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Acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan last Thursday presented an updated military plan at a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides.
The Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, has ordered the temporary withdrawal of the Spanish frigate Méndez Núñez (F-104), with 215 sailors on board, from the combat group led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
US officials said Monday that initial assessments of an incident over the weekend in which four oil tankers were damaged by explosions in Emirati waters point to Iranian involvement.
In a phone call Russian and Turkish presidents stressed importance of further coordination of actions in Syria, including between Defence ministries.
A US Air Force task force of B-52 strategic bombers completed its first mission ‒ a training operation ‒ from its new base in Qatar on Sunday. The nuclear-capable warplanes have been sent to the region as part of US muscle-flexing against Iran.
The hill, located in the Old City district of Jerusalem, is considered a holy place not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in Islam, creating a basis for potential tensions between the city's residents on religious holidays amid uneasy relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
DOHA (Sputnik) - The vessels sabotaged on Sunday in the Gulf of Oman were navigating under the flags of Saudi Arabia, Norway and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Al Arabiya news channel reported on Monday.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry has slammed a report by the OPCW on the alleged chemical attack in the city of Douma on 7 April 2018 as containing distorted facts and being prepared by biased experts who failed to take into account the possession of chemical weapons by terrorists.
As the expected announcement of US President Donald Trump's "deal of the century" approaches, media outlets have intensified publications of alleged "leaks" of the deal's provisions. At the same time, US officials working on the accord have called for such leaks to be ignored and for people to wait for the agreement to be officially published.
Tensions between Iran and the US have further escalated over the past few weeks since the US blacklisted the IRGC as a terrorist organisation and introduced a new set of sanctions against Tehran. Iran, in turn, recognised the US CENTCOM as a terror group and announced it was scaling back on some of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.
The situation in the region escalated last week after acting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan ordered the deployment of the USS Arlington, a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, and additional MIM-104 Patriot missile defence systems to the US Central Command (CENTCOM) region.
The development comes shortly after the foreign ministry of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said on Sunday that four commercial vessels had been targeted in “acts of sabotage” in Gulf waters off its coast.
A year after Washington’s pull-out from the 2015 Iran deal, the Trump administration has announced that it will increase the American military presence in the Middle East.
The Saudi energy minister has reportedly said that two country's vessels were targeted in a "sabotage attack" on Sunday morning near UAE, noting that no casualties or leaks occurred, according to Reuters citing Saudi state TV.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Militants have attacked four settlements in the Syrian province of Latakia over the past 24 hours, the head of the Russian Defence Ministry's Centre for Syrian Reconciliation, Maj. Gen. Viktor Kupchishin said on Sunday.
TEHRAN (Sputnik) - Iranian Navy Commander Rear Adm. Hossein Khanzadi said on Sunday, commenting on Washington’s decision to increase its military presence in the Middle East, that the United States must leave the region.
Earlier, the foreign ministry of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said that four merchant vessels had been targeted in "acts of sabotage" in Gulf waters off its coast, refuting previous reports by the Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen broadcaster claiming that several large explosions occurred in the port of Fujairah.
Retired soldiers have been protesting in Lebanon over proposed cuts to the cost of military pensions and benefits as the government debates a draft budget aimed at reducing the state deficit, Reuters reported Sunday.
The claims made by "respected security expert" Zaid Hamid come after late last month, the notorious leader of the Daesh* terror group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made his first appearance in five years.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US is aiming to "fix" the situation, with Iran apparently serving as "the major destabilising influence in the Middle East" amid the concentration of US military assets, including a carrier group, in the region.