Videos uploaded yesterday to YouTube by Syrian opposition groups showcase jihadist infrastructure and document heavy fighting close to the Israeli-Syrian border. The footage comes amid new Israeli evaluations that predict the Jewish state may have to fight a multi-front war against elements drawn from extremist Sunni groups that have increasingly...

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Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad recently gave an interview on Turkish TV in which he discussed Ankara’s support for opposition forces battling to overthrow the Assad regime. The Syrian strongman was less than measured, and he very pointedly threatened that Turkey would “pay very dearly.” Hezbollah media outlets were only too...

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Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian war has allowed the Bashar al-Assad regime to steadily erode two years of rebel advances and seize the momentum in the conflict. The opposition stronghold of Qusayr fell to a campaign that combined ground troops from the Iran-backed terror group with air support from the...

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Analysts have recently begun analyzing the Middle East as a function of three emerging regional blocs: an Iranian-led bloc that includes Syria and Hezbollah, an extremist Turkey/Brotherhood bloc with which Qatar often aligns, and a U.S.-allied bloc that includes Israel and moderate Arab states. The interactions between these camps vary...

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Iranian state media is crowing that it has been elected by a vote of the United Nations General Assembly to be the rapporteur of the U.N.’s Disarmament and International Security Committee. The election, according to Iran’s state-linked Fars news agency, was a defeat for the “Zionist regime representative” who had...

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Spillover and chaos driven by the Syrian conflict threatens to reverse the critical gains made by the U.S. and its allies during the Anbar awakening. The cooperation of tribal leaders in that region allowed the U.S. to hand Al Qaeda a battlefield defeat. Deepening sectarian tensions in Iraq, coupled with...

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Hezbollah has long been criticized for creating inside Lebanon what is effectively a state-within-a-state, where the Iran-backed terror group’s power and weaponry functionally eclipse Beirut’s sovereignty. Lebanon’s Future bloc – the largest faction of the country’s Western-aligned March 14 Alliance – made the criticism a little more pointed this week:...

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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that hundreds of Al Qaeda-linked jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) advanced overnight toward a Turkish border crossing. The move comes shortly after the group battled with elements of the more moderate Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA). Meanwhile...

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Damascus has ruled out talks with a bulk of the opposition forces battling to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, excluding among others the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) and calling into question the viability of peace talks scheduled to take place between various factions in November. “Assad is...

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Sunni extremists aligned against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime have at times made deliberate, extensive efforts to win hearts and minds. Al Qaeda officials, in general, are known to be concerned about the sensitivities of local populations. Documents and memos captured in Mali advise affiliates not to impose harsh sharia measures...

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