Author: Steven Sahiounie

The Russian military police continued on Friday to patrol communities in the northern Syrian provinces, said Major General Yuri Borenkov, head of the Defence Ministry’s Reconciliation Centre in Syria. He cited four routes between towns in the Aleppo province and one route in the northeasternmost Hasakah region. Army aviation patrolled the route between the Kuweires and Metras airfields. The patrols are part of last month’s pact between Russia and Turkey that designated areas for Russian patrol missions outside of the Turkish-held “safe” border zone that Ankara wanted to be cleared of Kurdish fighters to move in refugees. On 9 October, Turkey launched…

Iran’s deputy defense minister says Iran is producing a laser air defense system and plans to increase the range and precision of its cruise missiles. “We have acquired laser air defense technology that can be used against small aircraft and quadcopter drones,” General Qassem Taqizadeh said on Saturday. The system has undergone testing and is now under production, he added. The deputy defense minister also said that new mapping and digital systems were being used to increase the range and precision of cruise missiles as part of a project that would see its testing stages concluded in the near future. Speaking about…

A senior aide to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the country is determined to go on with the purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems, despite threats of sanctions by the United States. Ibrahim Kalin made the remarks on Friday, two days after Erdogan and US President Donald Trump met in Washington and discussed differences between the two countries, including over Turkey’s purchase of the S-400s. Ankara and Washington have been at loggerheads over Turkey’s purchase of the Russian systems, which the US says are not compatible with the military hardware owned by the other countries of the Western…

By Mark Taliano A Canadian political commentator and author of “Voices from Syria” said if a new constitution is approved by the Syrian Constitutional Committee, the foreign-backed “unelected” opposition cannot guarantee to adhere to it. “Unelected opposing parties cannot guarantee anything,” Mark Taliano said in an interview with Tasnim. “Their (opposing parties’) masters are not Syrian,” he said, adding, “Ultimately they will have no say in substantive matters.” The following is the full text of the interview. *** Tasnim: The United Nation’s envoy for Syria said recently that first talks in the Swiss city of Geneva on the country’s constitution involving Syrian…

Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip have likely taken possession of a “highly advanced” Israeli projectile that has fallen into the territory intact and can be reverse-engineered to reveal its industrial technology, a report suggests. The unexploded ordnance, a “Tamir” interceptor used in Israel’s so-called Iron Dome missile system, was recovered after being fired into Gaza during Israel’s recent 48-hour attacks on the enclave, which died down with a ceasefire on Thursday. In a report on the same day, the website The Drive used images from a tweet by Joe Truzman, purportedly a security analyst, for a visual investigation of the…

Turkey has sent more than 6,000 Syrian migrants in Istanbul to temporary housing centers in other provinces since early July, the local governor’s office said on Friday. His statement came two weeks after a deadline for Syrians not registered in the city to leave. Authorities had given undocumented Syrians in Istanbul until October 30 to move to another province or face forced removal from the city. The Istanbul governor’s office said 6,416 unregistered Syrians were removed from Istanbul since July 12. Turkey hosts more than 3.6 million Syrians, the largest population of Syrians displaced by an eight-year civil war. The…

Sixty-six Iraqi security officers have been put on trial over the excessive use of force in dispersing protesters, government spokesman Saad Hadisi, said amid unrest in the Middle Eastern country. On Thursday, the spokesman said live on Al Arabiya that “1,600 demonstrators arrested for participating in protests have been released and 66 security officers faced trial”. The UN Human Rights Council said last week that at least 269 people had been killed in the protests. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said that he would carry out a cabinet reshuffle and introduce changes to election laws. Mahdi said that the government’s…

by Tim Korso Lebanon has recently been rocked by weeks-long protests over the government’s plans to introduce a tax on online calls made via the WhatsApp messenger, leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil has stated that former Minister of Finance Mohammad Ahmed Safadi has agreed to assume the post of prime minister in a new government, Lebanese MTV reported. Bassil further praised Safadi as an appropriate person to occupy the position, although his candidacy has yet to be approved by the country’s major political factions. The foreign minister said that consultations on the…

Iraq’s prominent Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has called on legislators to promptly introduce a fair electoral law that would restore people’s faith in elections in the wake of weeks of protests in the capital Baghdad and a host of southern cities. “No one can give the government legitimacy but the people… Passing a law that does not provide this opportunity to voters would not be acceptable or useful,” Ayatollah Sistani said in a statement read out by his representative Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalaei during a sermon in the holy city of Karbala on Friday. In a statement on Saturday,…

Syria’s Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar al-Jaafari says Takfiri terrorist groups operating in the northwestern province of Idlib continue to take civilians as human shields, stressing that it is the Damascus government’s duty to purge the area of their presence. Speaking at a UN Security Council session on the situation in the Middle East, Jaafari argued that whilst some members of the world body were hindering the efforts being made by the Syrian government and its allies to fight Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, terrorist groups, others bragged about an alleged operation that led to the death of…