Last week, the United States and 11 other countries hammered China on its appalling human rights record at the United Nations, particularly the current crackdown on dissidents and human-rights activists. China struck back on Monday, accusing the U.S. of hypocrisy and lambasting American society for rape, murder, racism, and plunder.
TEL AVIV, Israel – Sham Maher Assad, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s niece, has claimed on Facebook that Russia’s announced military withdrawal from her war-torn country is not as significant as it seems. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly ordered the withdrawal of most of his military forces from Syria.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned that “Armageddon” could begin in Syria if a satisfactory peace agreement is not worked out soon. He proceeded to make it clear Iran will not accept the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, making such a peace agreement much more difficult to negotiate.
In a hospital in northern Israel, wounded Syrian rebel Malek is waiting until he is well enough to pick up his gun again to battle President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. “I will return to Syria and fight until Assad is gone,”
A Russian diplomat sought to reassure Israel on Tuesday that its security would not be harmed by the winding down of Moscow’s military intervention in Syria’s civil war, but a top Israeli lawmaker said the ramifications could not yet be
Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that his government will withdraw some its military from Syria six months after the Kremlin began airstrikes in the region.
Saudi Arabia declared that anyone linked to Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah will be deported from the kingdom, Al Arabiya News Channel reports.
Syria has lost millions of citizens since the civil war started, but the last known American citizen in Damascus will not leave.
Despite complaints of violations from all sides, and some ominous comments from faction leaders, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon insisted on Monday that the Syrian cease-fire is holding “by and large.”
TEL AVIV – Israel is deeply concerned over Iran’s increasing strength in Syria, fearing an Iranian terror front on Israel’s northern border, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon told his Italian counterpart, Roberta Pinotti, on Monday. Israel is “very concerned by the
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif warned Saudi Arabia not to send ground forces into Syria, as the Saudis have declared their intention to do. Anticipating charges of hypocrisy over the thousands of troops Iran has deployed in Syria, Zarif insisted they were merely “military advisers.”
CNN offers a man-on-the-street view of the Syrian civil war, showing residents of the mostly Shiite town of Nubl, close to the Turkish border, celebrating the ejection of rebel forces by dictator Bashar Assad’s troops. Citizens displayed photos and banners of Assad, as well as photos of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran.
Saudi Arabia’s military spokesman said on Thursday that his country’s decision to deploy ground forces in Syria was “final” and “irreversible,” despite warnings from Russia, Iran, and the Shiite government of Iraq that such a deployment could escalate the Syrian civil war into a regional conflict.
Munich (Germany) (AFP) – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned Thursday that if Arab forces entered the Syrian war they could spark a “new world war” and urged ceasefire talks instead. Asked about proposals by some Arab countries to enter
TEL AVIV – A relative of President Bashar Al-Assad published an open letter in which she called the Syrian president a traitor, an enemy of humanity, a devil, a murderer, and a terrorist who will end up “in history’s filthiest
An AFP-Reuters report on Tuesday highlighted the difficulty of getting Syria’s many warring factions together for U.N.-brokered peace talks, as many of the parties involved consider the presence of other parties to be non-starters. Turkey, for example, has announced that it strongly opposes participation by Kurdish groups.
During a Sirius XM town hall meeting hosted by Stephen K. Bannon of Breitbart News, Senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul was asked the question that has defined much of his political career: how can Americans be effectively protected from terrorist threats like ISIS, without unduly compromising individual liberty?
The city of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, scene of a recent mass abduction by the Islamic State, looks to be a decisive battle between ISIS and the Syrian army in the eastern region of the country—and there are indications ISIS is winning.
JAFFA, Israel – Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has delivered a significant blow to the Lebanese militia’s popularity in the Arab world. Pan-Arab adulation for Hezbollah culminated in the wake of its 2006 war with Israel, when it was
Israel’s Minister of Defense Moshe “Bogey” Ya’alon told an international security conference in Tel Aviv Tuesday that if he had to choose, he would prefer to have the Islamic State (ISIS) next door in Syria, rather than Iran.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared the use of man-made famine in Syria to be a “war crime” on Thursday. He described “all sides, including the Syrian government” as “committing this and other atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
A U.S. non-governmental organization called the Syrian Emergency Task Force told Foreign Policy their field office in the Idlib province was hit by a Russian airstrike on Saturday. Other civilian damage in the area has been reported, and the strike is being cited as evidence Russia is not focusing its attention on Islamic State targets, as it frequently claims.
The Associated Press reports it has seen documents that show the State Department expects Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to remain in power until at least March 2017, which is “two months after President Barack Obama leaves office and more than five years after Obama first called for Assad to leave.”
A watchdog group called the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons reports finding more evidence of chemical weapons deployment, including sarin gas, or a substance very similar to it.
State Department Spokesman John Kirby on Monday provided a boastful recap of his cabinet’s achievements in 2015 and highlighted “bringing peace [and] security” to war-torn Syria as one of its wins this past year.
Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold confirmed to a Saudi-owned website on Monday that the IDF thwarted attempts to transfer advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah. This is the first time an Israeli official makes such a statement not under the cover
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saluted Kurdish efforts against the Islamic State, and offered Moscow’s support, by way of Damascus.
A “grain of salt” warning must accompany reports from Seymour Hersh, who has made some fantastic claims during his career. With that in mind, his latest post in the London Review of Books alleges the U.S. military is sharing intelligence with the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad for the purpose of helping Assad’s military take down Islamic State and al-Qaeda rebels.
Back in 2002, in the dark ages before Breitbart News Network, the great conservative commentator Ben Shapiro warned that the United States must “Keep an eye on Russia,” because “Russia is renewing her relations with America’s enemies.” Shapiro reiterated his message in 2007, warning America that “Russia isn’t to be trusted.”
A casually-dressed Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, Asma, made a surprise visit to the Lady of Damascus Catholic Church in war-torn Syria’s capital city on Friday evening. They watched a choir rehearsal, listened to some Christmas poems, and posed for photos with churchgoers.
Continuing in its recent tradition of casting the United States as all that is evil in the world, Salon.com has once again published a piece insisting that the U.S. is the scariest, most dangerous country in the world and that America is what ails humanity, even more so than radical Islam.
The chaotic nature of the Syrian civil war was illustrated by the presence of over a hundred representatives from opposition groups in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to lay the groundwork for peace talks with dictator Bashar Assad.
According to an interview with the head of the Kurdish Red Crescent at Rudaw, the latest horror unleashed by the Islamic State is a plague of flesh-eating bacteria, spreading rapidly through rural Syria due to the jihadis’ habit of littering the streets with corpses.
Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton is attending a fundraiser hosted by a personal friend and supporter of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose dictatorial rule has helped birth the Islamic State’s savagery.
Readers of Sunday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times were presented with a front-page story depicting a sympathetic portrait of President Obama’s Syrian refugee resettlement project.
Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force squad, was reportedly injured while fighting in Syria last month. According to an Iranian opposition group, he was far more severely injured than Tehran wants to admit.
Russian planes have been bombing ethnic Turkmen in Syria, escalating tensions between Moscow and Ankara.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia is willing to “cooperate” with the West in Syria against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) but does not believe the West is ready to work with their coalition.
The use of chemical weapons in Syria, namely chlorine and mustard gas, is becoming routine, lamented the U.S. representative of a United Nations-backed chemical weapons watchdog.
Retired NBC anchor Tom Brokaw says, “It’s immoral for a democracy to send 1 percent of its population in a uniform into harm’s way over and over again.”
