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 2:20 PM, Jun 17, 2013 • By LEE SMITHAs if there isn't already enough on the agenda for the G-8 Summit, now Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is threatening Europe by hinting at a terror campaign on the continent. If the Europeans arm the Syrian rebels, Assad told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "then Europe's backyard will become terrorist, and Europe will pay the price for it."
He elaborated somewhat, explaining that European Muslims traveling to Syria to fight the regime "will return, battle-hardened and with an extremist ideology." The reality, however, is that Europe has much to fear from the regime, which waged a campaign of terror in Europe, particularly Paris, in the 80s. Then under the direction of Bashar's father Hafez, the regime's most notorious operation on the continent was the 1986 Hindawi Affair. An agent of the Damascus regime, Nezar Hindawi, put a bomb in the bag of his girlfriend, an Irish woman unaware of what she was carrying on board a Tel Aviv-bound EL AL flight out of London's Heathrow airport. After the airline's security detected the explosives, Hindawi took refuge in the Syrian embassy in London, leading to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to break off diplomatic relations with Syria.
When the Assad regime issues threats, it's worth taking them seriously.
5:20 PM, Jun 13, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPERDeputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes released the following statement on Syrian use of chemical weapons, resulting in 100-150 deaths:
Read more... 2:18 PM, Jun 3, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPERA news report published today says that North Korean officers are in Syria helping Bashar al-Assad wage war against his own people.
Read more... After a week's worth of fighting in Syria, the Islamic resistance licks its wounds.3:16 PM, May 24, 2013 • By LEE SMITHFor over a week now, the Syrian town of Qusayr in Homs Province has seen some of the heaviest fighting in the two-year conflict. The struggle for Qusayr, says besieged President Bashar al-Assad, “is the main battle” in all of Syria.
Read more... Israel sees Syria as part of its Iran problem—why doesn't Obama?4:01 PM, May 8, 2013 • By LEE SMITHIsrael’s air campaign this past weekend, its two strikes Friday and Sunday on Syrian targets, shows where the Obama administration has gotten Syria wrong. Over the last few weeks, the White House has framed its Syria policy, or its lack of one, in terms of Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal and the growing strength of the Islamist opposition, including al Qaeda affiliates. With these talking points, the administration has managed to tie up its critics on two fronts.
Read more... First anniversary of Atrocities Prevention Board is a celebration of the administration's feckless Syria policy.
6:02 PM, May 6, 2013 • By LEE SMITHLast week the White House celebrated the first anniversary of its Atrocities Prevention Board.
Read more... May 13, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 33 • By WILLIAM KRISTOLThere was one moment in President Obama’s world-weary press conference last Tuesday when he seemed genuinely interested and engaged. At the very end, when Obama had already begun to depart the podium, a reporter shouted a question about the previously obscure but now famously gay NBA center, Jason Collins.
Read more... The Syrian regime’s information campaign is part of a larger war against Western interests.11:05 AM, May 3, 2013 • By LEE SMITHJonathan Spyer explains how Syrian president Bashar al-Assad may have the upper hand right now in Syria’s two-year-old conflict. “Regime forces have clawed back areas of recent rebel advance,” Spyer writes in the Jerusalem Post. “The government side, evidently under Iranian tutelage, has showed an impressive and unexpected ability to adapt itself to the changing demands of the war.”
Read more... 8:55 PM, Apr 25, 2013 • By LEE SMITHThe Obama administration now believes that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad may have used chemical weapons. Today the White House released a letter explaining that the American “intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specially the chemical agent sarin.”
Read more... Hosted by Michael Graham.3:57 PM, Apr 25, 2013 • By TWS PODCASTTHE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the new revelations about the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.
Read more... 12:23 PM, Apr 18, 2013 • By LEE SMITHYesterday Syrian president Bashar al-Assad commemorated Syria’s independence day with a television interview where he described the Syrian civil war as a colonial plot. Western powers, said Assad, “never accepted the idea of other nations having their independence. They want those nations to submit to them.”
Read more... 3:36 PM, Apr 11, 2013 • By LEE SMITHToday NOW Lebanon publishes an article, with charts and graphics, explaining how the war in Syria pitting Sunni-majority rebels against Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite regime has spread to Lebanon, affecting the delicate sectarian balance there. The fighting in Lebanon so far has been contained mostly to Tripoli, a city in the northern part of the country that has long reflected Lebanon’s own internal divides as well as those of neighboring Syria.
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