The U.S. said that it has eased some restrictions on Syria’s government to allow for humanitarian aid. The U.S. Treasury had issued a sanctions exemption for six months to “support the Syrian people as they build a more hopeful, secure, and peaceful future,’’ it said in a statement. In December, Syria’s new de facto leader,…
Syria’s transitional government has vowed to dissolve and restructure all security agencies of the toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime accused of mass killings and abuses. Al-Assad, who ruled Syria for more than two decades, fled the country earlier this month as Islamist-led rebels advanced on the capital Damascus during a lighting sweep. The interim government,…
An international war crimes prosecutor Stephen Rapp said evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a state-run “machinery of death” under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad. According to Rapp more than 100,000 people have been tortured and murdered since 2013. Speaking after visiting two mass grave sites in the towns of Qutayfah and…
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has blamed his archenemies the United States and Israel for the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. “There can be no doubt that what has happened in Syria is the result of a joint American-Zionist plan,” Khamenei said on Wednesday in the capital Tehran, according to state…
Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official, highlights that the collapse of the Assad regime is transforming regional security dynamics, particularly for Jordan and Iraq, and easing some threats to Israel while complicating the overall situation in the Middle East. Melamed points out that with Assad’s downfall, Iran has lost its foothold in Syria, hindering…
