With half a dozen people already confirmed dead from starvation and the situation likely to worsen as winter takes hold, the Bashar al-Assad regime is engaged in what journalists are describing as a “terror-famine.” Children in Syria are now eating leaves for nutrition. Residents of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp are baking...

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Syrian officials today announced that peace talks will take place – depending on the timing and source of the reports – either Nov. 23-24 or some time before the end of the year. Secretary of State Kerry pushed for the so-called Geneva II talks on Monday, stating that the purpose...

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Hezbollah has for decades justified its military and political domination of Lebanon by insisting that it had to maintain its arsenal in order to defend Lebanese territory from Israel. That brand has been shattered, however, by the organization’s critical fighting in Syria on behalf of the Iran-allied Bashar al-Assad regime....

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Deepening instability along Turkey’s border with Syria has analysts concerned that U.S. troops – who are in the theater to protect Turkish airspace from Syrian forces – are likely to be either directly targeted or caught in crossfires. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had for the better part of a...

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Rumors emerged in recent weeks that Hezbollah – its brand as a Lebanese organization protecting Lebanese interests having been shattered by its involvement in the Syrian conflict – was untangling itself from that almost three year old conflict. A graphic video posted online and embedded below, which appeared to show...

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Among the security assurances given to Israel at the end of its 2006 war with Hezbollah was that an enlarged United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) – the peacekeeping force along the Israeli-Lebanese border – would fan across southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from smuggling weapons into the region....

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Analysts have worried for months that the decline in Turkey’s regional and global position will heighten the frequency and intensity of diatribes by the country’s Islamist prime minister Recep Erdogan. In September Erodgan lambasted Jews for orchestrating the overthrow of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked president Mohammed Morsi, after Ankara had sought...

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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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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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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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