The Islamic State has lost the vast majority of physical territory it once held, but fully defeating the terrorist group and rooting out sleeper cells that have spread across the Middle East and Africa ‘could take years,’ the Defense Department inspector general said in a sweeping report Monday that suggests final victory remains far off.
US military officials have voiced their concerns that the ‘aggressive military campaign’ Israel is waging in Syria against Iran-backed militia groups might cause the Islamic republic to attack American targets in Syria and Iraq in retaliation, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Israeli stealth planes reached Iran and returned without anyone noticing, Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al-Jarida reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources.
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The Islamic State remains ‘far from defeated,’ one of the nation’s top generals warned Tuesday, seeming to break with President Trump’s assertion that the terrorist group was ’99 percent’ beaten after four years of U.S.-led military action in Syria and Iraq.
Islamic State fighters trapped in Syria are putting up fierce resistance, using civilians as human shields, setting deadly booby traps, and hiding in underground tunnels, all the while frustrating efforts by U.S.-backed Syrian fighters to deal a final blow to the terrorist caliphate.
Christians are continuing to share the Gospel even in highly dangerous areas in the Middle East where the Islamic State terror group remains on the minds of the people.
The U.S. State Department recently published an unprecedented report detailing the financial resources Iran invests in destabilizing the Middle East.
A top Iranian military leader warned on Monday that Iran is plotting strikes outside of its own borders and will even go ‘beyond the seas’ to carry out attacks on those it perceives as enemies, statements that further highlight Iran’s clandestine operations inside the United States and in Europe.
Israel’s Defense Forces have carried out more than 200 airstrikes in Syria over the last year, many of which Israel claimed were targeting Iranian positions and weapons convoys, the IDF stated on Tuesday.
Israel will combat any Iranian threat in Syria and beyond, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said on Monday, just one week after Iran was reported to have transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Shi’ite allies in Iraq in recent months.
Israel signaled on Monday that it could attack suspected Iranian military assets in Iraq, as it has done with scores of air strikes in war-torn Syria.
Iran has given ballistic missiles to Shi’ite proxies in Iraq and is developing the capacity to build more there to deter attacks on its interests in the Middle East and to give it the means to hit regional foes, Iranian, Iraqi and Western sources said.
The Islamic State hold on territory has been broken, but Iraq now faces another existential threat as it battles neighboring Iran and Turkey for access to an increasingly scarce flow of water to the once-flourishing Fertile Crescent running down the spine of the country.
The number of Christians across the Middle East has been declining for decades as persecution and poverty have led to widespread migration. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, considered Christians infidels and forced them to pay special taxes, accelerating the trend in Syria and Iraq.
Osama Bin Laden has been dead for years and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s ‘caliphate’ in the Middle East has crumbled, but the global jihadist threat continues to boil as extremists retreat underground to plot terror strikes around the world.
The Islamic State extremist group has up to 30,000 members roughly equally distributed between Syria and Iraq and its global network poses a rising threat — as does al-Qaeda, which is much stronger in places, a United Nations report says.
Iran-backed militant control over key areas of Yemen, despite a blistering assault by U.S.-backed Saudi and Emirati military forces, has sent a difficult message to Washington: Arab powers armed with American weaponry and targeting intelligence isn’t going to be enough to crush Tehran’s armed proxies around the Middle East.
A group of Iraqi Muslims living in a refugee camp in Greece recently targeted a group of Iranian Christians who were holding a Bible study.
Iraqi Christian leaders are thanking the United States for providing life-saving aid following the Islamic State’s reign of terror in the region.