Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to destroy a 30,000-man border security force in Syria, trained and equipped by Washington, characterizing it as a ‘terror army’ designed to infringe on the country’s sovereignty in the region.
Iran’s foreign minister is visiting Moscow for talks focusing on the future of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and the situation in Syria, where both nations support President Bashar Assad.
For years, Syrian Christians had been praying for a revival. ‘But never did we imagine it would come because of war,’ said one church leader. Seven years of civil war has left Syria in ruins. Many of those who came from Christian families left early on in the war, a cause of great despair as church leaders watched their congregants slowly disappear.
The Syrian army claimed Tuesday that Israeli fighter jets and rockets targeted positions inside the war-torn nation overnight, marking a potential uptick in tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants operating there.
Israel’s security cabinet has convened several times in recent days, holding ‘extremely significant’ meetings to discuss developments on the northern border and Iran’s presence in Syria.
Syrian government forces and allied militiamen are advancing on the largest remaining rebel-held territory in the country’s north, forcing thousands of civilians to flee toward the border with Turkey in freezing winter temperatures.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad in a new year’s greeting that Russia will continue supporting Syria’s efforts to defend its sovereignty, the Kremlin said on Saturday.
The evacuation of several hundred Syrian rebels from the Beit Jinn area on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights over the weekend puts Israel in an old-new position on the border. Assad’s army is once again at the fences, just like it was from 1967 to 2011.
Hezbollah and Syrian army forces have reportedly launched an assault on a besieged Syrian rebels’ stronghold some 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) from Israel’s border, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel will not accept Iranian proxies on its frontier.
Russia has begun forming a ‘permanent presence’ at two military bases in Syria, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.
Syrian army forces backed by Iranian-backed militias pushed deeper into the last rebel-held enclave near a strategic border area with Israel and Lebanon in a new expansion of Tehran’s influence in the war-torn country.
The Assad regime is gearing up to expand the area it controls in southern Syria, near the border with Israel.
yrian President Bashar al-Assad expressed regret for the stalemate of U.N.-brokered intra-Syrian talks in Geneva last week but says he expects better results during the Russian-sponsored Sochi peace process to be held in February.
Sophisticated weapons the U.S. military secretly provided to Syrian rebels ended up with the Islamic State, a study said Thursday.
Two US fighter jets on Wednesday fired warning flares after two Russian jets entered a buffer zone intended to keep Russian and US-led coalition forces operating over Syria apart.
Less than an hour after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Palestinians protested by turning off the lights on the Christmas tree outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus.
The United States said on Tuesday it has not observed any meaningful withdrawal of Russian combat forces from Syria, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement on Monday of a significant pullout.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory against ‘terrorists’ in Syria on Monday during a surprise visit to a Russian military base in the county, where he also announced a partial pullout of Russian troops.
An Iraqi military parade in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone celebrated final victory over Islamic State on Sunday, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi looking on as troops marched in formation, their bodies spelling ‘victory day’ in Arabic.
Iran has virtually completed a ‘Shiite Crescent’ of influence across the heart of the Middle East, using a string of battlefield successes to link a network of allies and proxy forces now spanning from nation’s border with Iraq all the way to Lebanon.