Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani this week pledged support for the embattled regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and for the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah. The Iranian proxies were celebrated by the Iranian official, who many had hoped would emerge as a moderate and a reformer, because of their willingness to...

• Kindle

Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s nominee to be the U.S.’s next ambassador to the United Nations, was asked during her Senate hearings to describe the U.N.’s stance regarding the Syrian conflict. She was not kind: Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told a Senate...

• Kindle

Critics who have been blasting Hezbollah for its involvement in the Syrian conflict have outlined an array of fears regarding the consequences of the Iran-backed terror group’s actions. The regional consequences of the group’s actions – Hezbollah risks creating a crescent of Sunni-Shiit conflict from the Mediteranean coast into Iraq...

• Kindle

Tuesday saw a variety of potentially escalatory fire from across the Syrian border into Israel. Unidentified gunmen firing on Israeli troops who were investigating an infiltration into Israeli territory by Syrian suspects. Dozens of blasts being linked to mortars fired across the border. The situation is not, in other words, stable. The...

• Kindle

European countries are rushing to head off what’s being labeled “jihad tourism,” as evidence emerges that radicalized Europeans are traveling to Syria to fight against the Bashar al-Assad regime. Officials are expressing concerns that their citizens will eventually come home as battle-hardened jihadists: Mounting evidence of a growing number of...

• Kindle

There are growing worries that the Syrian opposition may splinter, after top Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Kamal Hamami was killed Thursday by Al Qaeda-linked militants in northern Syria. He was meeting with them so that the Sunni factions could coordinate moves against the Shiite-backed regime of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad....

• Kindle

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was created as a successor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). The latter had become a vehicle where rogue regimes huddled together for mutual protection – they voted to thwart criticism of themselves and allies – and from which they...

• Kindle

Syrian government troops continued their assault on Homs this week, threatening to fully wrest control of the strategic city from rebels who have used it to threaten the regime’s supply lines between Syria’s capital, Damascus, and the Mediterranean Sea. Syrian government troops unleashed a major artillery barrage on the city of Homs...

• Kindle

Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey was interviewed by CNN over the weekend and asked to evaluate the trajectory of the conflict in Syria. Describing how the conflict has been polarized along sectarian lines by battling Shiite and Sunni extremists, Dempsey projected that warfighting may last a full decade: The United...

• Kindle

Details and conflicting reports are beginning to trickle out of the Middle East, after huge explosions overnight Thursday rocked a Syrian army base twenty kilometers outside the port city of Latakia. Troops loyal to the Bashar al-Assad regime and opposition forces seeking its overthrow were exchanging artillery and missile fire...

• Kindle