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The Basic Law of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not guarantee gender equality.

A vigorous progressive movement,

Due to an enforced

Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister, embarrassed Oguz Celikkol, the Turkish ambassador on Monday, making him sit on a low couch and removing the Turkish flag from the table in a meeting called to convey Israeli protests over a Turkish television series.

The series that sparked the latest row between the two countries was a Turkish television drama, called The Valley of the Wolves, which Israel says depicts Israeli security forces as kidnapping children and shooting old men. That followed a drama aired on Turkish state television last October that appeared to portray Israeli soldiers shooting a Palestinian baby at close range. Israeli displeasure Ayalon had summoned Celikkol on Monday to express Israel's displeasure over The Valley of the Wolves.

At the beginning of the conversation with the Turkish envoy, the deputy foreign minister told cameramen in Hebrew: "Pay attention that he is sitting in a lower chair ... that there is only an Israeli flag on the table and that we are not smiling."

Perhaps what Iran wants is the ability to produce a nuclear weapon fast, rather than have a standing arsenal

I think a single hypothesis can account for all the known facts. These are: Iran is making a drive to close the fuel cycle and to be capable of independently enriching uranium to at least the 5 percent or so needed for energy reactors and also to the 20 percent needed for its medical reactor. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a fatwa in 2005 that no Islamic state may possess or use atomic weapons because they willy nilly kill masses of innocent civilians when used, which is contrary to the Islamic law of war (which forbids killing innocent non-combatants). Iranian officials have repeatedly denied that they are working on a nuclear bomb or that they aspire to have one. US intelligence agencies are convinced that Iran has done no weapons-related experiments since 2003, and that it currently has no nuclear weapons program. Israel forcefully maintains that Iran's nuclear program is for weapons and has repeatedly threatened to bomb the Natanz enrichment facilities. Iran recently announced a new nuclear enrichment facility near Qom.

Those who agree with the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as with the International Atomic Energy Agency, that there is no evidence for Iran having a nuclear weapons program have to explain Iran's insistence on closing the fuel cycle and being able to enrich uranium itself.

Turkey excluded Israel from a planned NATO military exercise partly because of Turkey's criticism of Israel's Gaza offensive nearly a year ago, Turkey's foreign minister told CNN on Sunday.

The Turkish government decided to change the list of participating countries and exclude Israel, according to the Israel Defense Forces. As a result, the NATO exercise was effectively scrapped, although a U.S. embassy representative said it was only postponed.

"We hope that the situation in Gaza will be improved, that the situation will be back to the diplomatic track. And that will create a new atmosphere in Turkish-Israeli relations as well. But in the existing situation, of course, we are criticizing this approach, [the] Israeli approach."

his year, the Hajj could become an incubator for the H1N1 virus.

number of people at the center who are going on the Hajj, also are getting H1N1 inoculations.

Dr. Asif Saberi gives them a short lecture on how to prepare and encourages everyone to have their shots at least seven days before traveling. He says the Saudi government is doing a lot to protect pilgrims, but "the magnitude of the problem is the magnitude of the numbers of people who attend the Hajj." When it comes to using hand sanitizer and wearing masks, Saberi says he encounters confusion about religious dictates and flu prevention. According to Muslim beliefs, for example, men in a state of pilgrimage should not wear any stitched items or touch alcohol

The militants have also begun to adopt other mundane state postures. The main road between Arish and Rafah is usually closed to civilians, forcing them to take side roads studded with checkpoints —  some manned by the military, others by the militants. Some of the militants’ checkpoints are stationed just a few kilometers away from the army’s, and are reportedly equipped with computers and internet connections to investigate any passersby.

Sayed, who works with journalists in North Sinai, was stopped and beaten at a militant-operated checkpoint between Arish and Rafah several weeks ago. Sayed was on the road with four Egyptian journalists, and two military tanks were driving ahead of them. The tanks turned shortly before Sayed found himself faced with the militants’ checkpoint. “I told them, ‘Be careful, there are military tanks nearby.’ They said, ‘We’re not here for them, we’re here for you’,” he recounts. Sayed and the journalists were shot at and physically assaulted, then released. He hid his companions’ press IDs, and said they worked for the sympathetic Al Jazeera satellite network based in Qatar. “If they knew the journalists were from an Egyptian newspaper, none of us would have made it out alive,” he claims.

Fouad is a coffee shop owner who recently relocated to Arish after the army evacuated the residents of Rafah to dig a buffer zone to deter terrorists. He explains that one time the militants collected everyone’s IDs at a checkpoint, but remained respectful because they didn’t suspect anyone. “The militants never hurt us or raise an arm in our face. They don’t scare us,” says an old woman from the village of Muqataa, a militant stronghold near Sheikh Zuwayed. “They have no interest in alienating the other residents, because they live among them and don’t want them to turn into collaborators with security,” Fathy explains.

In the president's second trip to Qom, he sought the clergy’s support for the nuclear negotiations and his economic policies. The trip was noteworthy because Rouhani had to change his plans to visit Khorasan Shomali province. The people of Qom — the majority of whom voted for Rouhani in the presidential election — took to the streets and welcomed Rouhani upon his arrival. Rouhani appeared on stage and succeeded in drawing people’s support. During a public speech, he described himself and his administration as the “children of seminary” and ensured residents and senior clerics that he wouldn’t do anything in opposition to Islam and the interests of Iran. Rouhani then met with grand ayatollahs and senior clerics during meetings scheduled by his Chief of Staff Mohammad Nahavandian and his cultural adviser Hessameddin Ashena. Rouhani’s opponents and hard-liners didn’t stand idly by during his visit. They tried to tarnish the president’s image by spreading rumors that he had given money to workers to attend his welcoming ceremony. They also distributed night letters — or covert leaflets — against him.

Rouhani had successful meetings with grand ayatollahs, all of whom supported his policies and approved of his performance in the nuclear talks. Seemingly, they were also pleased with the Rouhani administration's cultural policies, given that we have not heard any condemnations of the Ministry of Culture from senior clerics since Rouhani's return to Tehran. Grand Ayatollah Vahid Khorasani’s compliments of Rouhani were the highlight of the trip. Khorasani, who rarely talks politics and is highly influential in Qom, told Rouhani, “You're one of the best presidents and are faced with overwhelming problems.”

Nouri Hamedani said, “The Iranian nuclear negotiators are pious, revolutionary and hardworking.” Likewise, Makarem Shirazi expressed his hope for reaching a conclusion in the nuclear talks

while Tehran was gaining prominence on the battlefield and in international fora aimed at addressing the Syrian crisis, Iran began to pay greater costs for its involvement there. Domestically, the Iranian populace and regime insiders alike were torn on their country’s presence in Syria. They believed containing ISIS was critical, but also saw Assad as a horrifying figure whose forces were leaving hundreds of thousands displaced, wounded, and killed. The Guards and Artesh were beginning to see their death tolls rise, with the number of killed troops repatriated surpassing 1,000 by 2016. And as the country was struggling to reap the economic benefits of the 2015 nuclear deal and subsequent sanctions relief, it was also dedicating millions of dollars to supplying Assad and his forces with funds, advisors, weapons, and other equipment. According to reporting by Haaretz, “Iranian state-owned banks set up credit lines for the Syrian government of $3.6 billion in 2013 and $1 billion in 2015 to let the regime buy oil and other goods from Iran.” And this amount doesn’t include Iranian-supplied arms to various groups in the region

The Islamic Republic did not anticipate when it became involved in Syria that the conflict would last seven years and that Assad would preserve his tenure. Iran may have signaled in the middle of the war that it would have been willing to drop Assad for another friendly presence in Damascus, but that view changed as it became clear that the international community, chiefly the United States and its European allies, were at least tacitly willing to live with Assad.

Iran’s military has gained significant battlefield experience, with its armed forces becoming much more cohesive. And this experience isn’t limited to Iranian troops, but also the militias Iran has deployed from other parts of the region, including approximately 14,000 Fatemiyoun and 5,000 Zeynabiyoun

two radically different conceptions of Russian power have emerged. Within the Beltway, many analysts have come to understand the Russian demonstration of power and influence in the Middle East as an indicator that the global rivalry between Washington and Moscow of the past is also the present and future. Yet there also remains a small group of dissenters — Russia specialists, former U.S. officials, and journalists — to this view. They believe the Russians are actually quite weak, financially strapped, and caught in Syria. The best they can say is that Putin is playing a bad hand well

it’s payback time for almost three decades of Moscow’s humiliation. And what better place to start than the Middle East, where the United States is already widely resented even among its allies

Since Moscow’s demonstration of strength (with Iran’s help) in Syria, the Russians have asserted themselves as a credible alternative to the Americans with traditional U.S. allies. With arms sales, economic deals, and diplomatic maneuvering, Russia has been effective in pulling Turkey and Egypt away from the United States, though not completely, and closer to Russia’s orbit

when it comes to indigenous Uighurs in the vast western region of Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) has updated its old totalitarian methods with cutting-edge technology

The Qing Empire conquered Xinjiang in the 18th century. The territory then slipped from Beijing’s control, until the Communists reoccupied it with Soviet help in 1949. Today, several Central Asian peoples, including Uighurs, Kazakhs and Kyrghyz, make up about half of the region’s population; the remainder are Han and Hui, who arrived from eastern China starting in the mid-20th century

the C.C.P. has since subjected the entire Uighur population of some 11 million to arbitrary arrest, draconian surveillance or systemic discrimination. Uighurs are culturally Muslim, and the government often cites the threat of foreign Islamist ideology to justify its security policies

War crimes investigators and activists have amassed an “overwhelming volume” of testimony, images and videos documenting atrocities committed by all sides during Syria’s war, a U.N. quasi-prosecutorial body said in its first report.

The team, led by former French judge Catherine Marchi-Uhel, said it is preparing case files and has engaged with war crimes investigative units of various states including in Europe, whose courts can exercise universal jurisdiction to prosecute.

there is a need to sure “fair representation” by prosecuting crimes committed on all sides, and sexual and gender-based crimes, as well as violations against children, will be a priority

Yasa found himself semi-conscious in hospital along with nine other protesters after Erdogan’s bodyguards and thugs for hire set upon them. One yelled “Die Kurd” as they kicked and struck the demonstrators with discernible glee. Lucy Usoyan, a young Yazidi woman who was repeatedly hit on the head, fell unconscious, despite Yasa’s best efforts to shield her. The images captured on video and later subjected to forensic scrutiny leave no doubt as to what had transpired. “I didn’t know if I would ever see my children again,” Yasa said. “I thought I was dying.”

In May, Yasa and a dozen and a half fellow victims filed a civil action lawsuit in US federal court against Turkey. They are demanding at least $300 million in compensation on multiple counts ranging from bodily harm to psychological trauma — including, in at least one case, damage to conjugal relations.

the tort case against the Republic of Turkey rests on the Foreign Sovereignties Immunity Act, which stipulates seven violations for which foreign governments can be sued in US courts. “I’d love to see Turkey argue that under US law, ‘We are entitled to beat up people on the streets of Washington, DC,'” Perles said. “No dictator gets to come to my country and beat up citizens of my country on my watch. I’ll take that argument all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Palestine’s Taybeh Brewery successfully transported 50-kilogram kegs of beer across military checkpoints on donkeys while an increasingly violent and repressive occupation escalated around them

“I don’t think that any brewery in the world has ever had to take beer through checkpoints on a donkey. We did it. Because there was a bar that said, ‘I want Taybeh.’ The roads were closed and no cars could pass.”

25 years ago, during a period of optimism following the Oslo peace accords, the Khoury family returned to their homeland from Boston to open the first microbrewery in the Middle East. Their goal was to invest in and boost the local economy by introducing new styles of hand-crafted, micro-brewed beers. In 1994, the brewery bottled its first batch of beer—500 liters in total.

Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found.

The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels battling the coalition for control of the country, exposing some of America's sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other conflict zones.

The revelations raise fresh questions about whether the US has lost control over a key ally presiding over one of the most horrific wars of the past decade, and whether Saudi Arabia is responsible enough to be allowed to continue buying the sophisticated arms and fighting hardware

containers filled with 33 million pills of the banned psychostimulant fenethylline, commonly known as Captagon. Hidden inside pallets of lumber, the $660 million haul amounts to the biggest confiscation of the pill ever recorded. And where was the lumber loaded? Latakia, Syria.

The value of the recovered stash was worth more than all of Syria’s 2017 exports put together.

the Maryland-based National Center for Biotechnology Information now describes Syria as the “premier producer and exporter of counterfeit forms of Captagon.”

The Ministry of Interior of the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) warned that cutting off drinking water supplies by General Khalifa Haftar’s militias in the capital of Tripoli, amid the proliferation of the coronavirus pandemic, is seriously endangering the lives of children and families; adding that the situation will be catastrophic if the eastern forces do not lift the suspension of potable water in the area.

The GNA forces announced, in a statement published by the media office of Operation Volcano of Anger on its Facebook page, the arrival of a ship from Egypt to the eastern port of Tobruk yesterday, carrying 40 containers of military supplies to Haftar’s militias.

At the end of March, the GNA forces recorded the arrival of two military cargo planes, coming from the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi, to one of the military bases in the Haftar-controlled city of Al-Marj.

Saar is among the Syrian rebels paid by Turkey to fight alongside the forces of the Government of National Accord (GNA), one of the sides claiming power in the protracted Libyan conflict, which began with an uprising against Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011 and is now a battle for lucrative oil deals and regional influence. The GNA is recognized by the United Nations and backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational group that propagates political Islam with the support of powerful allies such as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Shared allegiance with the Brothers brought Turkey to the interim government’s aid, and its enhanced military support has recently turned the tide of the war in the GNA’s favor.

A 38-year-old father of four, Saar metamorphosed from a rebel to a mercenary as a consequence of prolonged privations inflicted by unending war in Syria. “My wife and four children live in a tent. I don’t have money to buy cement blocks to build a room for them,” he told Foreign Policy over the phone from Libya. “When my wife gave birth, I didn’t even have money to buy diapers and milk for the baby.”

Saar is an Arab, not a Turkmen, but he chose to join the group to earn a living. In 2018, he was among the rebels hired by Turkey to oust Kurdish militias and hundreds of thousands of civilians from Afrin in northern Syria. (Turkey accuses the Kurdish militias of conducting terrorist attacks inside Turkey and instigating secession.) In Afrin, Saar was paid 450 Turkish liras, a paltry stipend that comes to $46 a month. Libya, however, is a much more profitable assignment. “In my four months in Libya, I have earned more than I did in years of fighting in Syria. I earn $2,000 a month,”

It appears the Trump administration is counting on the country with the worst human rights record in the region to enforce peace and security in the Middle East.

Piled on top of this enormous arms lot are precision-guided munitions that President Obama would not sell the Saudis. That’s not because the Obama folks didn’t like selling weapons to the Saudis — Obama sold more weapons and gear to Saudi Arabia in eight years than all other previous administrations combined. No, Obama withheld precision-guided munitions because the Saudis were using U.S.-provided munitions to repeatedly target civilian and humanitarian sites in their bombing campaign inside Yemen, despite regular protests from the United States.

millions of Yemenis are being radicalized against the country they blame for the civilian deaths: the United States. By selling the Saudis these precision-guided weapons more — not fewer — civilians will be killed because it is Saudi Arabia’s strategy to starve Yemenis to death to increase their own leverage at the negotiating table. They couldn’t do this without the weapons we are selling them.