Free Republic

The controversy over President Trump’s pullout on the Turkish–Syrian border will settle down quickly. It is another useful debunking of ancient shibboleths and decrepit truisms, like the long-impregnable encrustation of false wisdom that moving the U.S embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would unleash hell upon the whole Middle East. There are about 35 million Kurds, approximately half of them in Turkey, where they make up about a fifth of Turkey’s population. A century ago almost all the Kurds had been in the Ottoman Empire, which the Allied powers broke up after World War I, a foolish decision that is on...

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner will lead a US delegation to Israel at the end of the month to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz, a senior administration official said on Thursday. Kushner has been leading President Donald Trump's effort to develop a peace plan for Israelis and Palestinians. After proposing a $60 billion aid package for the region last summer, he has yet to unveil a proposed political plan that gets at the thorniest issues in the decades-old conflict, with Netanyahu struggling to form a governing coalition. The official, speaking on condition...

Trump keeps his promises despite enormous pressure from warmongers! Syria can take care of the Kurds, Christians and Jews...trust me. Here is my rundown on situ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_-rNu_6jU  

Summary: Erdogan's "invasion" of Syria is not what the media is reporting. Turkey has 3.6 million refugees from the Syrian Civil War, and has prevented them from flooding Europe, causing severe economic hardship. This is the largest number of refugees held by any nation. If Erdogan can be believed, and he has been talking about this for a few years, this "invasion" is about creating 20 x 300 mile zone to create a zone to repatriate Syrian refugees. The Kurds are largely unaffected by Turkey's move. Turkey cannot hold millions of refugees forever. They can send them to Syria or...

Saudi, Sudanese Troops Arrive in Aden Area After Yemen Denies Deal With Separatists © AFP 2019 / SALEH AL-OBEIDI 00:19 17.10.2019 CAIRO (Sputnik) - Saudi and Sudanese troops, tanks and other military hardware rolled into the southern Yemeni province of Aden on Wednesday, a local government source said. The deployment of troops allied with the Yemeni government comes a day after it denied that a deal would soon be inked with separatists that would allow the cabinet to retake its interim seat in Aden. The reinforcements have been stationed west of the key port city between the Aden airport and...

President Trump has played this out perfectly. By isolating Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and effectively leaving him naked to an alliance of his enemies, Erdogan is now urgently asking for the U.S. to mediate peace negotiations with Kurdish forces. This request happens immediately after President Trump signed an executive order [See Here] triggering the sanction authority of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Erdogan called the White House requesting an urgent phone call with President Trump. After President Trump talked to Kurdish General Mazloum Kobani Abdi, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, President Trump then discussed the options available to...

President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year-long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State. Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey,...

Pentagon Hasn’t Extended Carrier Lincoln Deployment as More Troops Headed to Saudi Arabia By: Megan Eckstein and Sam LaGrone October 11, 2019 1:25 PM THE PENTAGON – Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has not extended the deployment of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group even in the midst of what the Pentagon described as a buildup of forces in Saudi Arabia to defend U.S. forces and interests against Iranian aggression, a Defense Department spokesman told USNI News. Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley briefed reporters Friday and noted that 3,000 forces have been authorized...

When Terrorists Rule: The Truth About Gaza OCT 14, 2019 9:00 AM BY RAMI DABBAS T Hamas is the armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. When such groups and theocratic regimes reach power, this is terrorism. How the terrorist dictatorship Hamas controls Gaza with an iron fist has finally been exposed, revealing its ugly face and providing the clearest example of how repressive terrorist movements deal with their own people when they reach power. Hamas has recently arrested hundreds of protesters suffering from poor economic conditions and lack of services, and hundreds of...

Iran announced on Sunday that it has discovered a new natural gas reserve with the capacity to produce nearly 400 million barrels of gas condensate, which could generate a total of $40 billion. The natural gas field, named Eram, is located near the Persian Gulf in the southwestern province of Fars and holds about 19 trillion cubic feet of gas, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Deputy Managing Director Reza Dehghan said at a press conference. "We have the potential to identify more undiscovered oil and gas reserves (in the country) by using geophysical exploration techniques and discovery drilling and will...

BEIRUT/QAMISHLI, Syria, (Reuters) - The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been holding negotiations at a Russian airbase in Syria, a Syrian Kurdish politician told Reuters on Sunday, expressing hope for a deal that would halt a Turkish attack. Ahmed Suleiman, a senior member of the Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party in Syria, said the talks were being held at Russia's Hmeimim airbase in Latakia. He did not say if he or his party - which is independent from the SDF - had a role in the negotiations. Asked about Suleiman's comments, the head of the SDF media...

The near consensus view of President Donald Trump’s decision to remove US special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against ISIS. Trump’s move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world. There are several problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that until this week, the US had power and influence in Syria when in fact, by design, the US went to great lengths...

President Donald J. Trump's recent announcement that he is withdrawing the 2,000 American troops stationed in Syria has sent shockwaves throughout the nation's capital. A bipartisan consensus has formed that Trump not only erred, but has abandoned America's erstwhile friends, the Kurds, to be slaughtered by America's NATO partner, Turkey. This is simply inaccurate. The Kurds do share close ties with the United States. Despite this, however, no American president has ever vindicated the Kurdish dream of an independent sovereign state. Trump is not at all different. The Kurds are the largest stateless people in the world, sharing a contiguous...

CAIRO (REUTERS) - ARAB League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Saturday led Arab foreign ministers in lambasting Turkey's military operation in northeast Syria as an "invasion of an Arab state's land and an aggression on its sovereignty". Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Alhakim, president of the current Arab League session, also condemned Turkey's offensive into Syria during an emergency meeting of the body, called by Egypt. The offensive "will exacerbate humanitarian crises, increase the suffering of the Syrian people, and strengthen the ability of terrorists to reorganize their remnants," Alhakim said. Alhakim and Lebanon's Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil called...

U.S. military officials are preparing to deploy thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia. During a Friday news conference, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said collected evidence shows Iran was responsible for attacks on Saudi oil facilities. 1,500 additional forces will be deployed to the region, including fighter squadrons and air defense systems. Iran’s state news agency announced the explosion of an oil tanker off the coast of Saudi Arabia on Friday morning. Two missiles reportedly struck a vessel that belongs to the National Iranian Oil Company. A video released on the same day reportedly shows U.S. military vehicles near the Syria-Turkey...

Iran’s army has launched unannounced military drills in the northwest of the country bordering Turkey, Iranian state media reported. The semiofficial ISNA news agency reported on October 9 that the exercises included rapid reaction units, mobile and offense brigades, and helicopters. The maneuvers in Iran’s Western Azerbaijan Province are being overseen by Iran’s army chief, Major General Abdolrahim Musavi, according to state TV. The reports did not mention the number of troops taking part. The announcement of the drills comes as Turkey says it is about to launch an offensive into northern Syria. Tehran, a key ally of President Bashar...

About a third of the tankers owned by COSCO Shipping Tanker (Dalian) have shut off their AIS systems after the U.S. imposed sanctions on the company for allegedly shipping Iranian crude, reports Reuters. Ship tracking data from Refinitiv Eikon indicates that in the week ending October 7, 14 tankers, including nine VLCCs, have gone dark. The U.S. imposed sanctions on the company on September 25. At the time, the U.S. Department of State said the company, along with five others, knowingly engaging in a significant transaction for the transport of oil from Iran in defiance of sanctions set in place...

China National Petroleum Corp has pulled out of a deal to develop Iran’s South Pars field. Photo: APChina National Petroleum Corp has pulled out of a deal to develop Iran’s South Pars field. China National Petroleum Corp has pulled out of a deal to develop Iran’s South Pars field. Photo: AP Chinese state-owned oil company China National Petroleum Corporation has pulled out of a US$5 billion deal to develop a portion of Iran’s massive offshore natural gas field, the Islamic Republic’s oil minister said on Sunday, after France’s Total SA earlier withdrew from the agreement over US sanctions. The South...

The toll from four days of violent unrest in Iraq rose to 72 killed and hundreds more wounded, police and medics said on Saturday, as authorities lifted a days-long curfew in Baghdad that protesters had defied. FRANCE 24's correspondent Simona Foltyn has the details. More than 3,000 people have also been injured since the protests against chronic unemployment, poor public services and widespread corruption erupted in the capital on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said. Rights activists said police snipers shot at protesters on Friday, escalating violent tactics used by the security forces that have included live fire, tear gas and water...

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh says China's national petroleum company has pulled out of a $5 billion deal to help develop Iran's giant South Pars natural gas field in the Persian Gulf. The development, announced by Zanganeh on the ministry's SHANA website, comes amid economic pressure on both Iran and China from the United States. It also follows a series of military confrontations in the area between Iran and the naval forces of Britain and the United States. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) became the dominant investor in plans for the expansion of South Pars, the world’s largest gas...