After coming under scrutiny for de facto facilitating weapons shipments from Iran to the Bashar al-Assad regime, Iraqi officials have declared their readiness to carry out random searches of airplanes: While Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s spokesman spoke of newly tightened restrictions on Iranian flights to Syria, the head of Iraq’s...

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Islamist elements in the Syrian opposition are increasingly at odds with more secular forces in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), setting the stage for a showdown that could happen after the Bashar al-Assad regime falls — or possibly before — but looks almost certain to happen in some form: These...

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The Israeli army has completed the installation of a field hospital set up on the Israeli-Syrian border to treat injured Syrians. The humanitarian gesture comes at the risk of encouraging further efforts by Syrians to cross into Israel: Ben-Dror Yemini writes that, now that the word is out that Israel...

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At least 600 Syrian refugees were deported from Turkey following clashes with military police at a refugee camp near the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkish officials deny that anyone was expelled — they insist that the refugees left voluntarily — but human rights organizations are pointing to evidence of the opposite, and are...

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Unconfirmed reports from Syrian rebels indicate that they may have successfully struck an Iranian airplane that was attempting to land at the Damascus airport and deliver arms to the Bashar al-Assad regime. Reuters recently reported that Iran has “significantly stepped up” military assistance to Syrian army. The main weapons routes...

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Gunfire from across the Syrian border struck Israeli army vehicles over the weekend, triggering an Israeli retaliation that destroyed a Syrian machine-gun position. The Israeli military judged that the attack was deliberate, in contrast to previous cross-border gunfire: The cease-fire line between Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan, which...

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Hezbollah is lashing out against President Obama after the president told a crowd of Israeli students last week that the European Union should blacklist the Iran-backed group. Hezbollah conducts critical fundraising and logistical work inside the E.U., and even the group’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that an E.U. designation “would...

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Israeli officials believe that chemical weapons were used yesterday in Syria for the first time in that country’s two-year conflict, with each side blaming the other for an attack that killed at least 25 people. Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons is thought to be the world’s largest, and last week IDF...

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A network of spy stations is transmitting information from Lebanon to Iran, according to a report in the Saudi daily Al-Watan [Arabic]. In the report, journalist Fatima Houhou writes that information passed on to Tehran includes video, phone, and electronic data. Houhou goes on to suggest that the information is...

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A statement by Syria’s grand mufti has citizens of the war-torn country fearing that a full military draft may be in the offing: The statement was issued by the Syrian government’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badredeen al-Hassoun, on behalf of the country’s Supreme Fatwa Council and said: “Military service...

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