Free Republic

Muhammad Adnan Al-Afyouni, the Bashar al-Assad regime’s mufti, was killed when a bomb placed in his car exploded Thursday, according to the SANA news agency. The religious authority died in Qudsaya, near Damascus, said the news agency of the Assad regime. No information about the identity of the perpetrator was disclosed.

  In what is a shocking development, 50 intelligence analysts are in full revolution against the Obama regime. They assert that Obama is cooking the intelligence books: More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military's Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned. The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S....

CAIRO: An explosion on the Arab gas pipeline has caused a total blackout in Syria, the state news agency (SANA) reported on Monday, quoting the nation's electricity minister. The minister said the explosion occurred between the Ad Dumayr and Adra areas in Syria. Syria's oil minister said the explosion could be a terrorist act.

Israel paid Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend of Sadat. Israel paid Syrian President Bashar Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend to assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Dr. Mahmoud Jame’ said Sadat was briefed on the deal, according to the Jordanian-based Albawaba website. Jame’, a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, said, “One morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan...

Syria devalued its currency by 44% on Wednesday, announcing a new official exchange rate for the pound amid chaos in the market, hours before new U.S. sanctions aimed at cutting off revenue for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government took effect. The sanctions, known as the U.S. Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, are the toughest set of measures to be imposed on Syria yet, preventing anyone around the world from doing business with Syrian officials or state institutions or from participating in the country’s reconstruction... Syria’s already troubled economy has sharply deteriorated, prices have soared and the national currency, the Syrian...

Today, at President Donald J. Trump’s direction, the Department of the Treasury and Department of State announced important sanctions designations on individuals and entities actively supporting the murderous and barbaric Assad regime in Syria.  Today’s designations employ a wide range of sanctions authorities to target the Assad regime, including the Caesar Act provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2020, which authorizes sanctions on individuals providing support to the Syrian government.The targets of today’s sanctions include regime-loyalists, Syrian financiers supporting corrupt reconstruction efforts, and individuals actively involved in the ceasefire disruption in northern Syria.Since the...

Syrian rebels backed by the Turkish military said on Thursday they had recaptured the strategic town of Saraqeb in what would be the first major reverse for the Syrian army in a Russian-backed offensive that had made swift gains. Three weeks ago, the armed opposition lost the northwestern town at the junction of two main highways, following advances by the Syrian army in its push to retake the last large, rebel-held region in Syria after nine years of war. Turkey has sent thousands of troops and heavy military hardware into Syria‘s Idlib region in an unprecedented incursion to back the...

A video has surfaced of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad laughing about President Trump during Putin's visit to Damascus last week. The video, originally posted by a journalist for the Komsomolskaya Pravda, comes just over a month after multiple NATO nation leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron, were recorded seemingly mocking the American president at a NATO summit. In the latest clip, Assad and Putin joked that Trump should follow in the footsteps of Paul the Apostle and visit the Syrian capital of Damascus. "If Trump arrives along this road...

While many Iranian officials have threatened genocide, Qassem Soleimani was actually tasked with it. As an architect of Bashar Assad’s genocidal war against the Syrian people, he was one of the most guilty men on earth. As the Godfather of Iran’s global terror network, he was also one of the most dangerous. His terror world tour was finally cut short last Friday by a precision airstrike, in what was arguably President Trump’s boldest and most presidential move thus far. Soleimani was identified only by his hand, itself identified by a red-stone ring he was known to wear. Soleimani was the...

Iran threatens rape of Obama daughter Warns of mass abductions, brutal killings of American citizens if U.S. hits Syria (Daily Caller) As Congress debates whether to support President Obama’s call for a limited strike against Syria for the alleged use of chemical weapons, Iran is vowing to back Bashar al-Assad’s regime to the hilt and threatening to unleash terrorism should the U.S. strike. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Forces, Wednesday told the Assembly of Experts — the body that chooses the supreme leader — that “[w]e will support Syria to the end.” And in an unprecedented statement, a...

Maaret al-Numan (Syria) (AFP) - Thin mattresses, children's toys, a gas heater: Abu Ismail packed a pick-up truck with scant belongings before fleeing a northwest Syria town nearly emptied of residents by recent regime attacks. "I don't know where I am going, if I will find a house for my family, or what will happen to us," the 42-year-old father of seven told AFP, plumes of smoke rising around him. Tens of thousands of people like Abu Ismail have fled the Maaret al-Numan region, located in jihadist-held Idlib province, since December 16, following a rise in air strikes, according to...

White Helmets founder James Le Mesurier may have been liquidated by intelligence agents upon the CIA’s instructions or with the agency’s direct participation, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Russia’s Rossiya-24 television on Thursday. The Syrian president said he saw links between the death of Le Mesurier and the deaths of US financier Jeffrey Epstein, Al Qaeda chieftain Osama bin Laden and Islamic State (outlawed in Russia) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was killed several weeks ago, they said he had committed suicide in jail. However, he was killed because he knew a lot of vital secrets connected...

<p>TAL ABYAD, Syria — A car bomb killed at least 13 people in a Turkish-held border town in northeast Syria Saturday, as thousands of Kurds in the wider region protested against “Turkish occupation.”</p> <p>The bombing ripped through Tal Abyad, one of several once Kurdish-controlled towns seized by Turkey last month in a deadly cross-border offensive.</p>

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday that his government’s ultimate goal was to restore state authority over Kurdish controlled areas in northeast Syria after an abrupt U.S. troop withdrawal but he expected it to happen gradually. In a state television interview Assad also said that a deal between Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin to drive out the Kurdish-led YPG militia from a 30 km (19 mile) “safe zone” along the border was a “positive” step that would help Damascus achieve its goal. “It might not achieve everything ... it paves the road...

In Iran, Eshaq Jahangiri Kouhshahi, the first vice president of the President Hassan Rouhani's regime, said on Oct. 22 that $22 billion of the country's resources were taken to Istanbul and Dubai under the pretext of increasing the value of the country's troubled rial currency. However, the miserable dollar price of the rial was not reduced from the act, and the $22 billion was not returned to the country. Something else was going on. Iran is facing unprecedented economic instability, a horrifying nightmare, along with corruption, embezzlement, and looting. It's institutionalized, so what we can infer from this is that...

As U.S. troops follow President Trump's orders and pull out of northeast Syria, they leave behind men they fought side by side with against the Islamic State group. Amid fears of ethnic cleansing by Turkey, the Kurds have agreed to withdraw from a border area where fighting is underway, and now terrified civilians are also fleeing. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6

It’s all over but the shouting, and there really doesn’t even seem to be much of that. Yesterday was supposed to be the end of the ceasefire in northeastern Syria, at which point we expected the Turks to begin “cleansing” the twenty-mile wide border region of any remaining Kurdish fighters. But dawn broke and the fighting still seems to be on hold. The reason was announced earlier this morning and it seems that the Russians have stepped in and put all the combatants back in their respective corners. (Associated Press) Turkey’s Defense Ministry is signaling it won’t resume its...

The American president just gifted 2.5 billion barrels of oil to long-time Syrian enemy Bashar Al-Assad and, by default, Iran and Russia. As far as gifts go, it was both well-received and unexpected given the ‘Deep State’ designs on Syria for years. To recap: Last week, Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, and then had them stand down and step aside while the Turkish military poured across the border into Northern Syria, taking down any Kurds that stood in their way. After five days of bloodshed, Turkey agreed to a temporary ceasefire at the behest of the...

Unidentified drones attacked Syrian areas controlled by the Assad regime and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias at the Hamdan airport near the town of Al-Bukamal in the eastern region of Deir ez-Zor, according to opposition-affiliated TV station Halab Today. Before the attack, three drones were seen flying from the direction of areas under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces militia, according to Step News, a news agency founded by Syrian activists and journalists. At noon, explosions were heard at the Hamdan airport. Ambulances were sent to the airport, but the number of causalities is unknown. Iranian-backed militias in Al-Bukamal have been...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) defended President Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria, saying that the Kurds would be better off aligned with Syrian leader Bashar Assad. “The Kurds are going to better aligned with Assad because they frankly need a Syrian sponsor,” Paul, told Hill.TV during an interview that aired on Thursday. Paul, seen as an outsider among Republicans on foreign policy, has been a staunch defender of Trump's decision to pullout from Syria. Paul said the U.S. never intended to stay in Syria in the first place. “We were never staying there — the president never promised to...