Lebanon’s Daily Star reported early Friday morning that the Syrian army had launched what the outlet described as “a series of artillery strikes” on the Lebanese town of Tfail, sending Lebanese residents and Syrian refugees who have taken shelter in the town “flee[ing] into the surrounding hills”: “Syrians from all villages surrounding Tfail have fled...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Iran’s propaganda machine suggested April 13 that the leading figure in the Syrian opposition demanded “a coalition with Israel,” even being prepared to accept Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Tehran frequently uses its manifold media outlets to diss its opponents by hinting at or saying outright they enjoy relations...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Late last month, Syrian rebels reported another chemical attack perpetrated by the government of Bashar al-Assad. Subsequently, a senior Israeli defense official told Israel Radio that Assad had again used chemical weapons, though this time they were “nonlethal agents were used to incapacitate opposition fighters.” This would be the first...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Syria now has only 17 days left to hand over the remainder of its chemical weapons stockpile or it will be in violation of a United Nations deadline that had originally been set as an alternative to a U.S.-led attack on Syrian military infrastructure, per comments made today by the...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah boasted in an interview published Monday that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime was no longer in danger of being overthrown by opposition elements, as U.S. lawmakers moved to target the Iran-backed terror group over its critical support for Damascus: Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose fighters have been supporting Assad...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has begun taking over Hezbollah checkpoints in the Bekaa Valley in northeastern Lebanon, close to the border with Syria. This move offers considerable advantages to Hezbollah, which gets the benefits of containment of blowback from Syria in the former of Sunni rebel fighters crossing over...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The United Nations on Thursday announced that more than one million refugees have flooded into Lebanon from Syria, creating what The New York Times described as “the highest concentration of refugees as a percentage of population in the world, with about one Syrian for every three Lebanese.” “The influx of a million...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday conveyed recent figures from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) assessing that more than 150,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, amid another string of prominently reported gains by forces fighting on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

President Barack Obama on Friday traveled to Saudi Arabia for what had long been anticipated as a fence-mending visit, after months of increasingly public disagreements between the US and its traditional Gulf allies over Washington’s posture towards Shiite expansionism, on the one hand, and political Islamists within the Sunni world, on the other. The...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

National Journal on Wednesday conveyed details of what the outlet described as an “explosive” hearing held that day by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which saw senators from both parties “eviscerate” Obama administration officials over what Sen. Bob Corker described as a “delusional” understanding of the Syrian conflict. Corker leveled the characterization at Tom...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle