Free Republic

A top Iranian general has accused Russia of lying to Tehran by saying its jets were attacking Syrian rebels while they were instead bombing the open desert. In a rare break from Iran's diplomatic line on Syria, Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati partially blamed Moscow for the fall of Bashar Assad's government during a speech at a mosque in Tehran. An audio recording of the speech was published on Tuesday by Abdullah Abdi, a journalist in Geneva who reports on Iran. "We were defeated, and defeated very badly. We took a very big blow, and it's been very difficult," Esbati said...

Syria’s former media chief and top aide to Bashar al-Assad said that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have “tricked” the ousted Syrian president in his final days as leader. Speaking to Mazeej Studios, a podcast produced by Saudi channel Al Arabiya, Kamel Saqr said that Assad was in Moscow in late November, just over a week before Syrian rebels captured Damascus. According to him, the rebels had already captured much of Aleppo by the time Assad met Putin on Friday 29 November. There, Saqr said Assad asked for Putin’s support in helping Iran transport equipment and support to strengthen his...

Trump was considered reckless for wanting to start a war at the end of his term. Now, Biden is doing the same.President Joe Biden has less than a month in office, but that might be enough time to leave a very big mess on President-elect Donald Trump's desk. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan presented Biden with plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites before the end of his term "in a meeting several weeks ago," Axios reported on Thursday. A source told Axios that Biden's inner circle believes that he has both "an imperative and an opportunity to strike" now. The...

Syrian Leader Ahmad al-Sharaa: Liberating Syria secures regional and Gulf stability for 50 years. Elections require a full census and may take four years. Constitution drafting will span three years for a lasting framework.

According to Pamela Geller, “The terrorist Abu Mohammed al-Jolani had a ten million dollar bounty on his head for killing Americans in Iraq. Biden removed the bounty when his guerilla army took over Syria.” As Geller puts it “We have roughly two thousand soldiers in Syria. Why?”. yet another reason to withdraw American troops from Syria. Geller cites Bill Roggio as stating “The US State Department removed the $10 million reward for Abu Mohammad al Jolani, the Specially Designated Global Terrorist who leads Haytat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), which State describes as an Al Qaeda branch. The bounty on Jolani...

There is an oft-quoted remark from Vladimir Lenin, which in its English formulation usually reads something like: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” This is one of those aphorisms which has been exercised practically to death, but there are rare occasions where it perfectly fits the chaotic tempo of world events, and few cases fit the bill better than the fall of the Syrian Arab Republic and its embattled (former) President, Bashir Al-Assad. Syria was first plunged into Civil War by an escalating insurgency in 2012, and more than a decade of grueling...

On Sunday, December 22, the Chinese state-run CGTN's correspondent in Ankara reported, citing an Iranian security official, that Pourhashemi died after being shot by a Syrian officer during a meeting in a joint operations room in Aleppo.According to the report by Yakup Aslan, the meeting included Iranian military advisors and Syrian army commanders and took place amid advances by rebel forces in the outskirts of Aleppo...The report noted that IRGC commanders believed a counteroffensive against Assad's opposition, supported by Russian airpower, was possible at the time. However, Syrian commanders hesitated to issue the necessary orders...Armed opposition forces, in a surprise...

The Yemeni channel Al-Masirah, affiliated with the Houthi rebel group, reported a strike in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. According to reports, the international coalition is behind the strike. CENTCOM reported: "US Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted precision airstrikes against a missile storage facility and a command-and-control facility operated by Iran-backed Houthis within Houthi-controlled territory in Sana'a, Yemen, on Dec. 21 Yemen time." "CENTCOM forces conducted the deliberate strikes to disrupt and degrade Houthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden. "During the operation, CENTCOM...

On Sept. 4, 2013, a terrorist group launched an attack on a profoundly symbolic Syrian village.“The dawn assault on the predominantly Christian village of Maaloula,” reported the Associated Press, “was carried out by rebels from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group, according to a Syrian government official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime group.“At the start of the attack, an al-Nusra fighter blew himself up at a regime checkpoint at the entrance to the village, said the Observatory, which collects information from a network of anti-regime activists,” the Associated Press reported.A story that ran on Sept. 6, 2013,...

A mass grave containing the bodies of at least 100,000 people tortured and killed under the brutal dictatorship of ousted President Bashar al-Assad was discovered outside Damascus, according to the head of a US-based Syrian advocacy group — who said the corpses were squished by bulldozers to “fit them in.” Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), said the regime’s victims were found in al-Qutayfah, about 25 miles north of the capital. ... “One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate,” Moustafa told Reuters of the amount of bodies he believed were dumped at the...

In a surprise announcement, the Defense Department disclosed Thursday that U.S. officials have doubled the number of American troops in Syria to support the fight ISIS, an increase that predates the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime this month.The Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, said at the Pentagon briefing that the U.S. has roughly 2,000 troops deployed in Syria, even though the U.S. military and U.S. Central Command have consistently reported having only 900 troops there.Ryder did not say when the number of U.S. personnel had increased. He said he had learned Thursday that the number has been significantly...

The United States doubled the number of forces in Syria to fight the Islamic State group before the overthrow of President Bashar Assad’s government, the Pentagon said Thursday. The U.S. has previously said 900 troops were in Syria, but Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, announced that 2,000 were there and had been for a while. He told reporters that the increase in forces was temporary and they are there to augment the U.S. operations against the Islamic State group. The Pentagon has been asked repeatedly in recent days and weeks about the U.S. presence in Syria and...

Israeli Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli called for the internartional coomunity to grant and recognize the independence of Kurdistan as Kurdish regions in northern Syria face attacks from Turkey and Turkish-backed rebel groups. "Kurdistan must be granted independence, while Erdoğan should be expelled from NATO and left to crown himself as the caliph of an Islamic state, ruling alongside his friends in ISIS and Al-Qaeda," Chikli wrote on X. Chikli's comments were made in response to an interview given by a Kurdish journalist in Syria with Israel's Kan News channel. .....

The de facto leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has said the country is exhausted by war and is not a threat to its neighbours or to the West. In an interview with the BBC in Damascus, he called for sanctions on Syria to be lifted. Sharaa led the lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad's regime less than two weeks ago. He is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the rebel alliance, and was previously known by his wartime pseudonym of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. He said HTS should be de-listed as a terrorist organisation. It...

Peace is not at hand in the Middle East, and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu remains determined to expand the war. Syria’s de facto partition into Israeli and Turkish territories is the prelude to wider war with Iran. As the Times of Israel reported last week, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has “continued to increase its readiness and preparations” for “potential strikes in Iran.” Netanyahu’s top priority is the destruction of Iran before Russia wraps up its victory in Ukraine and Syria becomes a new battleground for Turks and Israelis. It’s not simply the end of Washington’s “rules-based international order.” It’s...

Hezbollah lost its most important supply route from Iran through Syria with the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, the group’s chief admitted Sunday. It was the first public acknowledgment of how upheaval in Syria had hurt the Iranian proxy, which had propped up Assad and is now fighting a war in Lebanon with Israel. Weapons to counter the Israeli campaign flowed from Iran through Syria and into Lebanon for Hezbollah. Assad’s ousting jeopardized Syria’s close ties to Iran. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that led the overthrow of Assad, had lamented that Syria had become a "playground for Iran."...

Syria’s new transitional government says there is no place for Russian presence in Syria a week after the country’s long-time President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown. The new government also says it is open to engage in contacts with all countries to pave Syria’s new future. The Spokesperson for the political department of Syria’s new transitional government has called on Russia to reconsider its presence in the country now that their ally; President Bashar al-Assad, has been overthrown. A convoy of Russian military vehicles was spotted traveling from the coastal city of Latakia, and were headed southward towards the city of...

The enemies of Israel are taking notice as the IDF drops an “earthquake bomb” on targets in Syria, which registered a 3.0-magnitude earthquake. Meanwhile, the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen fire a missile directly at Tel Aviv. Will the Jewish State’s wars against Iranian terrorism, soon include a direct conflict in Yemen? Watch now.

The prisoner CNN helped free from a secret facility in Syria was actually a notorious member of Bashar al-Assad’s forces known to torture those who refused to pay him off, according to a shocking local fact check. The network went viral last week with footage of the startled prisoner being led from the prison by journalist Clarissa Ward, who called it “one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed” in her 20 years of reporting. But “independent and unbiased” fact-checkers Verify-Sy published a detailed report Sunday saying that the seemingly innocent prisoner was actually Salama Mohammad Salama — a...

Syria's former President Bashar al-Assad appears to say he never intended to flee to Russia - in what is purported to be his first statement since the fall of Damascus eight days ago. Assad's reported statement was put on the Telegram channel belonging to the Syrian presidency on Monday, although it is not clear who currently controls the channel. In it he says that, as the Syrian capital fell to rebels, he went to the Russian military base in his stronghold in the Latakia province "to oversee combat operations" only to see that Syrian troops had abandoned positions. The Hmeimim...