A United Nations commission ruled on Thursday that ISIS is committing genocide against the persecuted Yazidi religious minority in Syria, The New York Times reported. “Genocide has occurred and is ongoing”, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, the chairman of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, told reporters. “ISIS has...

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Dozens of U.S. State Department officials have written a letter of dissent calling on the Obama administration to take military action against the Iran-backed regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and urging his removal as a necessary step to defeating the Islamic State, The Wall Street Journal reported (Google link) Thursday. The letter was published...

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A top spokeswoman for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad claimed that there was no starvation in besieged parts of Syria while remotely participating in a Washington D.C. press conference on Thursday. The event, hosted at the National Press Club by a group that seeks to pressure the United States to ally...

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The announcement that a spokeswoman for the Iran-backed regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will be participating in a meeting sponsored by an anti-ISIS group in Washington D.C. on Thursday has provoked outrage on social media. Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, who was designated by the Treasury department since August 2011 for being one of three “principal defenders of...

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Iran’s defense minister claimed that conflicts in Iraq and Syria are the result of a “deep-seated U.S.-Zionist conspiracy” during a memorial service for Mustafa Baddredine, a Hezbollah commander who was responsible for bombing the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, Iranian media reported on Wednesday. “Zionists are supporting terrorists and equipping them,...

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The aid provided by Israeli humanitarian groups to displaced Syrians can serve as a lesson for how people from different countries, religions, and political perspectives can work together to ease their plight, a Syrian refugee said at a congressional briefing Tuesday. Shadi Martini, a native of Aleppo who today serves as a senior...

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Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has increasingly relied on Iranian volunteers to maintain his rule, which is only exacerbating sectarian strife in the Middle East, a report in Foreign Policy on Thursday documented. The report centered on Asghar and Abbas Abyari, a father and son who were both members of Iran’s Basij militia. Both...

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Mustafa Badreddine, a Hezbollah commander who led their operations in Syria and was accused of planning multiple large-scale terror attacks, was killed in a bomb blast, the Iran-backed terror organization confirmed Friday. Badreddine was killed in an explosion near the Damascus airport that also injured several other people, Hezbollah officials...

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At least 13 military advisers attached to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed while fighting in the Syrian village of Khan Touman, Iranian media reported Monday. Former IRGC Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, announced that the soldiers had been killed as ISIS forces launched a surprise attack and...

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The financial ties between the Islamic State, which controls most of Syria’s oil fields, and the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which indirectly buys much of its energy resources from ISIS, was highlighted in a Wall Street Journal Sunday profile (Google link) of the Russian-Syrian oil mogul who acts as a middleman. George Haswani has...

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