Middle East & North Africa

DUBAI, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Bahrain's foreign minister, Abdullatif Al Zayani, said on Saturday that Lebanon needs to demonstrate that its powerful Iran-allied Hezbollah movement can change its behaviour to mend a rift with Gulf Arab states.

Lebanon is facing a diplomatic crisis with Gulf states, triggered by a minister's critical comments about the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen that prompted Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait to expel Lebanon's top diplomats and recall their own envoys. 

MANAMA, Nov 20 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sought on Saturday to reassure allies in the Middle East that President Joe Biden's administration was committed to the region despite Washington increasingly turning its attention towards countering China.

It was unclear how much impact Austin's speech would have with Washington's allies in the Middle East, since it was not backed by any announcements of further deployments or new weapon sales in the region.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — America’s top defense official vowed Saturday to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to counter its “dangerous use” of suicide drones in the wider Mideast, a pledge coming as negotiations remain stalled over Tehran’s tattered atomic deal with world powers.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran announced Saturday it has now fully vaccinated 44 million people, more than half of its population of 85 million. The country has been hit the worst by the pandemic in the Middle East.

The health ministry said the 44 million received two doses of the vaccine. Iran has recorded at least 128,000 deaths since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The ministry also announced that there have been more than 3,500 new cases of infections in the past 24 hours, as well as 118 deaths.

20 Nov 2021; MEMO: Fans of footballer Mohamed Elneny have accused his club, UK's Arsenal, of terminating his contract over his support for Palestine, Rai Al-Youm reported on Friday.

The news outlet claims that the stated reason for the termination of Elneny's contract was that his team's coach, Mikel Arteta, no longer wanted him on the team.

The family of Muhammad Abd Al-Razzaq Al-Sabbagh owned a building and a large house in the city of Jaffa, in northern occupied Palestine, now Israel, before moving to East Jerusalem following the Palestinian exodus of 1948, Anadolu News Agency reports.

For years, the family, comprising 32 people now, has feared a new displacement after receiving many decisions from settler groups to evict them from the house that they have resided in since 1956 in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.

20 Nov 2021; MEMO: Turkey's interior minister received an award, Thursday, from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean in Rome, Italy, for an app developed by the Turkish government to help women deal with domestic violence.

The Women's Emergency Support Application (KADES), developed by Turkey's Interior Ministry, provides women with a hotline to report such violence and direct law enforcement officers to the scene.

20 Nov 2021; MEMO: Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar announced on Thursday that military operations in Syria would continue until the neutralisation of the last "terrorist", Aram News reported.

Akar confirmed that his country fulfils the humanitarian needs of around nine million "Syrian brothers" in Turkey and Syria.

"If we did not carry out these operations, our country and the whole region would have been facing a big threat and danger," he explained.

20 Nov 2021; MEMO: Omri Goren, the housekeeper of Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz, has been arrested and charged with espionage over offering to spy on Gantz for Iran, Israeli media reported on Friday.

According to Israeli Channel 12 news, Goren reached out to Black Shadow, a cyber-hacker group, on Telegram and proposed his help.

20 Nov 2021; MEMO: Turkish contractors and consultancy firms can be a part of projects involving infrastructure, hospitals, schools and public buildings in Iraq, Nail Olpak, head of the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) said in Iraq, Daily Sabah Newspaper reports.

According to the report, this cooperation can be further facilitated by a reversal in discrimination regarding the conditions of fair competition, as well as the easing of processes required to do business, a Turkish trade official said Friday.