Four Iranian special forces soldiers were killed in Syria, a week after Iran announced that elite units would be deployed to help Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad stay in power. The four commandos, who are the first members of the official Iranian armed forces to die in the Syrian civil war, were sent as military advisers, Iran’s Tasnim...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

JNS.org – Here’s the latest episode of outreach to Iran from the lips of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. After condemning, during a press conference in Bahrain, the “destabilizing actions” of Iran in the Middle East, he then followed up with a plea. “Help us end the war in...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Describing the seizure of the Syrian city of Palmyra by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad from the Islamic State as a switch “from one tyranny to another,” a refugee from Palmyra called both Assad and ISIS “enemies of normal Syrian people” during an interview published in The Independent on Thursday. Mohamed Alkhateb was studying at a...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Five years into the Syrian civil war, Qutaiba Idlbi, a native of Damascus, recalled a question he first heard at the onset of the revolution. “Why should we go out to the streets if we know that Assad is going to shoot unarmed people?” Idlbi remembered that question, raised by...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said that the Iran-backed regime of President Bashar al-Assad has used banned chemical weapons against civilians since the current ceasefire began, Reuters reported on Tuesday. “The Syrians used military grade chemical weapons and lately have been using materials, chlorine, against civilians, including in these very days,...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

A United Nations report has accused the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of carrying out a campaign of “extermination” against jailed opponents, among many other crimes against humanity. Although the report documented abuses on all sides of the Syrian civil war, it was particularly thorough in cataloging the ring of prisons run by the Iran-backed...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Tens of thousands of Syrians have fled from Aleppo after the city was nearly encircled by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, supported by Iranian troops and hundreds of Russian air strikes. “The Russian cover continues night and day, there were more than 250 air strikes on this area in one...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

As the Syrian village of Madaya continues to be under siege by the forces of Iran-backed dictator Bashar al-Assad, with nearly two dozen people dead from starvation, the hunger problems continue to worsen throughout the country. One in three Syrians doesn’t have adequate access to food, NPR reported Tuesday. This food insecurity is caused by civilians surrounded...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Russia is supplying the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah with advanced weaponry, including “long-range tactical missiles, laser guided rockets, and anti-tank weapons,” according to two anonymous Hezbollah commanders, The Daily Beast reported on Monday. The duo, who used the false names Bakr and Assir, met with The Daily Beast separately in December...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The Obama administration’s failure to address the brutality of the Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria led to a “vacuum” that allowed “a humanitarian catastrophe, a terrible refugee crisis, a deepening proxy war and the rise of ISIL in Iraq and Syria” to occur, Dennis Ross, a former White...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle