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Israel wants to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toppled, its ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday, in a shift from its non-committal public stance on its neighbor's civil war. Even Assad's defeat by al Qaeda-aligned rebels would be preferable to Damascus's current alliance with Israel's arch-foe Iran, Ambassador Michael Oren said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post. His comments marked a move in Israel's public position on Syria's two-and-1/2-year-old war.

Half of Syrian rebels are hardline Islamists: British study AFP - Jihadists and members of hardline Islamist groups make up almost half of forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to extracts from a British defence study published in Monday's Daily Telegraph. The analysis by defence consultancy IHS Jane's, due to be published in full later this week, puts the number of rebel forces at around 100,000, the Telegraph reported. But these fighters have split into as many as 1,000 bands since violence flared two years ago, the study concluded. Of the rebel forces, IHS Jane's estimates that around...

Israel must now persuade Russia, to draw the line at providing weapons to its allies that would undermine Israel’s security. President Barack Obama’s abysmal failure to provide leadership during the Syrian crisis represents a turning point in the Middle East and has paved the way for President Vladimir Putin’s Russia to emerge as the dominant regional force, a position it had surrendered after the breakup of the Soviet Union. To avert abject humiliation, Obama has absurdly spun the situation into a victory achieved by the American threat of military force. Instead, it was Putin who played the role of international...

Full title: Is Assad hiding his chemical weapons outside Syria? Rebel leader claims stockpiles have been moved to Lebanon and Iraq to prevent detection Syrian president Bashar Assad is hiding his chemical weapons outside the country to prevent the deadly arsenal being destroyed, a rebel leader has claimed. The dictator has been accused of moving his stockpiles across the border to Lebanon and Iraq to evade a possible inspection. His forces were said to have acted after the US and Russia agreed to secure and eliminate the weapons – a deal hailed by Assad’s regime as a ‘victory’. General Salim...

...So this was always the plan, plotted three moves ahead by the clever American president, who was only pretending to be indecisive, quixotic and out of his depth. By sort-of threatening military intervention and then appearing to back down at the last minute, the US was not dithering or tripping over its own feet on the world stage. Oh no. It was creating the necessary conditions for Bashar al-Assad and his Russian mentors to come to the table and begin the process of submitting themselves to international standards on chemical weapons. Of course, if we pursue the chess analogy, then...

Lebanese daily says 20 trucks crossed into Iraq last week, bearing equipment and material used for manufacturing chemical weapons. Syria has moved 20 trucks worth of equipment and material used for the manufacturing of chemical weapons into neighboring Iraq, the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal reported on Sunday. The newspaper reported that the trucks crossed the boundary separating Syria with Iraq over the course of Thursday and Friday. Border guards did not inspect the contents of the trucks, which raises suspicions that they contained illicit cargo, according to Al-Mustaqbal.

Syrian warplanes and artillery bombarded rebel suburbs of the capital on Sunday after the United States agreed to call off military action in a deal with Russia to remove President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons.

...Warning; Graphic content A Syrian boy is held by the hand as he walks past the body of a beheaded Islamic militant loyal to Assad. An unnamed photojournalist was given rare access to the public execution in the town of Keferghen in the north of the country. @LeJournal/SIPA/Rex Features ... A group of young children sit on a wall as they stare at the dead body. The severed head of a militant is held aloft. The photographer witnessed four executions on August 31. @LeJournal/SIPA/Rex Features

Canada’s foreign minister John Baird is calling Syria’s offer to begin providing information on its chemical arsenal 30 days after it signs an international convention banning such weapons “ridiculous and absurd.” Baird said Syrian President Bashar Assad could not be given extra time. Baird said: “This is a man who up until a week ago denied that they had any such weapons.” …

In an exclusive interview with FRANCE 24 on Friday, US Senator John McCain acknowledged François Hollande’s support on Syria and noted that US inaction had put the French president in an “unfair political position”. US Senator John McCain has said he was worried US inaction had hurt the Syrian rebels’ campaign against President Bashar al-Assad and had put Washington’s allies, such as French President François Hollande, in an “unfair political position”. In an interview with FRANCE 24 on Friday, McCain said he feared the recent international focus on chemical weapons had given Assad an advantage in his use of conventional...

WASHINGTON — President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening to use force to ensure that Syria lives up to its commitment to turn over chemical weapons, but will seek other tangible consequences for Syria if it does not comply, senior administration officials said Friday. Although Mr. Obama reserves the right to order a punitive military strike on his own without United Nations backing if Syria reneges, the officials said he understood that Russia, because of its veto power in the Security Council, would never allow a resolution that authorized such a use of force. France, which...

Syria’s President Bashar Assad on Thursday demanded that Israel ratify international treaties on non-proliferation of nonconventional weapons, and that the US promise not to attack his regime, as he set conditions for a negotiated resolution of the crisis over his chemical weapon. Assad said he would submit data on his country’s chemical weapons stockpile a month after signing an international convention banning the arms, adding that it was Russia, and not the US, that was making a negotiated solution possible. His comments were believed to mark Assad’s first formal acknowledgement that he has chemical weapons. Calling a month wait the...

An elite Syrian unit that runs the government's chemical arms program has been scattering the weapons to dozens of sites across the country, potentially complicating US plans for air strikes, the Wall Street Journal reported. The newspaper, citing unnamed US officials and lawmakers briefed on the intelligence, said on its website on Thursday that a secretive military group known as Unit 450 had been moving the stocks around for months to help avoid detection of the weapons. US and Israeli intelligence agencies and Middle Eastern officials still believe they know the location of most of the government's chemical weapons supply,...

Chinese diplomats in Syria as well as Beijing's embassy are under regular threat from rebel attacks, China's ambassador to Syria has confided to local media outlets. In an interview with the Global Times [ link at site], Zhang Xun, China's ambassador to Syria said that Beijing's embassy has increasingly been caught in the cross-hairs of fighting between rebel and government forces in recent months... Zhang said that in another attack last month, Syrian rebels fired mortar shells at President Bashar al-Assad's motorcade. They missed the Syrian leader but hit a building that was located just 10 meters from the Chinese...

I … don’t remember this being part of the offer. Obama had better run it past Putin right away to see how he wants the U.S. to respond. Syria will fulfil an initiative to hand over its chemical weapons only when the United States stops threatening to strike Syria, RIA news agency quoted President Bashar al-Assad as saying in a television interview… “When we see the United States really wants stability in our region and stops threatening, striving to attack, and also ceases arms deliveries to terrorists, then we will believe that the necessary processes can be finalized,” he was...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad insisted that the U.S. give up its "policy of threats" and halt arms shipments to rebels before his government turns over its chemical weapons, as U.S. and Russian delegations began talks in Geneva aimed at forging a road map for the shutdown of the weapons program. Mr. Assad's comments, in his first public statement on the Russian proposal that Syria hand over its chemical weapons to an international monitors, underlined the distance between Syria and its backers in Moscow on one side and the U.S. and its allies on the other. Before starting their discussions, Secretary...

Syrian President Bashar Assad said his nation would give up its chemical arms only if the United States ends any weapons deliveries to opposition forces and ceases its "threatening" behavior. The Damascus leader made the remarks in a Russian television interview quoted on Thursday by the Washington Post. "When we see the United States really wants stability in our region and stops threatening, striving to attack, and also ceases arms deliveries to terrorists, then we will believe that the necessary processes can be finalized,” Assad reportedly told Rossiya-24 television. He said Damascus would start disclosing details about its chemical assets...

The head of the opposition Free Syria Army, General Salim Idriss, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday that he has intelligence that the Assad regime is moving its chemical weapons out of the country. “Today we have information that the regime began to move chemical materials and chemical weapons to Lebanon and to Iraq,” General Idriss told Amanpour from inside Syria. It’s a huge claim that would fundamentally shift everything U.S. intelligence officials have in the past said they believe about the situation in Syria, CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr reports.

Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Geneva today for talks with Russia about Syria's chemical weapons and was met by a statement from the Syrian president that he was not surrendering the arsenal because of any U.S. threats. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the Russian state-run news channel Rossiya-24 that his regime decided to hand over his massive cache of sarin, VX and mustard gas at Russia's suggestion. "Syria is handing over its chemical weapons under international supervision because of Russia. The U.S. threats did not influence the decision," Assad told the Russian TV. He said his government is...