Iran and Saudi Arabia, two states on polar opposite sides of the ongoing civil war in Syria, are set to meet face-to-face in Vienna on Friday, as part of international talks which hope to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.
The Russian government is claiming 19-year-old Vadim Kostenko, a contract serviceman, committed suicide in Syria on Saturday over problems with a woman. His family is adamantly rejecting this version of events.
Almost 200,000 people have attempted to illegally cross from Turkey into Syria over the past year, and many of those individuals are seeking to join terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, Turkish intelligence announced in a report Wednesday.
According to a final report from U.S. Central Command, issued as the third and final training class winds down, $385 million was spent on President Obama’s Syrian rebel training program to train 180 graduates, with only 95 of them currently active in Syria.
The Free Syrian Army has been backed by Western powers until now and has been actively targeted by Russian airstrikes, but it has reportedly made overtures to Moscow to discuss military cooperation, or at least an end to Russian bombing of their positions.
Reuters, citing two Obama Administration officials, reports that U.S. special operations in Iraq and Syria may occur in the near future.
The office of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad issued a statement Tuesday claiming to welcome “any political solution” to the Syrian civil war, days after insisting that an election is out of the question until Assad achieves “victory over terrorism.”
Contents: Sunni jihadist suicide bomber targets Shia mosque in Saudi Arabia; Russia’s military intervention in Syria inflames jihadists in Saudi Arabia
While being questioned by Lindsey Graham about the means through which the Obama administration intended to secure the ousting of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter conceded that such efforts were “principally political.”
From the Financial Times: At the beginning of this year, Angela Merkel had a good claim to be the most successful politician in the world. The German chancellor had won three successive election victories. She was the dominant political figure
United States State Department spokesman John Kirby called Iran’s “destabilizing activity” in Syria “unhelpful” but noted that the Islamic Republic would need to be more involved in the diplomatic process of achieving an end to the violence in the region sooner rather than later.
The Islamic State has struck on a novel combination of depravities, murdering three prisoners by lashing them to ancient stone pillars at a historic site in Palmyra, Syria, and then destroying both pillar and prisoner with explosives.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, indicated that the death of Delta Force Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler in Iraq will probably not be the last American ground combat fatality in that country.
A Kurdish man from the beleaguered Syrian border town of Kobani set himself on fire upon learning that his daughter had left home to join the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, the all-female YPJ, in the war against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).
Contents: US Navy to challenge China in the South China Sea today; What was the purpose of Russia’s Caspian Sea cruise missile attack on Syria?; Insurers taking increasingly risky investment bets
From CNN: ISIS, which comes up with more and more heinous methods of execution, has ramped up its cruelty: Members of the group tied three people to the pillars in the ancient section of Palmyra and killed them by detonating
The latest in a long series of hideous execution videos from the Islamic State shows a 19-year-old Syrian soldier bound hand and foot, made to stand in the middle of a road, and crushed beneath the treads of a tank.
Syrian civilians have accused the Russian military of dropping “cluster bombs” while supporting the Bashar al-Assad regime’s offensive in northern Syria’s Aleppo province.
A 23-year-old Israeli-Arab utilized his paraglider from a high-point in Israel to make his way across the border into Syria, where officials suspect he has joined a terrorist organization that is engaged in holy war in the country, Israeli media censors cleared for publication over the weekend.
Al Qaeda, in the second edition of the English-language jihadi magazine Al Risalah, is portrayed as “moderate” compared to its “extremist” rival Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).
An article in Monday’s Hurriyet Daily News pinpoints an unassuming tea house called “Islam,” in the eastern Adiyaman province, as a pivotal location in the Islamic State’s assault on Turkey.
The Russian government wants Syria to hold presidential and parliamentary elections. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has allegedly stated he would rather wait until “terrorism” is eradicated from the country to hold elections again.
In a meeting with Chaldean bishops from Iraq and Syria Monday, Pope Francis used some of his strongest language to date to condemn what he called the “fanatical hatred” of Islamic terrorists that has provoked a “hemorrhage” of Christian faithful out of the Middle East.
Russian lawmakers meeting with Syrian head of state Bashar al-Assad on Sunday claim he is open to holding elections that may result in his removal from power, but only after “terrorists”–a word Assad has often used as a blanket term for any Syrian opposition–are defeated.
The Lebanese army reports the arrest of three Palestinians linked to the Islamic State, who were building an ISIS cell in the refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh.
