creating an new Islamic Caliphate governed under Sharia law — and it is a direct threat to U.S. national security, according to the Daily Caller.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), was released from US custody four years ago, according the UK Telegraph.
The State Department confirmed on Wednesday that Iran has been shipping crude oil to Syria for the past several months, behavior that some experts say is in direct violation of the interim nuclear accord signed last year with the Obama administration.
Ukraine’s interior minister says that three tanks have crossed into Ukrainian territory from Russia and were attacked by his country’s forces.
As the situation in Iraq begins to looks more and more like a complete state meltdown, Russia has stepped in with a familiar refrain: “We told you so.”
First Falluja, then Mosul, and now the oil-refinery town of Bayji. The rapid advance of Al Qaeda-inspired militants across the Sunni heartland of northern and western Iraq has been stunning and relentless—and utterly predictable. Here’s a forecast: the bad news is just beginning.
Iran is “busy redesigning” a planned research reactor to sharply cut its potential output of plutonium – a potential nuclear bomb fuel, a senior Iranian official said in comments that seemed to address a key dispute in negotiations with world powers.
Jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq have “thanked Allah” for the existence of Twitter, the social media platform, as a means of advertising their “victories in battle.”
As the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) threatened Western Iraq, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out air strikes against the terrorist organization, according to the New York Times.
Sunni jihadists pushed in a lightening offensive from northern Iraq and seized Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, just 80 miles north of Baghdad.
Russia’s recent missile developments represent a “material breach” of its obligations under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a senior House Republican said Wednesday.