Russian Defense Ministry has presented photos of oil delivery convoys at Syria-Turkey border, the head of the Russian General Staff’s operative command said. The general staff has irrefutable evidence on Turkey’s involvement in illegal oil trade. Moscow has called on Turkey to open access to the places where, according to the retrieved Russian intel, …

Guess who just popped up in the Kremlin? Bashar al-Assad, Syrian dictator and destroyer, now Vladimir Putin’s newest pet. After four years holed up in Damascus, Assad was summoned to Russia to bend a knee to Putin, show the world that today Middle East questions get settled not …

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s high-profile meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on November 23 has triggered speculationthat the two sides are weighing some serious policy choices about Syria. The key question, as always, is the fate of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. There is no …

Trita Parsi A senior German official told me in 2010, quite proudly, that under the leadership of Angela Merkel, Germany’s Iran policy had become a function of its relations with Israel. Whether Germany would sanction Iran or engage in diplomacy very much depended on Israel’s reaction. In its …

President Vladimir Putin is actively misinforming his domestic audience and the international community about Russia’s first military intervention outside the former Soviet Union since its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Putin has created a false narrative about the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to disguise the true objectives …

Moscow isn’t likely to bomb Turkish military facilities, but it has other ways of undermining Ankara’s presence in Syria: Russia is now aiding Kurdish rebels — a group that has been labeled as “terrorists” by Turkey. The Syrian Kurdish forces (YPG) are considered extremely valuable in the fight against ISIS. …

Entering the Syrian conflict, Moscow has faced the challenge posed both by Daesh and its covert backers, Canadian Professor Michael Jabara Carley notes; he questions whether French President Hollande has the guts to escape Washington’s “spider web” and join Russia’s coalition in Syria. Professor Michael Jabara Carley of the …

In what might come as a surprise, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a prominent geopolitical strategist and a former National security advisor, downplayed tensions between the United States and Russia, as well as between Moscow and Ankara after the Su-24 bomber was shot out of the Syrian skies by the Turkish …

A difficult question is arising for German Chancellor Angela Merkel before her meeting with Turkish leader Recer Tayyip Erdogan – should Europe deal with a country which buys oil from terrorists? Politicians with principles should have cancelled the meeting, German media reported.  EU leaders are expected to meet with the …