“Sleeper cells” made up of former Iraqi police officers and soldiers are tipping off authorities to ISISpositions in the northern city of Mosul, a prominent lawmaker has told the Associated Press. The comments by Hakim al-Zamili, the head of parliament’s security and defense committee, are the first high-level confirmation of the groups’ existence after weeks of rumors. Their work remains ...

Iraqi Kurdish forces Sunday found and freed workers who had gone missing a day earlier when ISISinsurgents seized a small crude oil station near the northern city of Kirkuk, the provincial governor and a local councilman said. The development came as ISIS militants press ahead with their offensive in the Kirkuk area after suffering last week a setback in Syria, ...

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has ordered an end to a years-old nightly curfew in Baghdad in a bid to ease restrictions on daily life despite persistent violence, officials said Thursday. Lifting the curfew is a major change to a longstanding policy aimed at curbing violence in the capital by limiting movement at night, which has failed to stop the ...

Backed by allied Shiite, Sunni and Iranian fighters, Iraqi security forces launched a large-scale military operation Monday to recapture Saddam Hussein’s hometown from ISIS, a major step in a campaign to reclaim territory in northern Iraq controlled by the militants. But hours into the operation, a key test for the embattled Iraqi army, the military said it still hadn’t entered ...

Iran’s footballers have been warned they could face punishment if they take “selfie” pictures with female fans who have turned out in large numbers at the Asian Cup. The head of the Iranian Football Federation’s moral committee said players risked being used as a “political tool” if snapped with women fans. Women are banned from attending men’s sports events in ...

A deal between Iran and the six world powers is highly unlikely to be reached by March, a senior Israeli official told reporters Monday. “I don’t believe that an agreement will come at any price,” said the official who has knowledge of the negotiations. “No one can declare with any certainty that an agreement will be reached shortly. It’s hard ...

Iran said Tuesday it has sent a warning to Israel through the United States over the recent killing of an Iranian general in an alleged Israeli airstrike, the official IRNA news agency reported. The report quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying, “We told the Americans that the leaders of the Zionist regime should await the consequences of ...

Iran’s parliament agreed Tuesday to examine a bill asking the government to resume all its nuclear activities in the event of fresh US sanctions, local media reported. Under an interim deal struck in 2013, Iran froze its uranium enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief. But two deadlines for a full accord cutting off Iran’s pathway to an atomic bomb ...

WASHINGTON: Iran is “forever” banned from building a nuclear weapon under an existing international treaty, top U.S. diplomat John Kerry said Wednesday, seeking to dismiss fears that limits on its program imposed in a new deal may eventually be lifted. “Please understand, there is no reduction [of restrictions] at any time that permits Iran to build a nuclear weapon,” Kerry ...

The Egyptian authorities have deported an Australian television journalist jailed for more than a year on politicized charges about the content of his work. The Australian, Peter Greste, is one of three journalists for Al Jazeera’s English-language affiliate jailed on allegations of reporting false news in a conspiracy with the Muslim Brotherhood to destabilize the country. The other two, along ...