Free Republic

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...

Frame grab shows Russian fighter-bomber dropping bomb over Syria. The skies over Syria are dangerously crowded these days with the US, Russia, and the Assad regime all bombing various actors on vaguely opposite sides of the country's multidimensional conflict. In both Iraq and Syria, the reality of overlapping aerial operations among countries with little geopolitical fondness toward one another has already led to claims that British aircraft have been authorized to engage Russian aircraft over Iraq if threatened. The British government denied these reports, but they still underscore the possibility of confrontation between allied and Russian military aircraft. Several presidential...

Debkafile exclusive from Washington and Beirut: Early Friday, Oct. 8, senior US diplomat Frederic Hof landed in Damascus with a strong ultimatum from US President Barack Obama warning Syrian President Bashar Assad that he would be held personally responsible for military action Hizballah may pursue in Beirut or any other part of Lebanon; there would be consequences for the Syrian ruler's standing in Washington and that of his country.

Frederic Hof, an aide to U.S. Special Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell, is due to arrive in Damascus Wednesday evening on the first leg of a Middle Eastern tour that aims to explore the prospects of reviving the peace process in the Middle East. Hof is scheduled to meet Thursday with a number of Syrian officials, topped by Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa. European diplomatic sources have told the Italian news agency AKI that Hof's visit, in addition to the recent visit by Mitchell to Damascus and Muallem's meeting with U.S. Secretary of State...

Ambassador to Syria? It's all true that we haven't had one since 2005, and that we have imposed sanctions on the country, accused it of collaborating with Al Qaeda, and of trying to secretly build a nuclear reactor with the good help of North Korea. And it was Rafik Harrari's assassination in Lebanon in 2005 which precipitated our breaking relations with Syria and recalling our ambassador, as we assigned his murder to Syria. And now, we are expecting a new ambassador to the Arab nation? It was announced today that President Obama, in consultation with Secretary of State Clinton, decided...

TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Deep in a violent and lawless slum just north of this coastal city, 12 men whose faces were shrouded by scarves drilled with Kalashnikovs. In unison, they lunged in one direction, turned and lunged in another. “Allah-u akbar,” the men shouted in praise to God as they fired their machine guns into a wall. The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda. He has...