Washington's sanctions pressure on the Islamic Republic continues amid the ongoing tensions between the two countries in place since America’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018.

Although Israel later apologised for the incident that claimed the lives of nine Turkish nationals and one American and compensated the victims' families, Tel Aviv-Ankara ties have never been able to get back on track, and doubts run high as to whether they can ever be repaired.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham* terrorist group has attacked settlements in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, the head of the Russian Defence Ministry's centre for Syrian reconciliation, said on Saturday.

Egypt became the first Arab country to establish relations with Israel in 1979, with the two countries engaging in security cooperation in Sinai, and Cairo occasionally helping to mediate between the Israel and the Palestinians.

The United States announced on Wednesday it will terminate sanctions waivers that had allowed Russian, Chinese and European companies to carry out work at Iranian nuclear sites as part of the JCPOA nuclear deal.

Commenting on the recent protests and riots in Minneapolis, Minnesota, following the killing of George Floyd on Monday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted a video to social media which argued the US’ present is evil, like its past.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham* terrorist group has attacked settlements in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, the head of the Russian Defence Ministry's centre for Syrian reconciliation, said on Friday.

BEIRUT (Sputnik) – The Israeli army opened fire with automatic weapons in a disputed territory of the Shebaa farms located on the border with Lebanon when a shepherd was grazing his flocks of sheep on the border zone, the state-run Lebanese NNA news agency reported on Friday.

Amid a slump in demand for oil and dwindling storage capacity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was earlier reported that tankers carrying Saudi Arabian oil launched by the kingdom before it called a halt to the price war and agreed new production cuts were on course for the US coast, to join the congestion of tankers there waiting to offload.

Last week, worshippers gathered outside Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan, while the interiors of the mosque remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Previously, US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook underscored that Washington’s policy of maximum economic pressure on Iran would prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, leaving the country with a choice of either coming to the negotiating table or facing “economic collapse”.

Daesh has ramped up attacks on both security forces and civilians in remote rural areas of Iraq while the local government is focusing its efforts on tackling the coronavirus outbreak.

ANKARA (Sputnik) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the prayer to commemorate the 567th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople (currently, Istanbul) would be held in Hagia Sophia on Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham* terrorist group has attacked settlements in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, the head of the Russian Defence Ministry's centre for Syrian reconciliation, said on Thursday.

UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) – The city of Aden in south Yemen has the world's highest mortality rate from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) with 70 percent of its infected residents dying, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Thursday.

The eastern Syrian provinces of al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor remain a major source of tensions between Damascus and Washington amid the ongoing tense standoff between Syrian forces, local civilians and US troops and their allies.

Several hundred Israeli websites were systematically hacked last week as hackers from across the Middle East marked Quds Day, a day of protest of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem. Before that, Israeli and Iranian hackers engaged in back-and-forth hack attacks on one another’s infrastructure, targeting port and utilities facilities.

TEHRAN (Sputnik) - Iran is capable of supplying itself with nuclear fuel even without Russia's assistance, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) spokesman, Behruz Kamalvandi, said on Thursday.

On 6 May Facebook revealed the first 20 members of its Oversight Board, an independent body entrusted with the final say over certain content moderation decisions for the world’s largest social media platform, the creation of which was announced in November 2018, to avoid accusations of bias over removing content deemed problematic

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Economic losses resulting from the blockade of Libyan ports used by the National Oil Corporation (NOC) have reached about $5 billion, the NOC reports.