A video of Syrian rebels spraying bullets at captured government troops as they lay on the ground may document a war crime, according to human rights groups, and will complicate Western efforts to unite and assist forces fighting the ruling regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The video, which was...

• Kindle

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned this week that the Syrian opposition aligned against the regime of Bashar al-Assad was being “hijacked” by Islamic extremists, even as rebel forces expanded their influence into Palestinian refugee communities and were accused by human rights groups of committing war crimes. Secretary Clinton declared on Wednesday...

• Kindle

Developments this week highlighted the destabilizing role played by Iran’s conventional arsenal, in regions far beyond the Islamic Republic’s immediate neighborhood and in contexts independent of its military and terrorist efforts against Israel. Inside Syria, opposition leaders stressed to CNN that Iran’s military coordination with Bashar al-Assad’s regime has escalated, and that...

• Kindle

Iran has provided drones to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to opposition forces speaking to CNN. Syrian government troops have reportedly turned the unmanned aircraft against Syrian civilians and rebel forces. The reports come in the aftermath of intelligence reports published in September that documented how “planes...

• Kindle

Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi took credit Sunday for the drone dispatched by Hezbollah in early October. The unmanned aircraft penetrated Israeli airspace before being intercepted and shot down by the Israeli Air Force. Vahidi’s remarks echo those of Iranian parliamentary Defense Committee Chairman Esmail Kowsari, who said the drone...

• Kindle

Fears that Syria’s civil war will engulf other countries are on the verge of coalescing into a dangerous reality, as the violence between foreign-backed forces inside Syria spills across the nation’s borders. Already a proxy war between Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, which provide troops and weapons in support of the...

• Kindle

In addition to spilling over regionally into Turkey and Lebanon, the civil war in Syria is increasingly becoming an explicit proxy war between US-aligned Saudi Arabia and Turkey, on one side, and Iran-aligned Hezbollah and Syria, on the other. A senior Russian general is charging that the Syrian opposition has...

• Kindle

Lebanese politicians are formally accusing the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah of killing Brig. Gen. Wissam Al-Hassan with a car bomb late last week, specifically highlighting similarities between the attack and the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Lebanese lawmakers are also demanding an investigation into Hassan’s...

• Kindle

The assassination of anti-Syrian Lebanon official Wissam Al-Hassan threatens to send Lebanon spiraling into another sectarian civil war, as rioting erupted in the aftermath of his Sunday funeral. Hassan, who was closely linked to the March 14 movement and the Cedar Revolution that expelled Syrian troops from Lebanon, was murdered...

• Kindle

Syrian government forces demolished the northern Syrian town of Maarat al-Noaman, which had been taken over by rebels last week. The New York Times described the scene as a “horror”: “Men stumbled over rubble, carrying single bones nearly shorn of flesh and shredded body parts barely identifiable as human… ....

• Kindle