Free Republic

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...

TBN Israel's Yair Pinto reports on the Israel-Hamas, Hezbollah War and Syrian conflict. Pinto reports on Israel’s largest-ever military operation following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. The IDF has destroyed hundreds of strategic targets, including military bases, missile sites, and chemical weapons facilities, to prevent them from falling into hostile hands. Ground forces have secured Mount Hermon, while strikes continue against Iranian-backed militias and terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Stay up-to-date with the latest developments here on TBN Israel.

The jihadi rebels who toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad say they want to build a unified, inclusive country. But after nearly 14 years of civil war, putting that ideal into practice will not be easy. For Syria’s Kurdish minority, America’s closest ally in the country, the struggle for a new order is entering a potentially even more challenging phase. Over the course of Syria’s civil war, Kurdish fighters have fended off an array of armed factions, partnered with the U.S. to rout the Islamic State group and carved out a largely autonomous region in the country’s oil-rich east. But the...

Syrian rebel forces have uncovered a network of huge underground tunnels beneath the Qalamoun Mountains bordering Syria and Lebanon. The subterranean labyrinth, which cost millions of dollars to build, was funded by Iran for the purpose of transferring advanced weaponry to its proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. In the below video uploaded to s social media, photographers ride a motorcycle inside the sophisticated, huge well-built tunnels while describing the batteries for firing surface-to-surface missiles that they see, stored within. A smaller but equally sophisticated tunnel system was found beneath Syria’s presidential palace in Damascus and the home of Assad’s brother, Maher...

The first significant Russian strategic defeat as a direct consequence of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the loss of its Mediterranean outpost. Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine has led Russia to channel virtually all its military forces and resources into the Ukrainian conflict. Russia has suffered massive losses, stretching its military thin and making it increasingly difficult to defend the country’s geopolitical interests elsewhere. Not only has the Kremlin pulled its military forces from vast stretches of Russia’s enormous territory and thrown them into the Ukrainian meat and metal grinder, but Moscow has also neglected other areas where the...

Title says it all, but Mahyar touches on returning refugees, Christians fleeing, Kurds defending themselves, Erdowan wanting to make Ottoman Empire 2.0, and other related issues. Transcript linked below video.

The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) conducted dozens of airstrikes on known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria on Sunday to prevent the terrorist organization from taking advantage of the demise of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s regime. After Assad’s family ruled over Syria for more than 50 years, Assad was forced to flee Syria to Russia, where he was granted asylum, when a coalition of largely radical Islamist groups led a sweeping offensive across Syria and captured the country’s capital city. CENTCOM announced on Sunday that it has conducted strikes against ISIS leaders, operatives and camps as part of an...

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that Russia's abandonment of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad led to his downfall, adding Moscow never should have protected him in the first place and then lost interest because of a war in Ukraine that never should have started. "Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by (President) Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. "There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place," Trump wrote. "They lost all interest in...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew out of Damascus for an unknown destination on Sunday, as rebels said they had infiltrated the capital with no sign of army deployments. Syrian army units abandoned their positions on the outskirts of Damascus on Saturday night, fleeing the advance of rebel forces. The military said it was “reinforcing” defensive lines around the capital, which appeared to have collapsed. Mohammed al-Rahmoun, the Syrian interior minister, earlier said there was a “very strong security cordon on the outskirts of Damascus and no one can break it”. But the Syrian opposition fighters early on Sunday disproved this,...