The Russian fleet in the Caspian Sea has launched 18 cruise missiles, hitting seven terrorist targets in Syria on Friday, Russian Defense Minster Sergey Shoigu has reported to President Vladimir Putin. “On November 20, the warships of the Caspian Fleet launched 18 cruise missiles at seven targets in the provinces of Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo. All targets were hit successfully,” he said. [...]

Around 500 fuel tanker vehicles transporting illegal oil from Syria to Iraq for processing have been destroyed by Russia’s Air Forces, the General Staff said. “In recent years, Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and other extremist groups have organized the operations of the so-called ‘pipeline on wheels’ on the territories they control,” Russian General Staff spokesman Colonel Ge [...]

On the day Moscow officially confirmed a terrorist attack as the cause of last month’s downing of a passenger plane in Egypt, the Russian military hit over 200 terrorist targets in Syria in 127 sorties. The escalated Russian operation involved not only warplanes flying from an airfield near Latakia, but also strategic bombers operating from Russian territory. [...]

Israel wants to quash an arrest warrant prepared by a Spanish judge for Benjamin Netanyahu over the deadly 2010 IDF attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that killed ten people. The Israeli PM and six other former ministers would be arrested if they set foot on Spanish soil. [...]

Russia has deployed its fleet of strategic bombers to double the volume of airstrikes on Islamist targets in Syria, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has announced. Vladimir Putin has ordered a cruiser to coordinate operations with French naval forces in the Mediterranean. [...]

The Russian military has launched airstrikes against the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa in Syria with cruise missiles from their ships in the Mediterranean Sea, France’s Le Monde newspaper said, citing a French official. The information that Russia has struck Islamic State positions in Raqqa has been also reported by a senior French government source, cited by Reuters. [...]

In a rare interview with Russian media outlets, RT among them, Syrian leader Bashar Assad spoke about global and domestic terrorism threats, the need for a united front against jihadism, Western propaganda about the refugee crisis and ways to bring peace to his war-torn nation. [...]

Coping with the terrorist threat and assisting refugees is only possible by combined efforts, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during an informal meeting of the leaders of the BRICS countries, which is running on the margins of the G20 summit in Antalya. "We all understand perfectly well that coping with the terrorist threat and helping millions of people who have lost their homes, is poss [...]

A day after the devastating terror attacks in Paris, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said his country’s intelligence services had warned governments of three countries, including France, that terrorists had chosen as primary targets. “Information has been obtained from Iraqi intelligence sources that the countries to be targeted soon are Europe in general, specifically France, as [...]

As Syrian peace talks pick up speed, should we hope for any progress in ending the war? This conflict is a riddle, surely - as years go on, it becomes more and more difficult to sort out who’s fighting whom and for what purpose. And over that boiling pot of violence and blood, major powers – Russia, America, Gulf States, Iran – play their own game, no less convoluted, with goals and forces u [...]

Elite Syrian army units have broken the siege of Kweires airbase, following weeks of intense fighting against Islamic State and other jihadist forces. The base, which opens up routes for offensives against Raqqa and Aleppo, had been encircled for nearly two years. [...]

Amid intensifying U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria, a group of 35 bipartisan House lawmakers issued an open letter on Friday calling for Congress to fulfill its responsibility by voting "as quickly as possible" on whether to authorize a war that is well over a year old. [...]

I think there is no ‘love lost’ between Netanyahu and President Obama: they dislike each other at a personal level. But for reasons of politics they will shake hands and smile, says Professor James Petras of Binghamton University. [...]

The US is not interested in defeating ISIS but would want to control its movements to create a geopolitical balance on the ground and provide the US-led coalition with leverage at the Vienna talks, said Middle East geopolitics analyst Sharmine Narwani. [...]

The US-led coalition has been "unbelievably" inefficient in fighting the terror group Islamic State, possibly because some members have their plans for the terrorists, Iraq's former PM told RT. [...]

Ankara is worried about possible Kurdish-American collaboration after the backing the Kurds got from Moscow, says Dr. Jamal Wakim, Professor of History and International Relations at Lebanese University. Turkey says it will carry out a military operation against ISIS in the near future, without specifying when. [...]

One month after the U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Afghanistan killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens more, the Obama administration refuses to submit to an independent inquiry while the aid group charges that the lack of global outcry over the incident has become deafening. [...]

Transparency International warns: "Corruption has fueled political unrest, extremism, and formed a narrative for violent extremist groups" Western nations—led by the United States—are selling large quantities of weapons to governments in the Middle East and North Africa, providing little oversight for how these arms are used, and thereby fueling corruption and conflict in countries from Sau [...]

When I was a kid, three presidents told us we had to fight in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, because if we didn’t fight them over there, we’d have to fight them on the beaches of California. We believed. It was a lie. I was a teenager during the Cold War, and several presidents told us we needed to create massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons, garrison the world, invade Cuba, fight in odd litt [...]

Newly acquired documents show the Pentagon spent nearly $400 million, or $2 million per fighter, on its failed train-and-equip program, according to USA Today. The Pentagon claims the actual cost was $30,000 per trainee. [...]

Damascus is opposed to having US troops on its soil, thus the US is committing aggression and international crimes against the nation of Syria, says Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute. [...]

DOHA - Amidst the wilderness of mirrors surrounding the Syrian tragedy, a diamond-shaped fact persists: Despite so many degrees of separation, the Saudis are still talking to the Russians. Why? A key reason is because a perennially paranoid House of Saud feels betrayed by their American protectors who, under the Obama administration, seem to have given up on isolating Iran. [...]