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In March, State Department veteran and former adviser to Barack Obama, Frederic Hof, bid farewell to public life with a stunning admission. Amid a confession regarding his failure to prevent the expansion of the Syrian civil war into a regional crisis, Hof laid the blame for that all-consuming conflict (as well as a notable uptick in Russian aggression) at the feet of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The administration sacrificed Syrian civilians and American credibility for the mistaken notion that Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price for a nuclear agreement,” Hof wrote. Today, with 500,000 dead, millions...

The United States' commitment to global development does not look good compared with that of other wealthy countries — and it's likely to get worse. According to an annual index released Tuesday by the Center for Global Development that ranks 27 of the world's wealthiest countries, the U.S. scored dead last on foreign aid contributions and quality — despite being the largest donor in dollar amount. That's because in 2017, it allocated a mere 0.18 percent of its gross national income for development assistance. That is well short of the 0.7 percent that wealthy countries have committed to strive for...

Russia has blamed Israel for the downing of one of its military planes in Syria and threatened "retaliation." An Ilyushin IL-20 aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defense missiles in what has been called a "friendly fire" incident. The Russian defense ministry has claimed that Israeli jets were attacking nearby targets and purposely "used the Russian plane as a cover, exposing it to fire from Syrian air defenses."

The military base that was hit by the car bomb is considered one of the most important military centers of the Russian forces on the Syrian coast, located some 15 kilometers from Latakia.

ISTANBUL (REUTERS) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defended his decision to accept a luxury plane from Qatar at a time of economic hardship, saying it was a gift, not a purchase, and that it had been donated to the Turkish state, not to him personally. State broadcaster TRT Haber said last week the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani had given Mr Erdogan the aircraft, which Turkish media said was a Boeing 747, sparking criticism from Turkey's opposition. A lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Mr Sezgin Tanrikulu, had expressed concern that the aircraft...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday blasted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s meetings with Iranian officials since leaving office. "What Secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented," Pompeo told reporters at the State Department, according to CNN. "This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world's largest state sponsor of terror and according to him, he was talking to them, he was telling them to wait out this administration," Pompeo added. "You can't find precedent for this in US history and the secretary ought not engage in this kind of behavior," Pompeo continued. "It's...

Hypocrisy appears to be the leading trait we can expect from high-ranking UN officials such as the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Sadly, Ms. Bachelet is no exception The new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has unfortunately continued the one-sided anti-Israel narrative that her anti-Semitic predecessor, Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, propagated whenever he got a chance. In her first speech to the UN Human Rights Council on September 10, 2018, Ms. Bachelet blamed Israel’s so-called “blockade” and its alleged “excessive use of force” for all the problems suffered by the Palestinians in Hamas-run Gaza. “Prospects...

Foreign Policy: Recent comments by former Democratic presidential candidate, Secretary of State and Senator John Kerry lead to one inevitable conclusion: Making Kerry America's top diplomat was a huge error. Kerry has been seen a lot lately, largely because he's flogging a book, "Every Day Is Extra," seemingly everywhere in the media. He's doing lots of live interviews, some of them quite telling. In one, for instance, he calls President Donald Trump's time in office a matter of "life and death," and suggests that he would "bring a case against Donald Trump for the lives that will be lost" due...

@realDonaldTrump John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people. He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD! 9:10 PM · Sep 13, 2018

Former Secretary of State John Kerry is being slammed for conducting shadow diplomacy with Iran after admitting to multiple meetings with Iranian officials behind the backs of Trump administration officials -- including over the scrapped nuclear deal. An administration official on Thursday told Fox News Kerry’s meetings are "shameful," pointing out what Iranian-backed militias are doing to kill and injure people in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Other Republicans suggested it may not even be legal. “John Kerry is out giving advice to Iran about how to maneuver around what Donald Trump is doing; it's insidious,” Ari Fleischer, the former White...

Syrian school textbooks repeatedly accuse Israel of stealing lands in order to "fabricate Arab-Syrian history", and make no mention of Hezbollah or the Holocaust, according to a new study that provides information about school curriculum in Syria in the wake of the Syrian civil war. Marcus Sheff, commented on the textbook: "While Syrian children witness the civil war raging around them, their textbooks give no explanation for this war. There is no hope that Syria will moderate its traditional Ba'athist hostility towards Israel even after the end of this terrible civil war." One of the most serious accusations against Israel,...

Bucking--not backing - Trump is a sure-fire recipe for committing political suicide President Trump has created a veritable diplomatic tsunami affecting the political fortunes of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Hamas and Jordan - with his decision to cease all future donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) - currently US$360million per annum and comprising about 30% of UNRWA’s budget. The numbers of UNRWA-registered Palestinian Arab refugees in Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza have been increasing in leaps and bounds annually because they include all the descendants of those Palestinian Arabs caught up in the 1948...

Secret KGB documents reveal just how deeply involved the Soviet Union was in the spilling of Israeli blood. The Russian spy agency provided Palestinian terror organizations with funds, training and arms, running agents like 'Krotov' - aka Mahmoud Abbas, 'Aref' - or Yasser Arafat, and 'Nationalist,' who was behind several plane hijackings long before 9/11. The genesis of the KGB’s developing ties with Palestinian terror organizations can be traced back to the end of the 1960s. The two most important KGB recruitments from the PLO during the second half of the 1970s were of people who still play a major...

On the morning of September 8, a number of missiles were launched against the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) in the town of Koya, 300km north of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad. Reports indicate that 13 people were killed while many more were injured, some in critical condition. On the same day, three young Kurd political prisoners, Ramin Hossein Panahi, and Loghman and Zaniar Moradi were executed in Karaj’s Rajaie Shahr Prison. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps took responsibility for the missile attack, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani thanked the...

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran carried out a missile attack on Kurdish opposition groups in northern Iraq’s Koya on September 8. The IRGC later released a statement and footage of the missiles being fired as well as a drone monitoring the KDP-I headquarters that was struck. The footage as well as other information reveals the accuracy that the Fateh 110 missile that was used is capable of. Not all the details are fully known, but an investigation, including a visit to the site of the missile attack by Zach Huff, reveals important details about the IRGC’s actions....

Several Russian media outlets, nearly simultaneously, began broadcasting “breaking news” warnings claiming that rebels occupying the last anti-government stronghold in Idlib Province, Syria, are preparing to stage chemical weapons attacks in order to blame them on the Syrian government. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the anti-Assad rebels were preparing “fake footage of chemical attacks,” while the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation announced that the “fake footage of chemical attacks” was expected to be delivered to various TV channels and Western journalists before the end of the day Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is closing the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington, the latest U.S. blow against the Palestinians and an international court during the stalled Mideast peace process. Some things to know: THE GIST The administration’s move to close the PLO office in Washington is not directly connected to the Trump White House’s opposition to the International Criminal Court, although the administration is trying to link them. But the Trump administration is trotting out discussions about the two on the same day — Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year — in a move certain to inflame...

Iran has become a huge financial disappointment for the Kremlin. After being provided access to billions of dollars by the Obama administration, including a multi-billion ransom in cash flown in to Tehran in the middle of the night on an unmarked plane, Russia was planning on reaping billions in windfall contracts from the Islamic theocracy. Even former Secretary of State John Kerry admitted that ‘some of the cash will end up financing terrorism”. Trump changed all that and is pressing to reduce the revenue coming into the murderous regime.

Washington (CNN)Iranian President Hassan Rouhani issued a challenge to President Donald Trump on Monday, saying the Islamic Republic would welcome talks with the US "right now." "I don't have preconditions. If the US government is willing, let's start right now," Rouhani said during an interview that aired on state television late Monday local time, just hours before the US renewed sanctions on Iran. "If there is sincerity, Iran has always welcomed dialogue and negotiations," Rouhani said. Trump's national security adviser John Bolton, when asked about the offer by CNN's Jake Tapper, dismissed it as possible "propaganda." "Let's see what really...

Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan has lashed out at the United States, accusing Washington of supplying crude oil to a rebel group calling itself the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey classifies as related to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party PKK, which Ankara has designated a terrorist group. Turkish news outlet Ahval quoted Erdogan as telling local media that, “They are currently suppyling terrorist organizations, such as the YPG, in [Syria’s] Deir ez-Zor with oil. Terrorist organizations receive 300 million dollars income from crude oil.” The comments were made after a meeting Erdogan had with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Vladimir...