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Late last week, the BBC began blasting the airwaves with stories about a chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus. Initially, its reporters and presenters were reasonably careful to point out that the videos on which this claim was based were unverified - and in fact impossible to verify. As has since become quite clear, the site of the alleged atrocity is very difficult to reach. This fact would be well-known to those who released the films. Indeed, they are in a position to make the site hard to reach. This is by no means the first such allegation...

Three hospitals in Syria's Damascus governorate that are supported by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have reported to MSF that they received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms in less than three hours on the morning of Wednesday, August 21, 2013. Of those patients, 355 reportedly died.

A senior official in the Syrian army warned the United States and its partners on Tuesday that waging a full-scale war on Syria would be reciprocated with an immediate attack on Tel Aviv. "If Damascus comes under attack, Tel Aviv will be targeted too and a full-scale war against Syria will actually issue a license for attacking Israel," the Syrian army source told the Iranian Fars news agency. "Rest assured that if Syria is attacked, Israel will also be set on fire and such an attack will, in turn, engage Syria's neighbors," he added. The source also warned the U.S....

Recent news of a chemical weapons attack in Syria smacks of desperation. The question comes down to who is most desperate right now, the Assad regime or the Muslim Brotherhood rebels? Consider that since June, Assad’s forces have been winning. According to a CBS News report from last month, victories for the rebels had become “increasingly rare” and that the Muslim Brotherhood-backed opposition fighters were sustaining “some of their heaviest losses” near Damascus. The New York Times echoed this sentiment, even saying that before gaining the upper hand, concerns were that Assad would use chemical weapons; he did not. In...

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem vowed on Tuesday that his country will defend itself in case of any Western military strikes against it. "We have two options: either to surrender, or to defend ourselves with the means at our disposal. The second choice is the best: we will defend ourselves," Muallem said in a televised news conference. Muallem said that his country had defences that would "surprise" the world, and that any such action against it would serve the interests of Israel and Al-Qaeda. "Syria is not an easy case. We have defences which will surprise others," he said. "The...

On Saturday, Cyber War News released a cache of e-mails allegedly hacked by someone in Malaysia from a British private defense contractor called Britam Defence. One of the e-mails contains a discussion between Britam’s Business Development Director David Goulding and Philip Doughty, company founder. In the exchange, it’s revealed that there is a plan to unleash chemical weapons in Syria in order to blame it on the Bashar Al Assad regime to justify a direct intervention by U.S. and NATO forces in the country's civil war. The plan, thought up by the government of Qatar according to the e-mail, is...

Russia and China have stepped up their warnings against military intervention in Syria, with Moscow saying any such action would have "catastrophic consequences" for the region.

TEHRAN: A top Iranian military chief warned on Sunday that the US will face "harsh consequences" if it intervenes in ally Syria over claims of chemical attacks, Fars news agency reported. "If the United States crosses this red line, there will be harsh consequences for the White House," armed forces deputy chief of staff Massoud Jazayeri was quoted as saying. A year ago, US President Barack Obama warned the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a "red line" and have "enormous consequences". On Sunday, his Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US military was ready to take action...

There is no evidence that the Syrian government ordered the massacre with chemical weapons, but the West will blame it anyway because they want war, investigative journalist Neil Clark told RT. RT: As we can see the US, Britain, France and Turkey are all waiting on options in Syria. How ready are they to move from words to action at this point? Neil Clark: They are really bent on war and whatever the UN inspectors do this week won’t matter because it is a replay of 2003 when Saddam Hussein was bullied into allowing weapons inspection teams into Iraq. They...

Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russian a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria.

MOSCOW — A Western military attack on Syria will only create more problems in the region, lead to more bloodshed and result in the same sort of “catastrophe” as previous Western interventions in Iraq and Libya, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Monday. “Hysteria is growing and confrontation is incited,” Lavrov said in what he portrayed as an emergency press conference. He said the United States and its European allies have condemned the regime of Bashar al-Assad without any evidence that it actually used chemical weapons in an assault on a Damascus suburb on Aug. 21. China's president aims to...

The United States Monday built a humanitarian and legal case for military action against Syria, rooted in the proposition that an "undeniable" chemical attack had shattered international codes of war. Obama has spent months trying to avoid being sucked into a war which has killed at least 100,000 people, after extracting US troops from Iraq, and as he brings them home from Afghanistan. His defenders point out he is hardly a reluctant commander-in-chief: He leads a ruthless drone war worldwide and risked his presidency to kill Osama bin Laden. But his instincts are to avoid new foreign quagmires and he...

David Cameron is facing demands to set out the legal justification for military action against Syria amid mounting unease over the scale and speed of Britain’s commitment to another conflict in the Middle East. Britain, America and France are united in their readiness to act and do not require any further United Nations resolution under international law, the Foreign Secretary said. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, described the chemical attack as a “moral obscenity” and warned that Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, must face “consequences”. Mr Hague’s comments led to calls for ministers to “make their case” and detail...