Keyword: assad
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On 'America's Newsroom' Senator Rand Paul backed President Trump in the face of harsh criticism from Republicans over his decision to withdraw the 2,000-strong U.S. force from Syria. RAND PAUL: This is a very bold move for President Trump. It is exactly what he promised the American people -- in fact it is one of the reasons he won the election. Because he is different from so many Republicans who want us to be everywhere all the time around the world. They want us to be the world policeman, that every war on the planet we have to have our...
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WASHINGTON—The U.S. military is preparing to withdraw its forces from Syria, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that marks an abrupt reversal of the American military strategy in the Middle East. U.S. officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin an immediate pullout of American forces from the region where they have been trying to wrap up the campaign against Islamic State, the people said. “The Pentagon has an order to get to move troops out of Syria as quickly as possible, “ a U.S. official said.
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WASHINGTON—The U.S. military is preparing to withdraw its forces from Syria, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that marks an abrupt reversal of the American military strategy in the Middle East. U.S. officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin an immediate pullout of American forces from the region where they have been trying to wrap up the campaign against Islamic State, the people said.
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A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling...
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Russia has completed an elaborate air defense system in Syria that curbs the operational capabilities of both the United States and Israel, according to a report by the Washington- based Institute for the Study of War. The deployments throughout the conflict-ravaged country include variations of the advanced S-300 and S-400 systems in addition to other cutting-edge technologies. Moscow long ago exported such systems to Syria, however, they remained under the control of its own army. Only after the accidental downing in September by Syrian forces of a Russian reconnaissance plane, an incident the Kremlin blamed on Jerusalem which minutes earlier...
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MOSCOW — It would be one of the world’s more unusual direct flights. But bringing Syrian soldiers and civilians to a Black Sea resort is exactly what was on offer Tuesday, when a delegation from Crimea visited Damascus, the Syrian capital. “We understand that restrictions related to trade, money transfers and tourism are similar to what we have in Crimea,” said Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov, Russia’s top official there. Both Syria and Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine four years ago, have been hit by Western sanctions, and their economies are struggling. “We should turn our minuses into our advantages,”...
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Congress moved this week to tighten the economic noose on the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, passing new sanctions that directly target his military alliance with Russia and Iran that has resulted in scores of civilian casualties. The new sanctions on Assad seek to "halt the wholesale slaughter of the Syrian people" by hitting the regime's financial and military alliances with Russia and Iran, both of which have provided Assad and his allies with military hardware and manpower. It also authorized Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to provide U.S. support to entities that are gathering and preserving...
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Connections between the Kremlin and international terrorism extend back for decades. The KGB helped develop modern terrorism. It provided weapons to terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, helped devise aircraft hijackings during the 1960s, and promoted the concept of suicide bombings against both military and civilian targets. According to KGB defectors, the FSB successor has continued to sponsor terrorists such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, who trained in Russia in the 1990s before joining Osama bin Laden. During its proxy attack on Ukraine, Moscow supplied the missile system to separatists who shot down a Malaysian Airlines jet, killing nearly 300 civilians. The West has...
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In March, State Department veteran and former adviser to Barack Obama, Frederic Hof, bid farewell to public life with a stunning admission. Amid a confession regarding his failure to prevent the expansion of the Syrian civil war into a regional crisis, Hof laid the blame for that all-consuming conflict (as well as a notable uptick in Russian aggression) at the feet of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The administration sacrificed Syrian civilians and American credibility for the mistaken notion that Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price for a nuclear agreement,” Hof wrote. Today, with 500,000 dead, millions...
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BEIRUT (AP) — They dug trenches around towns, reinforced caves for cover and put up sand bags around their positions. They issued calls to arms, urging young men to join in the defense of Idlib, the Syrian province where opposition fighters expect to make their last stand against Russian- and Iranian-backed government troops they have fought for years. This time, it's "surrender or die." As the decisive stand for their last stronghold looms, this motley crew of tens of thousands of opposition fighters, including some of the world's most radical groups, is looking for ways to salvage whatever is possible...
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President Donald Trump’s national security adviser warned the Syrian government against using chemical weapons in the impending battle for Idlib Province, the last remaining rebel stronghold populated by more than 2 million people. If chemical weapons are used, National Security Adviser John Bolton promised the U.S. would deliver a counterattack ...
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President Bashar al-Assad has approved a gas attack in the Idlib province, which is the country’s last rebel stronghold, a report on Sunday said. Reports of Assad's approval comes about a week after President Trump warned the strongman and his allies not to “recklessly attack” the province. Trump called any gas attack a potential “grave humanitarian mistake.” The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials, was first to report on Assad.
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President Bashar al-Assad has approved a gas attack in the Idlib province, which is the country’s last rebel stronghold, a report on Sunday said...The Wall Street Journal reported that the international pressure did little to sway Assad, who benefits from support from Russia and Iran. The report said Assad has approved the use of chlorine gas...Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a “total annihilation of terrorists in Syria,” while Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke of “cleansing the Idlib region of terrorists.”
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<p>A bellicose President Trump wanted to kill Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad after he launched a chemical weapons attack on civilians in April 2017, according to the new White House tell-all by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.</p>
<p>The commander-in-chief called Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and issued the deadly order.</p>
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Former Secretary of State John Kerry said former President Barack Obama should have followed through on his infamous "red line" warning to Syria, and the United States "paid a price" as a result of Obama's inaction. Obama vowed in 2012 that if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime used chemical weapons on civilians, it would be a "game changer" for U.S. military involvement in Syria. But Obama failed to enforce the promise a year later when hundreds of Syrians were killed in a sarin gas attack, and he instead brokered a multi-nation deal in which Assad pledged to remove his chemical...
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The Syrian Army has finally managed to recapture the entire Yarmouk Basin region following fierce clashes with the Islamic State... - their defeat in southwest Syria.
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Since 2011, a devastating civil war has pitted Syrian, Russian, and Iranian armies against Sunni jihadis. Turkey has often weighed in as well. The Syrian conflict has also turned Christians against Christians. Some of Syria’s Christians persistently defend Bashar Assad as their lifelong protector. Others believe he is not only a ruthless dictator, but a pawn of Iran — the radical Islamist Revolutionary Shiite regime that has no place for Christians in its ideology. Historically, both tyrannical kings and modern dictators have used Christian minorities as useful instruments in their political toolbox. Notably, Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq long included...
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Russia cannot compel Iranian forces to quit Syria, Moscow's ambassador to Tel Aviv said on Monday, rebuffing Israel's long-standing demand that it should work to ensure their total withdrawal from the country. "They are playing a very, very important role in our common and joint effort to eliminate terrorists in Syria," Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov told Israel's Channel 10 television in an interview. "That is why, for this period of time, we see as non-realistic any demands to expel any foreign troops from the entirety of the Syrian Arab Republic," he said. "We can talk with our Iranian partners very frankly...
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According to media and field sources, the Syrian regime withdrew its weapons from the villages of rural Suwaida province before the sudden "Islamic State" organization attack on the province, raising further questions about the extent of the regime's complicity in that event. The correspondent of the website of "Anab Baladi" reported that the regime forces asked the elders of the village "al-Matuna" days ago to hand over their weapons on the pretext that there is no longer a reason to keep weapons after the end of the "danger" of Daraa and military control, which was reiterated in Swimra on Tuesday....
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WASHINGTON (CN) – The family of James Foley — a journalist who was tortured and beheaded by the Islamic State group in 2014 — brought a $200 million complaint Tuesday to hold the Syrian government liable. Represented by Steven Perles, Foley’s mother, father and three siblings contend that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government “facilitated” the rise of IS from its precursor groups, including the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq. “The Assad regime provided Daesh with material support at crucial times during its metastasis from an isolated group of terrorists into a quasi-terrorist ‘state’ that subsequently kidnapped, tortured,...
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