Israel needs to hold on the Golan Heights “for the foreseeable future” to as a buffer against the instability in Syria, and “the wisdom of that has only increased” since Syria descended into an intractable civil war, former presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in wide-ranging talk at the Hudson...
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A commonly-used Washington framework to describe Iranian politics is that the government is split between “hardliners” who support global terrorism and “moderates” who are willing to cooperate with the West. But on issues like Holocaust denial, the moderates are doing “a good job of disguising” any differences between themselves and the hardliners, The Washington Post editoral board wrote Tuesday....
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At least 13 military advisers attached to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed while fighting in the Syrian village of Khan Touman, Iranian media reported Monday. Former IRGC Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, announced that the soldiers had been killed as ISIS forces launched a surprise attack and...
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The financial ties between the Islamic State, which controls most of Syria’s oil fields, and the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which indirectly buys much of its energy resources from ISIS, was highlighted in a Wall Street Journal Sunday profile (Google link) of the Russian-Syrian oil mogul who acts as a middleman. George Haswani has...
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The Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah and its allies swept to victory in municipal elections in the Bekaa valley region of eastern Lebanon on Sunday. Hezbollah won a “complete victory” in the cities of Baalbek and the town of Brital, which borders Syria, according to its deputy chief, Sheikh Naim Kassem. Hezbollah competed in 80 of the...
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Iran announced Monday that it has tested another ballistic missile, which it claimed to have a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles)—enough to reach Israel and most of the Middle East. Brig. Gen. Ali Abdollahi, deputy chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, said that the missile, which was tested...
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Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta would “probably not” believe that President Barack Obama was serious about his promise to take action to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb if Panetta could make his assessments over again, he conceded in a New York Times Magazine article published on Thursday. Panetta, who was the director...
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President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications admitted that the administration’s fundamental selling point for the nuclear deal with Iran was false, according to a profile written by David Samuels and published Sunday in The New York Times magazine. Ben Rhodes, described as having a “mind meld” with...
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“Today we have diplomatic relations with 161 countries – more than at any time in our history,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the AIPAC policy conference in March. “And by the way, there are not that many countries left. There are only about 200 countries in the world.” Despite the number...
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The deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on state television Wednesday that his nation would close the strategic Strait of Hormuz to the United States and its allies if they “threaten” Iran. “If the Americans and their regional allies want to pass through the Strait of...
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