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Category: War

Assad has used chemical weapons consistently, deliberately, and with a conscious consideration of their qualitative effects

Assad has used chemical weapons consistently, deliberately, and with a conscious consideration of their qualitative effects

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John Bew and Shiraz Maher write: Assad has not simply eroded what academics call “the chemical weapons taboo”; he has shattered it. And his confidence has returned, especially compared to the high watermark of the war in 2014-15, when his authority had crumbled. Kurds dominated the north-east of Syria, while broader parts of the east had fallen to Islamic State. Meanwhile, an alphabet soup of various militias – jihadist and otherwise – rampaged across northern and southern parts of the…

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Israel and Iran are headed for a collision in Syria

Israel and Iran are headed for a collision in Syria

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Avi Issacharoff writes: Israel has stated clearly that it will not allow an Iranian military entrenchment in Syria. That is a red line as far as Israel is concerned, and, rather unusually, the military brass and the political leadership are in lockstep about the need to robustly enforce it (in stark opposition to the disagreements about the Palestinian issue). But meanwhile the Syrian reality has come knocking hard at Israel’s door. The Iranians are not showing any signs of curtailing…

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Israel wages a growing war in Syria

Israel wages a growing war in Syria

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Robin Wright writes: Jihad Mughniyah is buried under the same black marble slab as his father, Imad Mughniyah, the legendary Hezbollah military commander, at a special cemetery created by the Lebanese militia for its “martyrs” in Syria. Life-size posters of both men, dressed in fatigues, stand above it. During a recent trip to Beirut, I counted the number of the graves in the cemetery, a barometer of the price Hezbollah is paying to prop up Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad. Mughniyah’s…

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The logic of Assad’s brutality

The logic of Assad’s brutality

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Thanassis Cambanis writes: This latest [chemical] attack in Ghouta, if it holds to the pattern, makes perfect sense in the calculus of Assad, Vladimir Putin, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The successful trio wants first and foremost to subdue the remaining rebels in Syria, with an eye toward the several million people remaining in rebel-held Idlib province. A particularly heinous death for the holdouts in Ghouta, according to this military logic, might discourage the rebels in Idlib from…

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Russia threatens ‘gravest consequences’ if U.S. crosses red line by taking military action in response to alleged chemical attack in Syria

Russia threatens ‘gravest consequences’ if U.S. crosses red line by taking military action in response to alleged chemical attack in Syria

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The New York Times reports: Dozens of Syrians choked to death after a suspected chemical attack struck the rebel-held suburb of Douma, east of Damascus, and aid groups on Sunday blamed President Bashar al-Assad’s government for the assault. The attack after dusk on Saturday sent a stream of patients with burning eyes and breathing problems to clinics, medical and rescue groups said. Western governments expressed alarm at the attack, with the British Foreign Office calling for an urgent investigation and…

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Trump walks away from his vow to ‘utterly destroy ISIS’

Trump walks away from his vow to ‘utterly destroy ISIS’

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ABC News reports: President Donald Trump surprised even the most senior members of his Cabinet when he announced Thursday during a speech in Ohio that the U.S. military would be “coming out of Syria, like, very soon,” according to a senior administration official and a U.S. official familiar with the matter. The president has expressed to top members of his national security team that he would like to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, but none of them expected he’d say…

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Russia has ability to shut off power in the U.S.

Russia has ability to shut off power in the U.S.

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The New York Times reports: The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will. United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict. They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at…

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Novichok chemical attack near Porton Down fed catnip to conspiracy theorists

Novichok chemical attack near Porton Down fed catnip to conspiracy theorists

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Vladimir Putin has long understood that Russia can easily exploit the cynicism that permeates political perceptions across the West. The use of the Soviet chemical weapon, Novichok, in close proximity to the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, hardly seems coincidental. It accomplished two things: 1. By deploying this agent so close to the lab, operatives could be fairly confident that British authorities with the required expertise would be able to positively identify the chemical, i.e. Russia’s…

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Russia’s new trove of bizarre doomsday devices

Russia’s new trove of bizarre doomsday devices

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Jeffrey Lewis writes: The U.S. developed a nuclear-powered cruise missile in the 1960s, but it was canceled it because, well, it was insane. The nuclear-powered ramjet was literally deafening to people on the ground and left a trail of radioactivity from the unshielded reactor. The United States couldn’t even find a suitable place to fight-test this monster. Officials worried that if it went off course from the Nevada nuclear test site, it might crash into Las Vegas. Putin says Russia…

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Syria’s long war has reached its Srebrenica moment

Syria’s long war has reached its Srebrenica moment

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Roy Gutman writes: The Assad regime and Russia are poised to destroy totally the East Ghouta region just outside Damascus or expel its population of some 400,000, and nothing but the empty words of the United Nations, the United States, and Europe stand in their way. So, too, 23 years ago, the world sat mostly mute, watching events unfold in and around the small village of Srebrenica in a remote corner of eastern Bosnia. No government was ready to lift…

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Pentagon examines plans for a war against North Korea — ‘the brutality of this will be beyond the experience of any living soldier’

Pentagon examines plans for a war against North Korea — ‘the brutality of this will be beyond the experience of any living soldier’

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“A classified military exercise last week examined how American troops would mobilize and strike if ordered into a potential war on the Korean Peninsula,” reports the New York Times: A war with North Korea, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said, would be “catastrophic.” He and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have argued forcefully for using diplomacy to address Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Commanders who attended the exercise in Hawaii were told that roughly…

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In Syria’s war economy the worst of enemies are also partners in business

In Syria’s war economy the worst of enemies are also partners in business

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Century Foundation Fellow, Aron Lund, writes: After the October 2017 fall of Raqqa to U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab guerrillas, the extremist group known as the Islamic State is finally crumbling. But victory came a cost: Raqqa lies in ruins, and so does much of northern Syria. At least one of the tools for reconstruction is within reach. An hour and a half’s drive from Raqqa lies one of the largest and most modern cement plants in the entire Middle East,…

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