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Baku - APA. Russia could give asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he has to leave his country, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview published on January 12, according to RFE/RL. "It was surely more difficult to grant [U.S. national security contractor Edward] Snowden asylum in Russia than it would be in the case of Assad," Putin told the German tabloid Bild, referring to the American leaker of classified U.S. documents who was given asylum in Russia in 2013. Putin said it was too early to say whether Russia would have to give shelter to Assad as...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian leaders about the crisis in Syria. On his first trip to Iran in eight years, Putin met with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday, as Russia nears a third month of military engagement in the conflict. The discussions come on a sidelines of a one-day trip to Iran for a summit of gas-exporting countries. Tehran and Moscow have supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the ongoing civil war that has crippled the country since 2011 and killed over 250,000 people. The violence has displaced millions more. On...

The posters of President Bashar al-Assad once hung proud in Syria’s capital. Supporters of the regime would confidently predict the defeat of the “terrorists” - the accepted term for the rebel opposition. In the last few weeks, however, the the insurgents have turned the tide of the civil war by winning a string of battlefield victories against Mr Assad’s forces. In the north, a newly unified rebel coalition called the “Army of Conquest” managed to capture Idlib, a provincial capital, and much of the surrounding territory.

Jeb Bush has spent the week debating with himself over whether he would have started the war his brother launched on Iraq. When he figures it out, hopefully, our would-be president will focus in on the campaign to drag us into yet another Mideast war -- this time to bring down Bashar Assad's regime in Syria. While few would mourn the passing of the Assad dynasty, there is a problem: If Assad falls, a slaughter of Christians will follow and the battle for control of Damascus will be between the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, the Nusra Front, and the crazed...

The Assad regime has placed its intelligence chief under house arrest after suspecting he was plotting a coup, in a sign that battlefield losses are setting off increasing paranoia in Damascus. Ali Mamlouk, the head of the country's National Security Bureau, and one of the few officials still to have access to President Bashar al-Assad, was accused of holding secret talks with countries backing rebel groups and exiled members of the Syrian regime. Mr Assad is struggling to keep together the regime’s "inner circle", who are increasingly turning on each other, sources inside the presidential palace have told The Telegraph....

I never crossed paths with James Foley. I regret not having met him. A freelance reporter of great skill and courage, Foley was murdered, on camera, by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by cutting off his head. I know "beheading" is a mellower term, but I don't think this kind of barbarism should be softened. According to the BBC:"James Foley, 40, had reported extensively across the Middle East, working for US publication GlobalPost and other media outlets including French news agency AFP." Foley had been reporting on the appalling situation in Syria when he was abducted on Nov....

resident Obama's recent foreign policy speech, delivered at this year's West Point graduation ceremony, was a disappointment to anyone who hoped the president might be changing course. The failure of each U.S. intervention thus far in the 21st century might have inspired at least a bit of reflection. However, the president made it clear that interventionism and American exceptionalism would continue to guide his administration in its final two years. The president said, "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being," adding the dubious claim that "because of American diplomacy and foreign assistance, as well as the...

Iraqi Al Qaeda's entry into Syria's civil war caused "a political disaster" for Islamist militants there, the movement's global leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in a video message, urging the faction to redouble its efforts in Iraq instead. Zawahri has repeatedly tried to end infighting between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and another Al Qaeda-aligned group, the Nusra Front. He said on May 2 in a message translated by SITE Monitoring that if ISIL had accepted his decision not to get involved in Syria and had instead worked to "busy itself with Iraq, which needs double its...

French leaders announced that there are significant reasons to believe that Syrian forces continue to use chemical weapons on their own citizenry in its effort to crack down on opposition targets. Appearing on the Europe 1 radio show this weekend, French President Francois Hollande indicated his government had "a few elements of information" that government forces in Syria are behind recent chlorine gas attacks in at least three towns, although he stressed that at the moment concrete proof was still lacking. While French intelligence officials work to substantiate the claim, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabuis told the radio station that...

Don't step over the line and re-militarize the Rhineland. Absorbing Austria would cross a red line. Breaking up Czechoslovakia is unacceptable. Get out of Poland by the announced deadline. The rest was history. Don't dare blow up another American military barracks overseas. Don't ever consider another attack on the World Trade Center. Don't even try blowing up one more American embassy in East Africa. Don't ever put a hole in a U.S. warship again. The rest was history. President Obama issued yet another one of those sorts of warnings to stop the violence to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych just before...

Does anyone believe the president had the foggiest idea what he'll say tonight as recently as mid-afternoon?  He's blown through three different Syria policies -- that we know of -- in the last 48 hours.  And because he promised America a speech, a speech we shall receive.  How will he frame his remarks?  Will they be tailored primarily for a domestic political audience, or for America's adversaries, who have been running rings around him while giggling?  My guess is that he'll issue a deadline and an ultimatum, while talking a lot about how US pressure created an opening for diplomacy...

While President Barack Obama and Congress pontificate over whether Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people and whether a limited U.S. attack on Syria would be justified, what Washington needs to realize is this: Assad launched sarin on its citizens in hopes of moving the U.S. like a chess piece into his civil war and deeper onto the Middle East war map. According to New York University political scientist Alastair Smith, Assad's use of chemical weapons is in reality "a brilliant play internationally" on the global field of politics and power -- if, of course, you're...

Charlie Rose interviewed Syrian President Bashar Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus on Sunday morning. --- UPDATE (11:05 a.m.): Rose's preview of the interview as relayed by phone from Beirut, Lebanon, on CBS's "Face The Nation" on Sunday: [Assad] denied that he had anything to do with the attack. He denied that he knew there was a chemical attack, notwithstanding what has been said and notwithstanding the videotape. He said there’s not enough evidence to make a conclusive judgment. He would not say even, even though I read him the lead paragraph of the New York Times today in...

Iran threatens rape of Obama daughter Warns of mass abductions, brutal killings of American citizens if U.S. hits Syria (Daily Caller) As Congress debates whether to support President Obama’s call for a limited strike against Syria for the alleged use of chemical weapons, Iran is vowing to back Bashar al-Assad’s regime to the hilt and threatening to unleash terrorism should the U.S. strike. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Forces, Wednesday told the Assembly of Experts — the body that chooses the supreme leader — that “[w]e will support Syria to the end.” And in an unprecedented statement, a...

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top Pentagon officer repeatedly warned against the costs and potential entanglements of military involvement in Syria. Now he's testifying on behalf of the White House. The nation's top military officer warned repeatedly in recent months that getting US military involved with Syria is a dangerous proposition... Did he change his mind or is he just doing the White House's bidding? In the past, he has made it clear that US military intervention could tip the balance of power in favor of Islamist rebels who don't necessarily have the interests of the United States at heart...

The grossly obese Syrian officer was coming in the door of the King Khalid Military City exchange while I was coming out. I saw instantly that this was no soldier; this was a thug, a threat only to the unarmed civilians that are his kind’s prey. My eyes fell downward from his cruel face to the piece of flair gracing his olive green fatigues. “Nice Assad button,” I sneered. Real warriors don’t wear pictures of dictators on their uniform. He glared back at me with his dark, rat eyes, not understanding my words but fully appreciating my contempt. Though Syria...

"We're actively looking at the various legal angles that would inform a decision." That is what an anonymous administration official told the Washington Post this week about President Barack Obama's deliberations on whether he will personally involve the United States in another Middle Eastern war by ordering military action in Syria. But the only law that ultimately matters here is the one Obama swore to preserve, protect and defend: the Constitution of the United States. As recently as six years ago, Obama exhibited a clear understanding of the power the Constitution does and does not give the president in using...

Iran is to reportedly send 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad in the fight against opposition forces, according to the The Independent on Sunday. In what was described as an Iranian “military decision,” the British newspaper said Iran was now “fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime,” citing unnamed pro-Iranian sources. The sources “have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel,” The Independent’s Robert Fisk wrote. The decision, allegedly made before this week’s presidential election, was...

Syrian Rebel Bites Heart of Dead Soldier: Video BEIRUT (Reuters) - A video of a Syrian rebel commander cutting the heart out of a soldier and biting into is emblematic of a civil war that has rapidly descended into sectarian hatred and revenge killings, Human Rights Watch said on Monday. The New York-based group said an amateur video posted on the Internet on Sunday shows Abu Sakkar, a founder of the rebel Farouq Brigade who is well known to journalists as an insurgent from Homs, cutting into the torso of a dead soldier. The video has caused outrage among both...

As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regimeÂ’s chemical weapons and whether SyriaÂ’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after AssadÂ’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on SyriaÂ’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not. Relations between the United States and Israel had grown rocky after IsraelÂ’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006, for Secretary of State Condoleezza...