Middle Orient

Syria’s foreign minister demanded on Saturday that American and Turkish forces evacuate the war-ravaged country immediately or face “any and all countermeasures authorized under international law.”

American counterterrorism officials are voicing increased alarm about a Qaeda affiliate in Syria that they say is plotting attacks against the West by exploiting the chaotic security situation in the country’s northwest and the protection inadvertently afforded by Russian air defenses shielding Syrian government forces allied with Moscow.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the United States the “supporter of terrorism” in the Middle East and downplayed Tehran’s role in the recent Saudi oil facility attacks in a Tuesday interview with Fox News.

Key point: The IRGC is a fanatical and elite unit. No other branch of the Iranian military can claim the notoriety that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has earned for itself over the last several decades.

Senior United States Treasury official Marshall Billingslea has delivered a stern message to Lebanese officials during a two-day visit to Beirut, warning that those who co-operate with Hezbollah will be targeted by sanctions.

An expanded “safe zone” in northern Syria could include as many as 3 million people and stretch for 50 miles as far as Raqqa, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, proposed at the UN general assembly as he pressed his case to speed up the resettlement of Syrian refugees living …

A panel of former national security officials and other experts is calling for the White House and lawmakers to “halt the U.S. military withdrawal” from Syria or face potentially dire consequences.

A bipartisan report Tuesday urged the Trump administration to halt a planned troop drawdown from Syria and to step up diplomatic efforts to counter Iran’s influence and stave off a resurgence of the Islamic State militant group.

An explosives-laden drone captured by Syrian authorities was not Israeli and was likely Iranian, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman said Saturday.

Two months after Ankara threatened to launch an operation into northern Syria, where US forces are present, the US and Turkey seem to be working closely on a “security mechanism” that supposedly seeks to fulfill Turkey’s concerns about Syria.