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SUMMARY Donald Trump has met the Syrian interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Saudi Arabia this morning The brief meeting came after the US lifted sanctions on Syria - Trump said the move is designed to "give them a chance at greatness" Until December, the US offered a $10m reward for al-Sharaa's arrest, our correspondent Lina Sinjab writes from Damascus Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attended the US-Syria meeting, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined remotely Trump then addressed a Gulf leaders' summit - saying again he wanted a deal with Iran, but they must stop "sponsoring terror" After...

In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow with the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, urged the United States to confront Turkey. According to Gerecht, Turkey has emerged, under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “as perhaps the greatest danger to Israel in the Middle East, escalating the threat of a conflict he won’t be able to avoid.” Gerecht charges Erdogan with setting the stage for a clash with Israel as a key tactic in his power projection strategy abroad. To reduce the risk of “yet another regional war,” Gerecht urges President Donald Trump...

This weekend, the US and Iran will hold their first semi-direct talks in years, despite the previous insistence of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in barring such talks. What changed? First, the Iranian security situation has degraded rapidly over the last few months, thanks to their stupidity in attacking Israel directly as well as indirectly through their proxies. That has left the mullahs more exposed than ever before in their 46-year run as theocratic tyrants in Iran. That's not the only reason, the New York Times reports today. The Iranians may have finally realized that Donald Trump returned to office with the...

This is a simple question, but one that needs you to seriously consider before you respond. This is because, when you think about it, you will then be confronted with the reality that most of the wars America has been in since the end of WWII have nothing to do with our national interests. Now we could argue whether or not WWI was in our best interest. Yet since the end of WWII, other than a very few instance, our military actions have almost exclusively been because of problems caused by European nations. (Both Western and Eastern nations) Mind you,...

President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States should not interfere in Syria in a post on social media site Truth Social. "Syria is a mess but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!" Trump said. He also said that the rebels in Syria are on the outskirts of Damascus and are preparing for a major move to remove Assad. "Russia, because of the heavy losses in Ukraine, cannot stop it. The Russians, like Assad, could be...

Abu Ali, 09/28/2024, 10:41 am.. Idlib, Syria. On the signs it says: Thank you Netanyahu. Now the head of the criminal Bashar Assad. Thank you Netanyahu. Warmed the hearts of Syrian children.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has vowed to enact tougher measures to deport criminals, terrorists, and terror supporters after a 25-year-old Afghan man committed a fatal stabbing last week. Currently, Germany does not deport people back to Afghanistan or Syria partly due to the harsh conditions and oppressive leadership in those countries. Afghanistan is run by the Taliban, a brutal Islamist militant organization with which Germany does not have diplomatic relations, while Syria is led by Bashar al-Assad, the Iran-backed leader who has been accused of mass war crimes during his country’s ongoing civil war. But Scholz is looking to restore...

Monday on “The Alan Colmes Show,” Alan spoke with former Congressman and Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich about what President Obama should do about ISIS, and had some harsh criticism for President Barack Obama and the Bush Administration regarding policy in Iraq. Rep. Kucinich, who is also a Fox News contributor, said the US should not be a policeman for the world and let Syria handle ISIS, and said that President Barack Obama was not as anti-war as he is portrayed. He also said President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should “absolutely” be in jail for their role...

A Russian surveillance aircraft flew above a US base in Syria for an “extended period of time” on Friday morning in what officials deemed an intelligence collecting mission, a senior defense official said. The aircraft, an Antonov An-30, flew over the At-Tanf garrison, the official said, flying back and forth several times over the base and the surrounding area. “They continue to undertake activities that are very concerning to us,” the official said. No US assets were able to intercept Russia’s manned surveillance aircraft in time because of where US aircraft were positioned at the time. The official said that...

France is calling him “the backpack hero”, a young Catholic pilgrim on a walking tour of cathedrals who came face to face with the man who stabbed several children in a park in Annecy. Henri, a 24-year-old management and philosophy student, was near the playground in Le Paquier Park when he saw the man attacking children in a stroller as their mother desperately tried to shield them on Thursday. Video footage shows him trying to block the assailant with one of his two backpacks, pursuing the man into the playground, and throwing one of his bags at the attacker. So...

Al Arabiya English Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing to become the Prime Minister of Israel for the third time. He has until December 21 to form a government before taking office. In a wide-ranging interview with a group of print and television journalists at Al Arabiya, Mr. Netanyahu discussed Israel’s relations with Arab states, the US alliance structure in the Middle East, unrest in Iran, Israel’s new hard-right government, the future of the US-brokered maritime border agreement with Lebanon, and the Russia-Ukraine war. Mr. Netanyahu reiterated the paramount importance of normalization with Saudi Arabia, which would be a “quantum leap” toward...

America’s Lebanese fantasy hits a road-bump Lebanon Follow Tony Badran Published: 13 December ,2022: 12:39 PM GST Updated: 13 December ,2022: 01:25 PM GST For the past two years, the Biden administration has been hell-bent on getting Saudi Arabia to underwrite the US project of administering Lebanon. And for two years running, the Kingdom has refused, having no desire to bankroll an Iranian equity run by Hezbollah. The administration, however, is demanding US allies suspend disbelief and pretend that Lebanon is in fact a real, normal state. In the latest iteration of its Lebanese project, the Biden team is trying...

The head of NATO expressed worry that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a war between Russia and NATO, according to an interview released Friday. “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in remarks to Norwegian broadcaster NRK. “It is a terrible war in Ukraine. It is also a war that can become a full-fledged war that spreads into a major war between NATO and Russia,” he said. “We are working on that every day to avoid that.”

The US has been mostly silent, other than issuing a few meek statementsIt is difficult to understand what US President Joe Biden’s administration is doing in northern Syria, where its allies the Syrian Kurds have been bombed to high heaven by Turkish forces. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted that he also intends to mount a land operation against America’s partners there. Although Turkey for some time had been bombing and assassinating members of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), this current offensive is different. It is designed to deal the Kurds a fatal blow. What is incomprehensible is that...

A special event was held at the Patriarchal Monastery of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Thekla in Maaloula, Syria, on Monday, when the holy habitation was given a complex of solar panel-powered electrical equipment. The equipment will provide power to all the monastery buildings, including the church, the sisters’ cells, and the buildings where they carry out their obediences, reports the Russian Orthodox Representation to the Antiochian Orthodox Church. The ceremony was attended by a number of Russian state officials. The Church was represented by Archimandrite Philip (Vasiltsev), the representative of Patriarch Kirill to the Antiochian Church. The delegation was greeted...

Vladimir Putin’s Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov has declared “Big Jihad” and urged Russian Muslims to fight Ukraine’s “demons” and “satanic democracy.” Kadyrov, one of Putin’s most fanatical backers, urged his supporters to lay waste to Ukraine and backed calls from Russian allies to wipe cities “off the face of the f—ing Earth.” -snip- “I swear with the Almighty’s name, this is the Big Jihad, which we must all take part in and we will not stop. “We will be killing them wherever they are. No matter who is helping them, America or Europe. “There is nothing to worry about. They...

Syria may not only be to blame for the refusal of Palestinian factions to accept a cease-fire with Israel, but also for the terror attack which killed eight Yeshiva students in Jerusalem on Thursday, the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat reported on Saturday. According to the report, a senior Egyptian official told the paper that "Syria may be interested in focusing the international attention on the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, instead of the situation in Lebanon." Asked whether Hizbullah was responsible for the Jerusalem shooting spree, the official responded that "there was not enough evidence, but that an investigation...

Residents express anger at Angela Merkel’s open border policy.. Some have expressed anger at former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open border migrant policy after a Syrian national was arrested for the murder of a teenage girl whose body was found at a sewage treatment plant. 17-year-old Tabitha E. left an apartment in Asperg, southern Germany, on Tuesday afternoon last week, but the alarm was raised after she didn’t return home that evening. After an extensive police search, the girl’s body was found on Sunday at the Leudelsbach sewage treatment plant. After the home of a suspect was search and investigators...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Tuesday, the Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported Monday, citing spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. The trip signifies a new era of Turkey-Iran-Russia relations, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also heading to Tehran to meet his Iranian and Russian counterparts this week. This comes in the wake of US President Joe Biden visiting the region. The goal of the July 18-19 meeting in Iran is ostensibly part of the Astana process relating to Syria, and could have significant ramifications for Syria, which remains...

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syria said Wednesday it will recognize the "independence and sovereignty" of Ukraine's eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions and contacts will be established to set up diplomatic relations. (snip) Earlier this month, Russia claimed to have taken control of 97% of one of the two provinces that make up Ukraine's Donbas, bringing the Kremlin closer to its goal of fully capturing the eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.