In a conference call with The Israel Project on Tuesday, Dr. Jonathan Spyer, a Middle East journalist and analyst, said that Syria has “become a subcontractor for the ambitions of outside powers,” notably the Islamic Republic of Iran. Spyer explained that Iran’s involvement in Syria is a key part of its...

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The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, despite a series of setbacks and defeats on the battlefield, has “moved aggressively to prevent regime collapse” with backing from foreign troops and Iranian financial support, according to an analysis written by Phillip Smyth yesterday in Foreign Policy. Smyth noted that many Iraqi Shiite fighters...

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The recently suppressed unrest in the Kudish region of Iran, “is an indication not of the regime’s strength, but of its potential weakness,” Jonathan Spyer, director of the Rubin Center, wrote in a column for The Jerusalem Post on Friday. The suppression of any hint of Kurdish separatism has remained in...

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A top security official of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been placed under house arrest on suspicion of plotting a coup, The Telegraph reported today. Ali Mamlouk, the head of the country’s National Security Bureau, and one of the few officials still to have access to President...

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A decisive battle is underway in the area of Syria’s northwestern bornder with Lebanon between Syrian rebels and the Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah. Launched a few days ago, this battle is taking place in parallel with other battles by Syrian rebel groups in southern Syria who are trying to topple...

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Despite recent reports of battlefield reversals suffered by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the embattled dictator is still relatively secure, Jonathan Spyer, director of the Rubin Center, wrote in an analysis published Friday in The Jerusalem Post. Spyer argued that two factors—Assad’s ability to consolidate his rule over critical...

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In his observations about Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Saudi Arabia last week, columnist Tariq Al-Homayed of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat charged that an agreement between the West and Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program that fails to end Iran’s occupation of other countries or stop its sponsorship...

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America’s strategy in fighting the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) has become “increasingly dependent on Iranian fighters,” according to an analysis published Friday in The New York Times. In the four days since Iranian troops joined 30,000 Iraqi forces to try to wrest Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit back...

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Iran is stepping up its offensive against rebels in southern Syria, exacerbating “the tensions on Israel’s northern border,” Jonathan Spyer, director of the Rubin Center, and Benjamin Weinthal, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote in an analysis published yesterday. The Iran/Hezbollah/Assad troika has long threatened to develop the...

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The Associated Press (AP) reported today that Shiite militias in Iraq are proving to be “just as brutal as that of their sworn sectarian enemies,” the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In a grisly video recently posted online, a Shiite fighter shouts the name of a revered imam in victory...

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