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Iranian ships recently taunted two U.S. Navy vessels as part of escalating tensions in and around the Persian Gulf's Strait of Hormuz. The incidents in the strait, one of the world's most important oil routes, occurred last week and involved the USS New Orleans, an amphibious transport dock, and the Coast Guard Cutter Adak, the military said Friday in releasing videos of the incidents. Iranian speed boats are seen in one of the videos approaching the USS New Orleans within about 500 yards last Friday. "The Iranian boats did not respond to whistle signal or voice queries from the New...

Osama Bin Laden's hideout will be spectacularly destroyed by the Pakistan military in front of TV cameras, it has emerged. Military chiefs plan to launch rocket propelled grenades at the mansion hideout in Abbottabad. It will then be bulldozed in order to prevent the walled complex from becoming a shrine to the former Al Qaeda leader.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The U.S. Congress' House majority leader has met with Saudi Arabia's oil minister, marking the latest stop by an official from a major oil importing nation to the OPEC kingpin since Iran threatened to shutter the vital Strait of Hormuz. A statement released Wednesday by the Saudi Oil Ministry says Ali Al-Naimi and Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, discussed the importance of coordination between oil exporters and importers to stabilize oil markets.

According to MehrNews, the mouthpiece of the Islamic regime in Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that the Knesset’s decision to declare al-Quds (Jerusalem) the capital of Israel not only will not save the Zionist regime but also will speed up the regime’s annihilation. Ahmadinejad made the remarks during a meeting with the head of Turkey – Iran parliamentary friendship group, Murat Yildirim, in Tehran on Tuesday. He said that the Judaization of al-Quds (Jerusalem) is in line with the domineering powers’ colonialist policies to save the Zionist regime and dominate the region. Elsewhere in his remarks, Ahmadinejad said that...

Without much media attention, thousands of American troops are being deployed to Israel, and Iranian officials believe that this is the latest and most blatant warning that the US will soon be attacking Tehran. Tensions between nations have been high in recent months and have only worsened in the weeks since early December when Iran hijacked and recovered an American drone aircraft. Many have speculated that a back-and-forth between the two countries will soon escalate Iran and the US into an all-out war, and that event might occur sooner than thought. Under the Austere Challenge 12 drill scheduled for an...

While signing the bill on Saturday the New Year eve in Honolulu, where he is on year-end vacation, the president expressed many reservations about some of its provisions... The bill for the year 2012 seeks to suspend 60 percent of $1.1 billion US military aid to Pakistan under the category Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund till the secretaries of State and Defence report to the Congress that Islamabad is making progress in the war against terrorism particularly progress in strategies to counter IEDs... The Obama Administration has maintained that the bill under no circumstances results in suspension of US military aid to...

Tens of thousands of people have turned out at a rally in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi for former cricketer turned politician Imran Khan. Mr Khan, who has been an established politician for many years but has struggled to win votes, has seen his support increase recently. Correspondents say he has been riding a wave of disillusionment, particularly among the urban middle class. snip The two main parties - the PPP and the PML-N - are still strongly entrenched and Mr Khan has yet to spell out the specific policies of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) party. One...

What's Islam Got to Do with It?The role of Islam in terrorism should not be banned from discussion. Is there anything Islamic about Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? On what basis does Ayman al-Zawahiri, now al-Qaeda’s leader, formerly the head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, claim to be a jihadi — an Islamic warrior? Do groups that justify terrorism on the basis of Islam have a doctrinal leg to stand on?Let’s not start by answering these questions. Let’s start by agreeing that such questions need to be asked — not suppressed. Yet right now suppression seems to be the goal of...

A high-ranking Iranian official has said Iran's military will practice sealing off the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transport channel, in a provocative move that illustrates Iran’s capability of disrupting the world’s oil supply. The announcement Monday by Parviz Sarvari sent oil prices up about $3 to $100 a barrel based on the speculation of a disruption during the military drills, Bloomberg reported. “Soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz,” Sarvari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee, said in a statement reported by Reuters. “If...

<p>ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan will shoot down any U.S. drone that intrudes its air space per new directives, a senior Pakistani official told NBC News on Saturday.</p> <p>According to the new Pakistani defense policy, "Any object entering into our air space, including U.S. drones, will be treated as hostile and be shot down," a senior Pakistani military official told NBC News.</p>

Iran erupted in a fresh frenzy of animosity towards its old imperial foe on Sunday as MPs chanting "death to England" voted to expel Britain's ambassador to Tehran and threatened his mission with a reprise of the 1979 hostage crisis. Dominic Chilcott, who took up the position of ambassador just a month ago, could be forced to leave the country within weeks after a motion to downgrade Iran's diplomatic ties with Britain was passed overwhelmingly by the Islamist republic's parliament. The step was taken after Britain, Canada and the United States announced fresh sanctions against Iran last week in the...

RACISM!

Afghan and Western officials on Sunday said NATO and Afghan forces on a nighttime operation Saturday came under fire from across the Pakistan border before they called in a deadly airstrike on two Pakistani military posts, in an incident has left U.S.-Pakistan relations in tatters. Pakstan's military denied firing on NATO forces, calling the "unprovoked" raid on the border posts an "irresponsible act." The army questioned why the coalition undertook a sustained two-hour attack on well-known border positions, involving helicopters and fighter jets, which left 25 soldiers dead and another 25 injured. ...Afghan and U.S. officials say their troops are...

Pakistan has cooperated secretly with the U.S. on several war-fighting missions in an odd-couple alliance that also sees factions in Islamabad backing the fiercest American enemy. The uneasy relationship is being put to the test again, as Pakistan accused NATO on Saturday of unleashing a helicopter strike on a Pakistan army border outpost and said 24 soldiers were killed. U.S. military personnel who have served in the region tell The Washington Times that Pakistan does far more in secret than either side acknowledges. It wants money from Washington to keep flowing, yet fears a democratic Afghanistan could one day align...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran will target NATO's missile defense installations in Turkey if the U.S. or Israel attacks the Islamic Republic, a senior commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saturday. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guards' aerospace division, said the warning is part of a new defense strategy to counter what he described as an increase in threats from the U.S. and Israel.

Assad has also stated that should a US strike take place against Syria, “All these events(striking Tel Aviv, calling on Hezbollah to strike northern Israel) will happen in three hours, but in the second three hours, Iran will attack the U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf and the U.S. and European interests will be targeted simultaneously.”

DAMATURU, Nigeria, November 11 (CDN) — They stormed this town in Yobe state, northern Nigeria like a swarm of bees, and at the end of their four-hour rampage, some 150 people had been killed – at least 130 of them Christians, according to church sources. Hundreds of people are still missing, and the destruction included the bombing of at least 10 church buildings.

PARIS (Reuters) -A French satirical weekly whose office was fire bombed after it printed a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad has reproduced the image with other caricatures in a special supplement distributed with one of the country's leading newspapers.The weekly Charlie Hebdo defended "the freedom to poke fun" in the four-page supplement, which was wrapped around copies of the left-wing daily Liberation on Thursday, a day after an arson attack gutted Charlie Hebdo's Paris headquarters.

A House panel on Wednesday unanimously approved harsher penalties against Iran, arguing that an economically weak Tehran will struggle in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. By voice vote, Republicans and Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee pushed forward two bills that would strengthen current sanctions while expanding the list of companies and individuals subject to penalties. Lawmakers cited recent allegations of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and insisted that such brazen behavior demands consequences. The legislation builds on sanctions that Congress overwhelmingly passed — and President Barack Obama signed — last year....

French politicians and Muslim leaders denounced an arson attack early Wednesday that destroyed the offices of a satirical French newspaper after it "invited" the Prophet Muhammad as its guest editor this week.