Russia strongly backs Iranian membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), now that UN Security Council sanctions have been lifted from the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Iran is ready to become a full-fledged member of the organization, Lavrov said Friday during an SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Astana. [...]

Nothing prompts abdication of journalistic responsibility on American TV more swiftly than “beautiful” images of bombs crashing down on Syria. It must be assumed that while busy fawning over Donald Trump’s various military escapades, journalists simply haven’t had the time to give dissenting voices an opportunity to be heard. [...]

Fighting in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun will cease when experts arrive to investigate the alleged chemical attack, the Russian Ministry of Defense has said in a statement. [...]

In the aftermath of Thursday's Tomahawk cruise missile attack on the Ash Sha'irat airbase in Homs, Syria, Moscow vowed to strengthen its air defense umbrella over the country. Experts have already explained which systems need to be deployed to ensure Syria's safety against future US attacks. [...]

Acquiring a second citizenship is illegal in Austria. After the referendum in Turkey, the Austrian interior minister additionally called for fining Austrian Turks for obtaining it. Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said Wednesday he would seek hefty fines for ethnic Turks holding Austrian citizenship who illegally obtain a second passport. [...]

The current march to war in Syria is being justified by claiming that Bashar al Assad used chemical weapons on his people. This video demonstrates evidence that Assad did not have chemical weapons because they were all destroyed in 2014. Major Evidence That Assad Did Not Conduct Chemical Attacks Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Says The U.S. Government Is Directly Funding ISIS And Al Qaed [...]

The Syrian chemical weapons attack last Tuesday blamed on the Assad regime was “100 percent” a “fabrication,” Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad said in an interview Wednesday with AFP. The embattled Syrian president argued he never ordered the attack on the Idlib province which left some 80 dead, and said western-backed forces were benefitting ISIS terrorists in the area. [...]

With Russia’s hopes for détente with President Trump dashed by his missile strike on Syria, the Kremlin looks askance at visiting Secretary of State Tillerson who it feels played the Colin Powell role for his boss, says Gilbert Doctorow. Secretary of State Tillerson Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Moscow was supposed to prepare the way for a Trump-Putin summit either as a self- [...]

President Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria may have lightened political pressure at home but Russia’s retaliation – suspending a key “deconfliction agreement” – left Secretary of State Tillerson as supplicant at the Kremlin, reports Gilbert Doctorow. The Russian media offered no complete account of what may have been accomplished during Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s [...]

Donald Trump authorized an unjustified attack on a sovereign country. Donald Trump’s decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened: [...]

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has criticized his ally US President Donald Trump for ordering a missile strike against an airbase in Syria in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack. The MEP warned that many Trump voters will be confused by his retaliation. [...]

Members of Congress are split on the question of whether President Donald Trump's ordered Tomahawk missile strikes against a Syrian airbase were in accordance with US law. Lines drawn on the issue did not follow the pattern of partisanship often seen in Washington, DC. The US airstrikes on the Shayrat Air Base in Homs, Syria, on Thursday evening prompted Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to take t [...]

Once-dedicated passengers are now disembarking the ‘Trump Train’ following his administration’s actions against Syria. Previous supporters including Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Ingraham made public their opposition to the US president’s missile strike. Infowars Editor-At-Large Watson tweeted that Donald Trump “wasn’t 'Putin’s puppet' after all,” describing him as “another de [...]

To describe the US attack on Syria as a serious development is to be guilty of understatement. Without any recourse to international law or the United Nations, the Trump administration has embarked on an act of international aggression against yet another sovereign state in the Middle East, confirming that neocons have reasserted their dominance over US foreign policy in Washington. It is an act [...]

The U.S. government and the mainstream media rushed to judgment again, blaming the Syrian government for a new poison-gas attack and ignoring other possibilities, reports Robert Parry. With the latest hasty judgment about Tuesday’s poison-gas deaths in a rebel-held area of northern Syria, the mainstream U.S. news media once more reveals itself to be a threat to responsible journalism and to t [...]

In a serious setback to the promise of an impending peace process in Syria the United States have hit a Syrian airbase alleged to have carried out a chemical attack on a rebel held town, without any proper investigation of the incident. Only a day before the US strike, international donors in Brussels, as well as Syrian and Western politicians and experts in London were discussing ways of� [...]

Russia appears to have drawn a "red line" by suspending the air safety agreement, which Moscow and Washington reached in October 2015 to prevent aerial accidents in Syria's crowded skies, Director on geopolitical studies at the Brussels-based European Institute for International Relations (IERI) Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann told Sputnik. [...]

Senator Rand Paul has urged the President to stick to the position on Syria that he espoused before taking office – that military intervention will do more harm than good. The Senator re-tweeted a tweet from Trump posted in August of 2013, when a similar chemical weapon attack to this week’s was blamed on the Syrian government. Continues Here...  Was Syrian Chemical Attack A Fals [...]

The US has hinted it may take its own action in Syria, unless the UN Security Council takes action to prevent the use of chemical weapons in Syria. It comes after a reported chemical weapons attack in the Idlib province, which rebels blamed on Damascus. The UN Security Council convened on Wednesday to discuss a draft resolution proposed by the US, the UK and France, which would condemn Damascus [...]

Moscow will continue to support Syrian Army troops in their anti-terrorism effort, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, after being asked whether Russian policy had changed following a reported chemical attack in the Idlib province.   [...]

The United States was quick to lay the blame for what is claimed to have been a chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, a town in the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib, on President Bashar al-Assad despite the fact that Washington is fully aware that Damascus has long since destroyed its chemical arsenal, Russian economist Said Gafurov told Sputnik. "The Americans know that Syria simply does not ha [...]

The humanitarian plight of war-torn Mosul has “escalated to the limit,” with the Iraqi president comparing it to a “full-on catastrophe,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said. “It’s time to toll the alarm bells,” the official added.   [...]