#bashar assad

[deadpresidents]

50+ years of rule by the Assad family in Syria is officially over.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Melanie Phillips

The eagerness to assume that Islamists have reformed themselves accompanies the West’s suicidal refusal to see what is so plainly the case—that whether it involves Shia or Sunni Muslims, Hezbollah or the Houthis, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamists are waging world war against unbelievers wherever they are.

The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, set in train a series of events that have shaken the geopolitical kaleidoscope. Tiny Israel is now well on the way to smashing the Shia axis and—in the words of a member of the Iranian regime—becoming the foremost power in the region.

This also represents a shattering defeat for the strategy of former President Barack Obama, which has been continued by the Biden administration. This strategy was—remarkably—to empower the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To this end, the Obama and Biden administrations spared no effort to appease and protect the Tehran regime. In the war that followed the Oct. 7 pogrom, Washington refused to respond appropriately to repeated Iranian attacks while putting Israel under enormous pressure also not to do so.

And, after Donald Trump won the presidential election last month, the United States renewed a controversial sanctions waiver that will allow Iran access to some $10 billion in payments from Iraq.

The stupendous developments in the Middle East are a cause for unprecedented optimism. With the likely destruction of the Shia axis, the way will be set for Saudi Arabia finally to make its peace with Israel and thus end, once and for all, the Arab war against the Jewish state. The cause of the Palestinian Arabs, who never were the issue until the West chose to make them so, would simply evaporate.

To envisage this is not to fall into the trap of wishful thinking. The dangers for Israel and the free world remain acute and unresolved. Iran is poised to get the nuclear bomb, and there are fears that with its back to the wall, it will now do just that.

But Iran now has no military defenses or proxy shields. This is therefore the moment to destroy totally its nuclear program and maybe finish off this evil regime altogether.

To do this, however, Israel needs America to be involved. Will Trump be willing to do this? Or will he believe that he alone can make a deal that will tame the Iranian regime?

Any such deal would be illusory. Iran has lied about its activities for more than four decades and won’t stop now.

The old order has been shattered. Bad actors have been weakened; others are now empowered. It will take wise heads indeed to turn this extraordinarily complex set of developments into a real leap for peace in the world. It can be done. Are there the leaders to do it?

[girlactionfigure]

Translation: “Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba” is a line from the Mourner's Kaddish, a Jewish prayer recited in memory of the dead. The line translates to "May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified"

[eretzyisrael]

Emily Schrader Takes on Global Hypocrisy

[eli-kopter]

🤫

[unita2org]

COSI' WASHINGTON E ANKARA HANNO CAMBIATO IL REGIME DI DAMASCO

di Thierry Meyssan https://www.voltairenet.org/article221627.html Con sorprendente sfacciataggine la stampa internazionale ci assicura che in Siria è in corso non già un cambiamento militare di regime, bensì una rivoluzione per rovesciare la Repubblica Araba siriana. Ci nascondono la presenza dell’esercito turco e delle forze speciali statunitensi. Ci inondano con una propaganda, peraltro più…

[ricisidro]

There's a "very high probability" that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was killed in a plane crash as it was a mystery why the plane took a surprise U turn and disappeared off the map according to data from the Flightradar website, Reuters report.

The Fall of Damascus marks a turning point for Syria, shattered by 13 years of civil war which has turned cities to rubble, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and forced millions abroad as refugees.

It's a massive blow to allies Russia and Iran raising fears of a new wave of regional instability in the Middle East.

[youthchronical]

Syria: Over 1,000 killed in 2 days as Assad loyalists, security forces, and militants clash in deadliest violence in years - The Times of India

The death toll from two days of intense fighting in Syria has surpassed 1,000, making it one of the deadliest incidents in the country’s 14-year conflict, a war monitoring group said. The clashes involved Syrian security forces, armed loyalists of ousted President Bashar Assad, and retaliatory attacks. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, civilians bore the brunt of the violence,…

[sadanandaom]

[climate-changing]

One tiran less.

[deadpresidents]

"Bashar al-Assad left his country so secretively that some of his aides remained in the palace hours after he had left, waiting for a speech that never came, the insider said. After midnight, word came that the president was gone, and they fled in a panic, leaving the palace gates wide open for the rebels who would storm in a few hours later."

-- "Deception and Betrayal: Inside the Final Days of the Assad Regime", New York Times, December 21, 2024.

I love fly-on-the-wall reporting of events like this. Great work from Ben Hubbard, Farnaz Fassihi, Christina Goldbaum, and Hwaida Saad of the New York Times. Here's a gift link from me to bypass the paywall and read the whole story.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Moshe Phillips

As chaos envelops Syria—with one gang of terrorists overthrowing the other gang of terrorists who ran the government—the question needs to be asked: Can you imagine the danger Israel would now be facing if it had surrendered to U.S. demands in the 1990s to give up the Golan Heights?

This isn’t some theoretical what-if scenario. During the first Clinton administration, a team of State Department negotiators led by Dennis Ross spent several years trying to pressure Israel to give over the Golan to Syrian dictator Hafez Assad (father of the recently deposed dictator Bashar Assad, his second-oldest son).

Today, Ross can be seen on television and quoted in news articles presenting himself as an expert and offering unsolicited advice to Israel. Most consist of demanding that Israel make more concessions.

But from 1993 to 1994, Ross was not just a source of useless hot air. He was in a position to directly pressure Israel to hand strategic territory to an insane dictator who was building weapons of mass destruction. And he did, frequently.

In his 2021 book Red Line, Joby Warrick of The Washington Post revealed that in 1988, the CIA convinced one of Syria’s top chemical-weapons scientists to secretly provide the United States with information about Syria’s efforts to manufacture sarin gas and other deadly nerve agents.

The secret agent, who called himself “Ayman” and was known in the CIA by the code name “The Chemist,” provided information to the CIA continuously for the next 13 years.

Meaning that when Dennis Ross and his team began pressuring Israel to give up the Golan in 1993, the Clinton administration had already known from the inside—for five years already—the true evil nature of the Assad regime and its chemical weapons plans.

Yet in Ross’s account of his role in the Syria negotiations in his book The Missing Peace, he speaks fondly of Assad and about his friendly, sometimes warm relationship with the chemical-weapons war criminal.

[liberalsarecool]

Bashar al-Assad was run out of the country.

The long-suffering people of Syria now have the chance to build a better future.

Al-Assad fled to Russia. Remember that.

[eretzyisrael]

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei gave a speech yesterday to a large group of women. 

The main takeaway is that his words have become irrelevant, and everyone knows it.

Khamenei warned that any Israeli attempts to target Hezbollah through Syria would lead to Israel's own destruction while pledging continued support for regional resistance movements. 'The Zionist regime is preparing itself through Syria, in their imagination, to besiege and eradicate Hezbollah, but it is Israel that will be eradicated,' Khamenei said in a speech to thousands in Tehran. Addressing Assad's fall, he dismissed claims of the resistance axis's weakening: 'With the events that occurred in Syria, and with the crimes of the Zionist (Israel) regime and America and others' help to them, enemies thought the resistance issue was finished, but they are deeply mistaken.'

His specific words about women were even more absurd that his fantasies about the strength of the "axis of resistance."

 “Everyone, especially women, should be vigilant about the enemy’s soft tactics and not be deceived by slogans and temptations,” Khamenei said in a meeting with a group of women on Tuesday. "They label it as defending women, advocating for women's rights, or supporting a group of women," he added, pointing to the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement. "Yet, under the pretext of defending a single woman, they incite unrest in the country."

He said this only days after his government was forced to postpone a proposed draconian law to severely punish women who don't cover their hair properly according to the mullahs' standards. Khamenei probably engineered this speech to make it appear that Iranian women support him when they were the ones who forced the law to be stopped, at least for now. 

Dictators think they can change reality by making declarations. They lie so much that they start believing their own lies. They consistently underestimate the intelligence of their own people. By doing so, they sow the seeds of their own downfall.

This speech was not even well covered in Iranian media, perhaps out of embarrassment. Because when no one listens to or believes the words of their leaders, they cease to be leaders.

[standosart]

Syria is free! 💚💚💚💚💚💚

tomorrow, Palestine will be too

[unita2org]

ASSAD (2023): "LA TERZA GUERRA MONDIALE E' IN CORSO MA IN UNA FORMA DIVERSA..."

MEDITERRANEO 30 Novembre 2024 08:00 In una intervista a Ria Novosti del 2023, il presidente siriano Bashar Assad commentava la situazione internazionale e il conflitto mondiale in corso, rapportando il tutto alla situazione attuale del suo paese. Vittima di un decennio di conflitto e sanzioni da parte di terroristi al soldo della Nato e Israele, la Siria ha rappresentato la prima vera trincea…