US politicians, policymakers and commentators insist that the United States military’s involvement in Syria and Iraq is solely aimed at defeating militants from the self-titled Islamic State (IS). However, it is abundantly clear that before the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015, the United States was engaged in a proxy war against Damascus, not IS…
Israeli jets bombed a Syrian anti-aircraft battery east of Damascus after it fired an anti-aircraft missile at the Israeli aircraft on a spy mission overflying Lebanon, the IDF said. Damascus said the planes violated Syrian airspace near the Lebanese border. The battery was reportedly located 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Damascus, Reuters reported citing…
Plainly, Syria’s success – notwithstanding the caution of President Bashar al-Assad in saying that signs of success are not success itself – in resisting, against the odds, all attempts to fell the state suggest that a tipping point in the geopolitics of the region has occurred. We have written before how the Syria outcome dwarfs…
Under a broiling hot midday sun on the south Lebanese-Israeli border this summer, an extraordinary and very angry meeting took place between two major generals: the 60-year-old Irish UN force commander in Lebanon and the 54-year-old deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army. Listening to them was the ambitious, pro-Israeli – but very inexperienced…
The Wolfowitz Doctrine and the document A Clean Break, set out contemporary US policy against Russia, China and the Middle East dating back to the 1990s. These documents, while still influential in Washington, have been abject failures on many fronts. In the 1990s, US officials, all of whom would go on to serve in the…
On Sept. 8, a Syrian government factory for producing precision missiles came under aerial attack. The target is close to the village of Masyaf, in western Syria. The foreign press attributed the airstrike to the Israeli air force, but Israel has not accepted responsibility and has not responded. On the heels of the assault, and…
