Al-Monitor, an online news site that conveys and translates news from the Middle East, is facing questions about perceptions that it has been conveying the line of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. It is also facing questions about its founder and owner, Syrian-born businessman Jamal Daniel, who has made large investments in...

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is emphasizing that Russia remains committed to honoring arms contracts with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, including a contract under which Russia will deliver S-300 missile defense systems to Damascus. Russia last month acknowledged it has agreed to sell Syria advanced S-300 air-defense missiles, which...

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A recent survey found that Yemenis consider Iran to be their country’s Yemenis “number one enemy,” outpacing national antipathy for Israel and the United States. There’s a good reason for that: An expanded roster of Yemen-based allies would give Tehran a lever against the U.S., which relies on Yemen’s government...

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Hezbollah has brought Lebanon to the brink of outright disintegration, according to former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora: “Hezbollah is serving Syria and Iran at the expense of the Lebanese,” ex-Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told reporters. He said President Michel Suleiman should launch an initiative “to stop the state’s collapse...

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Though the U.N. has asked the parties backing the various entities in the Syrian conflict to stop injecting weapons into the violent war. The parties backing the various entities in the Syrian conflict seem to have declined to acede to the U.N.’s request: Heavy fighting resumed around the northern Syrian...

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Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah today committed his Lebanon-based Shiite terror group to further fighting in Syria: The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group vowed Friday to keep fighting in Syria “wherever needed” and said his Shiite Muslim group has made a “calculated” decision to defend the Syrian regime no matter what the...

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The White House this evening held a conference call at which it announced that the U.S. intelligence community has reassessed whether Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime has used chemical weapons against rebel fighters seeking its overthrow, and had concluded that chemical weapons had been used multiple times and had killed some...

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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned Wednesday that spillover from Syria’s civil war is threatening the increasingly fragile four-decade ceasefire between Syria and Israel. Observers are specifically raising alarms about the potential collapse of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) – the U.N. peacekeeping mission which has monitored the...

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The Lebanese army is threatening to retaliate against future Syrian attacks on Lebanese territory. The pointedly explicit warning comes after Damascus launched a helicopter gunship attack on the Lebanese border town of Arsal and injured two: The Lebanese army has warned it will immediately respond to any future cross-border attacks...

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The head of Mossad, Tamir Pardo, earlier this week met secretly with his Turkish counterpart, according to a report published in the Turkish daily Hurriyet. The meeting between Pardo and Hakan Fidan, the head of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency, took place Monday in Ankara according to the report. The...

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