Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah today committed his Lebanon-based Shiite terror group to further fighting in Syria: The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group vowed Friday to keep fighting in Syria “wherever needed” and said his Shiite Muslim group has made a “calculated” decision to defend the Syrian regime no matter what the...
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The White House this evening held a conference call at which it announced that the U.S. intelligence community has reassessed whether Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime has used chemical weapons against rebel fighters seeking its overthrow, and had concluded that chemical weapons had been used multiple times and had killed some...
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned Wednesday that spillover from Syria’s civil war is threatening the increasingly fragile four-decade ceasefire between Syria and Israel. Observers are specifically raising alarms about the potential collapse of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) – the U.N. peacekeeping mission which has monitored the...
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The Lebanese army is threatening to retaliate against future Syrian attacks on Lebanese territory. The pointedly explicit warning comes after Damascus launched a helicopter gunship attack on the Lebanese border town of Arsal and injured two: The Lebanese army has warned it will immediately respond to any future cross-border attacks...
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The head of Mossad, Tamir Pardo, earlier this week met secretly with his Turkish counterpart, according to a report published in the Turkish daily Hurriyet. The meeting between Pardo and Hakan Fidan, the head of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency, took place Monday in Ankara according to the report. The...
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Analysts are warning that Hezbollah’s sustained involvement in Syria on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime risks pulling Lebanon into a sectarian civil war similar to the country’s devastating 15-year conflict. It is sectarianism, Shi’ism, but not Lebanonism. In the moment of truth the Hezbollah chose sect and religion over state,...
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Amid concerns over Jordan’s stability, America contributed troops, Patriot batteries, and F-16 jets to participate in the Eager Lion military exercise in the country. Major General Awni al-Adwan, Jordan’s chief army commander for the drill, contextualized the exercise: In a press conference held at the Jordan Special Operations Command in...
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A new study by the Intelligence and Terrorism Center, which is part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, estimates that at least a hundred Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the battles in Syria. The study draws its information from open sources, mainly the Arab media. It provides...
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Lebanese Christians have joined just about everybody else in the region in blasting Hezbollah for its role in the Syrian conflict, and for dragging Lebanon into the now two and a half year conflict. Veteran Lebanese politician Samir Geagea made the point a few weeks ago: The LF leader said...
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Syrian rebels seized the Syrian side of the Quneitra border crossing yesterday. Even if they only held it temporarily, their achievement testifies to how far the Syrian civil war remains from resolution. Just a day earlier, Syrian officials said their army had succeeded in reconquering the key border town of...
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