ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Week Seventeen of the Russian Intervention in Syria: And how will Russia react if he triggers it By The Saker The situation with Turkey is rapidly getting out of control: not only have the Turks conducted artillery strikes across the Syrian border , Turkey has refused to comply with its obligations under the Open Skies Treaty and refused to let a Russian surveillance aircraft overfly Turkey . The Russian military has now declared that it had detected signs of Turkish preparations for an invasion . The Turkish refusal to abide by the Open Skies Treaty is an extremely worrisome development, especially when combined with the Russian warnings about the preparation for an invasion of Syria, and the Russians are not mincing their words: There are plenty more indicators and warnings showing that an escalation is possible: the Geneva negotiations have been abruptly terminated, the Saudis are threatening to invade Syria and there are signs that the Syrian army is slowly but surely pr

After Saudi-backed Syrian rebels balked at peace talks and the Russian-backed Syrian army cut off Turkish supply lines to jihadists and other Syrian rebels, the U.S. and its Mideast Sunni “allies” appear poised to invade Syria and force “regime change” even at the risk of fighting Russia, a gamble with nuclear war, writes Joe Lauria. By Joe Lauria Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last October said in a little noticed comment that the United States was ready to take “direct action on the ground” in Syria. Vice President Joe Biden said in Istanbul last month that if peace talks in Geneva failed, the United States was prepared for a “military solution” in that country. The peace talks collapsed on Wednesday even before they began. A day later Saudi Arabia said it is ready to invade Syria while Turkey is building up forces at its Syrian border. The U.N. aims to restart the talks on Feb. 25 but there is little hope they can begin in earnest as the Saudi-run opposition has set numerous condit

By Catherine Shakdam, she´s a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen. A regular pundit on RT and other networks her work has appeared in major publications: MintPress, the Foreign Policy Journal, Mehr News and many others.Director of Programs at the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, Catherine is also the co-founder of Veritas Consulting. She is the author of Arabia’s Rising - Under The Banner Of The First Imam A former beacon of human rights and civil liberties, Europe has become its own worst enemy, as governments exploit and engineer fears to expand their control and oversight. In this descent towards national paranoia France is leading the pack. Ever since terror rose its demonic face, world democracies have lived under a semi-permanent state of alert awaiting the proverbial clash of civilization, politicians, officials, and at times intellectuals, warned would inevitably take place should h

Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu pledged to return a “historical debt” to Turkey’s “Aleppo brothers” who helped defend the country in the early 20th century, just days after Russia warned of Ankara’s intentions to invade Syria as the rebels there falter. “We will return our historic debt. At one time, our brothers from Aleppo defended our cities of Sanliurfa, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, now we will defend the heroic Aleppo. All of Turkey stands behind its defenders,” Davutoglu said at the meeting of the Party of Justice and Development parliamentary faction, which he heads. Davutoglu was apparently referring to World War One and subsequent events in the Turkish War of Independence, seemingly glorifying the defense and retaking of Turkish cities from the Allied forces. Yet, he failed to mention that the Turks had been drawn into the war by Ottoman imperial ambitions. Turkey had entered the conflict by shelling the Russian port of Odessa from the sea. It then suffered a humiliating defeat at the

IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – On Sunday, al-Hashd al-Shaabi media official Mahmoud al-Sourji announced, that the so-called ISIS executed more than 300 persons in Mosul, while pointed out that the executed people were police and army personnel, as well as civil activists. Sourji said in a brief statement followed by IraqiNews.com, “ISIS executed more than 300 police and army personnel, in addition to civil activists by firing squad in Mosul.” Noteworthy, Mosul is suffering from major security and humanitarian crisis due to ISIS control on the city.

Chechen special forces loyal to Vladimir Putin are on the ground in Syria, embedded inside Isis-controlled territory as part of an intelligence-gathering mission, the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said. In a teaser for a documentary to be aired on Russia’s state-controlled TV channel, Russia One, later this week, Mr Kadyrov is shown at a training camp for special units in Chechnya. Shooting high-powered weapons and observing the troops, Mr Kadyrov tells the camera that his “best fighters” were sent undercover to Syria to train alongside Isis fighters, while Chechen agents had infiltrated Isis cells “to gather information about the terrorist group”. “An extensive spy network has been set up inside Isis,” Mr Kadyrov said. Russia One’s report said that the time had come to talk about those “who have safeguarded the success of Russian air strikes on the ground at the cost of their own lives”. However, in a rare discrepancy between the Kremlin’s official line and the information broadca

By Robert Fisk After losing up to 60,000 soldiers in five years of fighting, the Syrian army has suddenly scored its greatest victory of the war – smashing its way through Jabhat al-Nusra and the other rebel forces around Aleppo and effectively sealing its fate as Russia provided air strike operations outside the city. The rebel supply lines from Turkey to Aleppo have been cut, but this does not mean the end of the story. For many months, the regime’s own military authorities – along with tens of thousands of civilians, including many Christians – were trapped inside Aleppo and at the mercy of shelling and mortar fire by the Nusra fighters, who surrounded them until the army opened the main highway south. During this period, the only way to Aleppo was by plane because the army held a tiny peninsula of territory going to the airport – I flew out one night on a military aircraft crowded with wounded Syrian troops. But the tables have turned. It is the rebels themselves who are no

WASHINGTON: North Korea's latest rocket launch might kick off a buildup of U.S. missile defence systems in Asia, U.S. officials and missile defence experts said, something that could further strain U.S.-China ties and also hurt relations between Beijing and Seoul. North Korea says it put a satellite into orbit on Sunday, but the United States and its allies see the launch as cover for Pyongyang's development of ballistic missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear weapon. Washington sought to reassure its allies South Korea and Japan of its commitment to their defence after the launch, which followed a North Korean nuclear test on Jan. 6. The United States and South Korea said they would begin formal talks about deploying the sophisticated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, to the Korean peninsula "at the earliest possible date." South Korea had been reluctant to publicly discuss the possibility due to worries about upsetting China, i