US President Donald Trump threatened to obliterate parts of Iran if it attacked “anything American”, in a new war of words with Tehran after it condemned the latest US sanctions and called White House actions “mentally retarded”. Mr Trump on Monday signed an executive order imposing largely symbolic economic sanctions against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior …

Palestinian officials dismiss $50bn investment and infrastructure proposal, say political solution must be found first. The United States has revealed a proposal to create a $50bn global investment fund for the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states, designed to be the economic engine of the long-awaited US Middle East peace plan. The plan was posted on the White House website on …

An Australian member of Islamic State (IS) has begged to come home, describing “rivers of blood” flowing inside the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate and a life of horror and misery. Mahir Absar Alam, who was born in Sydney and went to high school in Loxton in country South Australia, urged Muslims around the world not to believe IS’s propaganda and to …

The surviving children of Australia’s most notorious convert to the Islamic State group Khaled Sharrouf have escaped the last brutal battle against the terrorist organisation in Syria and are being held in a refugee camp in the country’s north, as their Australian grandmother pleads for help to bring them home. The ABC has confirmed Sharrouf’s three remaining children — Zaynab, …

Daesh has lost its final shred of territory in Syria, according to US-backed forces which have declared an end to the group’s self-declared caliphate that once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria, . Syrian Defence Force (SDF) spokesman Mustafa Bali took to Twitter on Saturday to announce a “total elimination of [the] so-called caliphate” after IS militants were defeated …

The Russian presidency said that US President Donald Trump’s statements on the occupied Syrian Golan may destabilize situation in the Middle East. Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Piskov said in a press statement quoted by Tass  on Friday “Such calls may considerably destabilize the already strained situation in the Middle East,” he said. “In any case the idea as such by no …

Syria has stressed that the US administration does not have any right or mandate to decide the fate of the occupied Syrian Golan, and that any recognition by it or any action involving aggression against Syria’s right to regain it to its sovereignty is illegal act and has no effect. That came in the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry’s two letters …

Australia is urgently reviewing travel advice for Turkey weeks before Anzac Day celebrations after President Tayyip Erdogan warned Australians can expect to come home “in caskets” if there is a repeat of the Christchurch massacre. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday he had demanded Turkey remove false claims about Australia and the New Zealand terrorist attacks from its state-sponsored television …

About 400 ISIS militants have been captured trying to escape the last piece of land the group holds in Syria, a US-backed militia says. A Syrian Democratic Forces commander said the jihadists were caught overnight as they attempted to slip out of Baghuz with the help of smugglers. Hundreds of others have surrendered and been evacuated from the village with thousands …

Australian Defence officials have revealed two RAAF fighter jets were involved in a bombing mission in Iraq that led to the deaths of Iraqi civilians, with an Iraqi man whose family members were killed putting the civilian death toll at 35. The US-led Coalition estimated between six and 18 civilians may have been killed in the attack but that was …