ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced that Turkish military forces, the Free Syrian Army and Turkey-backed Islamist proxies had successfully expelled “terrorist organizations,” from the Syria-Turkey border. “From Azaz to Jarablus, our 91-kilometer border has been completely secured,” he said during a televised speech. UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the claims made by Yildirim, stating that militants backed by “Turkish tanks and warplanes” had taken several villages “after ISIS withdrew from them, ending ISIS presence… on the border.” ISIS and Turkey once had a profitable relationships with Syrian oil illegally being traded between the two. This was not reduced to blood-oil but also stolen antiquities and other equipment.

Homs, Syria (12:35 A.M.) – The Russian Air Force carried out several airstrikes over the northeastern countryside of the Homs Governorate on Wednesday, targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) headquarters near the Al-Sha’er Gas Fields. According to the government-backed “National Defense Forces,” the Islamic State’s headquarters near the Al-Sha’er Gas Fields was destroyed on Wednesday after a violent raid was conducted over their positions. In addition to the airstrikes over the Al-Sha’er Gas Fields, the Russian and Syrian air forces also targeted the Islamic State’s positions at the desert villages of ‘Arak and Sukhanah.

Saudi Arabia is increasingly using the internationally-prohibited cluster bombs in its airstrikes on Yemen, thus doubling the casualties among women and children. According to the Yemeni news agency, SABA, Saudi fighter jets pounded, yesterday, the district of Baqem in the northern province of Sa’ada with cluster bombs. It is believed that at least 105 Yemeni civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed by cluster bombs dropped by Saudi warplanes during 2015. The UK-based Thomson Reuters Corporation published a report on behalf of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) saying these missiles which can be fired on the ground or in the air are capable of turning into hundreds of smaller bombs influencing a larger area. These smaller splinter versions of these bombshells survive on the ground and act as a potential threat like a landmine. Due to their miniature design and toy-like appearance, these bombs pose a great danger to children in particular.

Yesterday saw a series of dead blasts rio through Damascus, Tartous, Homs and Hasakah. ISIS took responsibility for the attacks. Bahram Qassemi, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, condemned the attacks and highlighted the Saudi Wahhabi ideology that ISIS follow. “The actions taken by the criminal Takfiri terrorists and their Wahhabi supporters to target civilian citizens indicates their dejection and defeat in military warfare and the defeat of their political pipe dreams in the region,” he said. He then explained that the international community had to stop being indifferent to the crimes committed in Syria and Yemen. “International conventions and the international community have to stop remaining indifferent toward those ordering, supporting, and perpetrating these reprehensible crimes,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

In 2016, Russia delivered the first battalion of S-300PMU-1/SA-20 Gargoyle SAM batteries to Iran under the agreement signed by Moscow and Tehran in 2007. The S-300 is a long-range surface-to-air missile system. It can engage aircraft, cruise missiles and theater ballistic missiles.

By Eric Margolis What a mess! In the crazy Syrian war, US-backed and armed groups are fighting other US-backed rebel groups. How can this be? It is so because the Obama White House had stirred up the war in Syria but then lost control of the process. When the US has a strong president, he can usually keep the military and intelligence agencies on a tight leash. But the Obama administration has had a weak secretary of defense and a bunch of lady strategists who are the worst military commanders since Louis XV, who put his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, in charge of French military forces during the Seven Year’s War. The French were routed by the Prussians. France’s foe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, named one of his dogs, “la Pompadour.” As a result, the two arms of offensive US strategic power, the Pentagon, and CIA, went separate ways in Syria. Growing competition between the US military and militarized CIA broke into the open in Syria. Fed up with the astounding incompetence of th