US President Donald Trump said he’ll establish “safe zones’ within Syria for people fleeing terrorism, risking becoming even more involved in the crisis. He also believes the US should have “taken the oil” from Iraq as it pulled its troops out in 2011. [...]

The Russian Aerospace Forces have conducted airstrikes in Syria based on intelligence provided by the US-led coalition, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. The Pentagon later denied that cooperation took place.   [...]

Six Russian long-range Tu-22M3 bombers launched airstrikes on Daesh arms and ammunition depots in Syria's Deir ez-Zor, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.   [...]

Moscow and Ankara are carrying out their first joint military operation against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in the Syrian province of Aleppo, the Russian Defense Ministry has announced. [...]

Since becoming the US Commander-in-Chief in 2008, Barack Obama charted a thinly veiled anti-Russia course that many failed to anticipate or appreciate due to the media-generated hype of “hope and change” that accompanied his rise to power. [...]

Iran says it rejects any participation by US representatives at the scheduled Syria peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he believes US and UN representatives should be invited to the meeting. [...]

The liberation of Aleppo by the Syrian Army delivers a "heavy blow" to all terrorist groups which have been fighting in the country for over four years, according to Argentine journalist Leandro Albani. Leandro has worked as a reporter in the Middle East for the magazine Sudestada and websites such as Resumen Latinoamericano and Marcha.org. [...]

Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin hit back at his US counterpart, Samantha Power, at a UN Security Council meeting, saying that she was not Mother Teresa and represents a country with a long record of violations. Power and Churkin both spoke at a UN Security Council meeting on Aleppo in New York City on Monday. [...]

Earlier this month, Chinese Admiral Guan Youfei visited Syria. Few details were made available on the specifics of Beijing's cooperation agreement with the Syrian military, but the pact itself represents a landmark shift both in the military sense and from the perspective of international geopolitics, says French political analyst Thierry Meyssan. [...]

China’s recent announcement of an increase of its humanitarian support for the Syrian people and that it would provide additional training to the Syrian forces comes as a “headache for the US,” according to the American media. “As if the multi-party war in Syria weren’t complicated enough, it now appears that the People’s Republic of China has decided to take a more active role in t [...]

Russia's current actions in the Middle East show how Moscow can catch the West by surprise, according to Thomas Avenarius, a journalist writing for the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. It seems that the West has been caught by surprise by Russia's current actions in the Middle East, [...]

Earlier this week, a senior Chinese military officer visited Damascus to discuss closer ties between Syria and China. Guan Youfei, director of the Office for International Military Cooperation of China's Central Military Commission, met Syrian Defense Minister Fahad Jassim al-Freij, Xinhua reported. [...]

The U.S. government, having illegally sent American troops into Syria, is now threatening to attack the Syrian military if it endangers those troops, an Orwellian twist that marks a dangerous escalation, explains Daniel Lazare. War, like politics, is filled with surprises. While the focus in Syria has been on a U.S.-backed rebel offensive in Aleppo [...]

Washington’s neocon hypocrisy surfaced again with the furor over Russia using an Iranian base to launch airstrikes against terror groups in Syria, while the U.S. uses other Mideast bases for the same purpose, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes. We should reflect on the meaning of Russia’s use of a base in Iran for staging airstrikes in Syria, and about what lessons we could learn from t [...]

Russia’s air raids in Syria, launched from Iranian territory this week, were received by Washington with a mixture of consternation and disappointment. Understandably, too. It marks a breakthrough in Russia’s standing in the Middle East. Russia is working closely in a quartet that includes Iran, Iraq and Syria. [...]

Counter measures will be taken by US troops in case they “feel threatened” by Syrian or Russian air forces, according to a senior US military official. The warning comes in the wake of a recent incident with Syrian warplanes attacking areas close to US Special Forces. [...]

The major U.S. news media has consistently slanted its coverage of the Syrian conflict to back neocon desires for more U.S. military intervention in support of “regime change,” Gareth Porter wrote for FAIR. Coverage of the breakdown of the partial ceasefire in Syria illustrated the main way corporate news media distort public understanding of a major foreign policy story. [...]

Michael Morell's recent statements with retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson. Former CIA Deputy-Head Michael Morell who supports Hilary Clinton's election campaign said Tuesday that Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed covertly to make their countries "pay a price" and quickly resolve the Syrian crisis. [...]

Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who has recently endorsed Hillary Clinton, has caused a firestorm when he said that the United States should covertly kill Russians and Iranians in Syria, with Russian lawmakers denouncing the remarks as "monstrous" and experts saying that he merely [...]