Free Republic

As the world continues to debate if or when Iran will attempt to develop nuclear weapons – and what could happen if the Unites States and/or Israel strike – Iran’s closest ally in the region likely already has weapons of mass destruction. Syria, in what many characterize as a response to the Middle East’s worse kept military secret, namely a highly capable Israeli nuclear weapons program, seems to have developed a stockpile of chemical weapons and the means to deploy them. And with Syria in chaos, such weapons only make for a potentially deadlier regional situation. As U.S. Sen. John...

A number of recent articles make the case that the administration’s Syria policy is incoherent. Elliott Abrams says it’s worse than that: The White House’s position on Syria is duplicitous. Abrams looks at a series of recent interviews Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given to the press about Syria, and identifies what appear to be the administration’s three reasons for not supporting the Syrian opposition. First is the administration’s concern that, according to Clinton, al Qaeda may have infiltrated the opposition. Second, she contends that arming the opposition is futile because given the regime’s firepower there is no way...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Street battles raged on the doorstep of the Syrian capital on Monday, as President Bashar al-Assad's troops sought to consolidate their grip on suburbs rebel fighters had taken only a few miles from the centre of Assad's power. Activists and residents said Syrian troops now had control of Hamouriyeh, one of a cluster of districts where they have used armored vehicles and artillery to beat back rebels who came as close as eight km (five miles) to Damascus. An activist said the Free Syrian Army - a force of military defectors with links to Syria's divided political...

Syria rebels gain foothold in Damascus By Jeremy Bowen BBC Middle East editor, Damascus When the BBC team approached a checkpoint set up by the rebel Free Syria Army in the suburbs of Damascus, masked men with Kalashnikov assault rifles and hand grenades moved towards us - a few of them offering dates and biscuits. It is customary to give mourners something sweet, and a funeral was about to start that they said they were protecting. I had no idea before I saw them with my own eyes that the Free Syria Army was so active in and around Damascus....

The burden against Damascus. “ Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city, And it will be a ruinous heap. (Isaiah 17::1)Like much of the Arab world, Syria is a nation in agony. The passions incited by the “Arab Spring” have been inflamed in Syria, as they have in the rest of the middle east. No one can fault the people of the region for longing to throw off the suffocating tyrannies that have held absolute rule over them for so long. Through a ruthless willingness to crush all dissent, the late Hafez Assad and his son Bashir, have made...

DAMASCUS — Is this your first visit to Syria, the passport control man asks me. No, I tell him, I came here once before over a decade ago. He stamps my passport. I had been very lucky to get a Syrian visa this time. The travel advice was not to visit. The Syrian regime is very wary of foreigners, fearing that journalists and spies are inflaming the situation further. I collect my bag and walk through customs, passing a poster, of modest size, of President Bashar al-Assad with the words in Arabic proclaiming: "Leader of the youth, hope of the...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian forces killed at least 32 civilians on Friday, including 23 in the capital Damascus, in an intensifying crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad, activists said. It was the highest death toll in the central neighborhoods of Damascus since the uprising erupted four months ago in the southern Hauran Plain near Syria's border with Jordan.

Cell seeks to avenge assassination of Imad Mughniyeh; attack could target Israelis in immediate future, security sources warn; Talal Hamia named as Hezbollah commander charged with carrying out strike. Hezbollah is planning a terrorist attack against Israelis abroad within days, security sources warned on Thursday night. The warning of the imminent attack did not mention specific locations. It was issued as many Israelis were abroad for the weeklong Pessah holiday. Security is being stepped up at potential Jewish and Israeli targets overseas, the sources said. They named Hezbollah operative Talal Hamia as the commander of a small but well-organized overseas...

Part of the regime’s survival strategy is to keep out foreign journalists. Agency reporters have been expelled, bloggers detained. Snippets of information leak out through furtive phone calls, Facebook and Twitter, revealing a partial picture of a regime trying to repress dissent with increasing desperation. Last week, however, I spent five days in Damascus and the south of the country where the protests began, talking to political activists, students and ordinary families. Some were too scared to discuss politics; others could not stop. On the surface, everything was normal. The sun shone, tourists trod the ancient streets of Damascus and...

DAMASCUS, Syria – Troops opened fire on protesters in cities across Syria and pro- and anti-government crowds clashed in the capital's historic old city as one of the Mideast's most repressive regimes sought to put down demonstrations that exploded nationwide Friday demanding reform.

Police in Hamburg shut down the notorious al-Quds mosque, renamed the Taiba mosque in 2008, led by German-Syrian national and voluntary imam Mamoun Darkazanli. Darkazanli (a.k.a. Abu Ilyas al-Suri) has been a suspected al-Qaeda operative, primarily as a financier and logistician, in the European Union for close to two decades. Long active in al-Qaeda circles, Darkazanli first surfaced on the radar of Western intelligence agencies when he purportedly helped procure a cargo ship named “Jennifer” for Osama bin Laden as early as 1993 (Hamburger Abendblatt, October 16, 2004). Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (BKA- Federal Criminal Police Office) admitted that it had been...

Iran's secret pipeline into the U.S. J.J. Green, wtop.com WASHINGTON - Iran Air 744 is a bimonthly flight that originates in Tehran and flies directly to Caracas with periodic stops in Beirut and Damascus. The maiden flight was Feb. 2, 2007. The mere existence of the flight was a significant concern for U.S. intelligence officials, but now a broader concern is who and what are aboard the flights. "If you [a member of the public] tried to book yourself a seat on this flight and it doesn't matter whether it's a week before, a month before, six months before --...

Syria has sought to overcome U.S. sanctions on the regime of President Bashar Assad and so, apparently, has the Obama administration. The State Department said it has detected Syrian efforts to bypass U.S. sanctions imposed on Damascus over the last decade. In a report, the department's inspector-general said the U.S. embassy foiled several of these Syrian attempts. "The United States also was able to thwart several Syrian attempts to evade sanctions, thanks to timely embassy warnings," the report, titled "Report of Inspection," said. But the State Department also said U.S. enforcement of sanctions on Syria has been muddled under the...

The Return of Bin Laden’s Daughter 20/03/2010 By Tariq Alhomayed Finally, Iman Bin Laden is back with her mother who accompanied her daughter to Damascus after many difficult years spent in Iran where Iman lived in a residential compound in Tehran under tight security until she was able to escape and seek refuge in the Saudi embassy in Tehran in search of help. A new life has been ordained for Iman.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday reiterated his view that Jerusalem must enter peace talks with Damascus in the near future, prefacing his message with a warning to Syria not to make a military gamble against Israel. “I’ve heard some statements about Syria. I do not recommend to any neighboring country, including Syria, to put us to the test. Having said that, I do believe a genuine negotiation with Syria is one of Israel interests. I keep on calling on [Syrian President Bashar] Assad – we all understand what’s on the table and the time is now,” Barak said during...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama took a major step toward improving strained ties with Syria on Tuesday, announcing his intention to reappoint a U.S. ambassador to Damascus after a five-year absence. The White House said Obama had nominated career diplomat Robert Ford to the post. The nomination must still be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The United States withdrew its ambassador from Damascus in 2005 after the assassination in Beirut of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Syria's foes in Lebanon accused Damascus of involvement, a charge Syria denied.

•The rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus is only the culmination of the increasingly problematic policies pursued by the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). •Two factors in particular seem to have led to Turkey's shift away from Israel and toward Syria. First, Turkey no longer needed Israeli assistance to pressure the Syrian government to change its policy of providing safe-haven to the terrorist Kurdish Worker's Organization (PKK). Second, in the past seven years, once secular Turkish politics have undergone a profound Islamist transformation. •At the same time, the dynamic between the Turkish military and the state's civilian leadership has changed....

Syria is training Hizbullah to operate a Soviet-origin air defense system according to regional news reports. The Kuwaiti daily Al Rai reported that Syria provided Hizbullah with SA-2 surface-to-air missile systems for operations against Israel. On Jan. 17, the Kuwaiti newspaper, quoting a senior U.S. official, said Israel has warned Syria not to grant the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah access to the SA-2. "War will erupt in the forseeable future between Lebanon and Israel unless Syria agrees to additional red lines," the U.S. official told Al Rai, a newspaper believed used by Israel and the United States to relay messages to the...

An American source says that Syria allowed Hezbollah operatives to train within its territory in the use of advanced SA2 anti-aircraft missile batteries, the Kuwaiti daily Al Rai reported Sunday. In an interview, the senior U.S. official warned that if Syria supplies Hezbollah with this type of missile, Israel will bomb Damascus and a war will likely ensue. According to the official, Israel has warned Syria not to allow the transfer of the SA2 missiles into the hands of Hezbollah, and views the transfer of such missiles as the crossing of a red line.

If Israel were to attack Hizbullah in Lebanon, Syria would respond and not sit idly by, the Katari Al Watan newspaper quoted Syrian sources as saying in a report published Wednesday. The sources reportedly added that Damascus considered any threat to Lebanon's security and stability as a threat to Syria's security. The paper reported that Damascus was worriedly taking notice of "Israeli deployment and maneuvers along the northern border," and that Syrian leadership assessed Israel was planning a military operation in Lebanon in May. US officials have notified the Lebanese government that if it does not manage to unarm Hizbullah,...