The Obama administration’s efforts to pressure Iran, Syria and others are inhibited by the government shutdown, White House press secretary Jay Carney suggested Friday. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has had to furlough all but 11 of its 175 full-time employees, “meaning that the office is unable to sustain its core functions,” […]
by Daniel Pipes September 28, 2013 Cross-posted from National Review Online, The Corner Has anyone else noted the similarity in today’s top two Middle East news headlines – the telephone call between the Iranian and American presidents and the passage of U.N. Security Council Resoluton 2118 that calls for the “expeditious destruction” of Syrian chemical […]
Senator John McCain was just sure he could pick moderates in Syria worth supporting. To prove his point he made a trip to Syria this spring to demonstrate how much the insurgents were just like us, struggling for democracy and equal rights for all. But his trip was organized by the Syria Emergency Task Force’s […]
by Daniel Pipes National Review Online September 17, 2013 [Differs in minor ways from the NRO version.] Diplomacy has never witnessed anything like the dizzying and erratic sequence of events relating to Syria that began on Wednesday, Aug. 21 and ended 3½ weeks later, on Saturday, Sept. 14. Who won, who lost? It’s too soon […]
While many were fixated on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent letter to the American people, another letter from another Russian leader—this one directly addressed to the U.S. president—was missed. On September 10, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill issued a letteraddressed to “His Excellency Mr. Barack Obama, President, United States.” Whether one wishes to interpret this communique as […]
by Daniel Pipes September 11, 2013 Cross-posted from National Review Online, The Corner The Obama administration’s diplomatic acrobatic over Syria of the past three weeks prove that the president and his team are in way over their heads, amateurs in the deadly game of war and peace. (One wonders if Valerie Jarrett is making the […]
September 16, 2013 13:25 by Pesach Benson How enforceable is Russia’s plan to get rid of Syria’s chemical weapons? Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told the Jerusalem Post that Moscow’s plan isn’t realistic because A) no country will volunteer to send inspectors into the midst of a brutal civil […]
September 15, 2013 16:42 by Pesach Benson Assad’s scattering his chemical weapons to as many as 50 sites, and even preparing to hide more in Iraq. The movements of chemical weapons by Syria’s elite Unit 450 could complicate any U.S. bombing campaign in Syria over its alleged chemical attacks, officials said. It also raises questions […]
A number of Muslim girls from Tunisia have become pregnant after traveling to Syria to participate in “sexual jihad,” according to Lotfi Bin Jeddo, Tunisia’s Interior Minister. The girls “are (sexually) swapped between 20, 30, and 100 rebels and they come back bearing the fruit of sexual contacts in the name of sexual jihad and we […]
Opposition forces battling Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria now number around 100,000 fighters, but after more than two years of fighting they are fragmented into as many as 1,000 bands. The new study by IHS Jane’s, a defence consultancy, estimates there are around 10,000 jihadists – who would include foreign fighters – fighting for powerful factions linked […]
