OPINION

The Syrian army has taken control of key areas in northern Syria, and is near to completing the encirclement of a key town in the Latakia province still under the control of the Islamic State (ISIL) jihadist group, an army spokesperson said Monday. “We have cleared the 1122 height and virtually completed surrounding the Salma …

Oil produced by the Islamic State group finances its bloodlust. But how is it extracted, transported and sold? Who is buying it, and how does it reach Israel? Oil produced from fields under the control of the Islamic State group is at the heart of a new investigation …

The following text is the introductory chapter of  Professor Tim Anderson’s forthcoming book entitled The Dirty War on Syria Although every war makes ample use of lies and deception, the dirty war on Syria has relied on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory. The …

By the INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP Turkish officials say their fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday 24 November after warning it ten times in the space of five minutes that it was violating Turkish airspace. Moscow said that a SU-24 was downed …

Prof Michel Chossudovsky The downing of a Russian jet fighter over Syria’s airspace was undertaken  by Turkey in consultation with Washington and Brussels. Turkey did not take this decision without getting the greenlight from the Pentagon. Is this an act of  revenge against Russia for bombing the US-sponsored …

Robert Merry The United States suffers from a severe case of strategic confusion, manifest in the country seeing enemies where none exist and showing an inability to concentrate action where they do exist. Given the immensity of American power relative to the rest of the world, this malady …

It’s the right time for Obama to rethink the administration’s policy toward both Assad and his jihadist foes. In the wake of the ISIS terrorist attack on Paris, President Barack Obama declared that his administration has the right strategy on ISIS and will “see it through”. But the …

There are persisting reports from inside Syria pointing to differences between IRGC officers active in the civil war there and Russian Commanders. In two separate occasions, an IRGC General complained that his officers asked for Russian air forces to bomb specific sites to no vain. The whispers questioning …

Many questions are still unanswered at the time of writing this report on the potential consequences of downing the Russia jet by the Turks. The incident was doomed to happen at any time since the moment President Putin decided to go heavy handed to Syria in support of …