ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Sparrow  President Trump’s May 9, 2017 letter firing now-former FBI Director James Comey in part reads, “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation[.]” However, a  recent court filing  by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FBI in an ongoing FOIA lawsuit plainly indicates the FBI has an active investigation pertaining to Donald Trump’s actions related to actual or potential election-related hacking and espionage by Russia. The lawsuit is filed by  Ryan Shapiro , a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) PhD candidate/Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University research affiliate, and  Jason Leopold , Senior Investigative Journalist at  BuzzFeed News . On August 18, 2016, Shapiro and Leopold submitted a FOIA request to the FBI seeking “disclosure of any and all records, including investigative records, mentioning or referring to Donald J. Trump’s statement on 27 July, 2016 [regar

© AFP 2017/ DELIL SOULEIMAN Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. John Dorrian revealed Wednesday what kind of arms the United States will supply to Kurdish forces in Syria. The United States will soon start supplying arms to Kurdish militias operating within the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF will soon be involved in the advance on the ISIS self-proclaimed capital of Raqqah. Dorrian revealed that Kurdish forces will receive ammunition, small arms, heavy machine guns and mortars from the United States. “So what we are talking about here is ammunition, small arms, heavy machine guns and mortars will be included,” he told reporters. Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that US President  Donald Trump had approved a plan  to directly arm Kurdish forces operating in Syria.

On May 10, government forces, led by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces,  captured the village of Al-Mahdoum  west of the Jirah Military Airport in the eastern Aleppo countryside. This advance is considered to be a part of the fresh SAA operation against ISIS terrorists in the eastern Aleppo countryside aimed at capturing the strategic town of Maskana. Maskana is de-facto located between the provinces of Raqqa and Aleppo. The Russian Aerospace Forces supported SAA troops bombing ISIS gatherings and vehicles in the area between Al-Jirah Military Airport and the town of Maskana. From its side, pro-ISIS sources claimed that ISIS members had destroyed a 23mm gun with an ATGM in the village of Kharaj Daham and a T-72 battle tank and a BMP-1 vehicle in the village of Jarrah Saghir. A number of Syrian soldiers was allegedly killed or wounded in the village of Atshana as a result of 2 VBIED attacks on SAA troops there. ISIS also managed to damage a SAA T-72 battle tank in the vil

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) issued an official statement condemning the safe zones agreement reached during the recent round of the Astana talks. The statement described it as a conspiracy against the Syrian people and the Syrian revolution. According to the statement, the safe zones agreement – which aims to protect the civilians – achieves the interests of all parties except the Syrian people. The HTS accused some groups of the Free Syrian Army on the Syrian-Turkish border of preparing to launch an operation against it with the support of Turkey and the United States in Idlib. The group argued that the safe zones agreement is a trick to kill real “jihadists” and later hand over the areas to the Syrian government. Click to see the full-size image Click to see the full-size image HTS described the approval of the Astana agreement as a “betrayal of God” and declared that any faction that accepts the agreement and works to implement it is considered as an infidel. HTS