ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suggested he and the US are ready to drive so-called Islamic State (IS) from its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. Mr Erdogan said US President Barack Obama floated the idea of joint action against the militants when they met at the G20 summit in China. He said Turkey would have "no problem" with such action. Last month Turkey launched an operation inside Syria, targeting both IS and Kurdish rebels. The US State Department would not confirm the details of Mr Erdogan's statement, but an official said it was important that "local forces" were involved in the fight to deliver "a lasting defeat" to IS. "The actions that Turkey is currently taking along its border with Syria, with US support, is having the important effect of isolating Raqqa," the official said. "That is a critical step in our ultimate objective to liberate Raqqa from Isil (IS) control." Turkish-backed militia have driven IS from

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.