By Aram Mirzaei for the Saker blog One week after the latest US aggression against Syria, the Syrian Army and its allies have spared no efforts in continuing their raging fight against terrorism. Douma was liberated last week, right after Washington and its vassals bombed Syria to “save lives”, and on Tuesday reports emerged that jihadist militants of the besieged city of Al-Dumayr, further east of Damascus, have agreed to
By Aram Mirzaei for The Saker Blog Last night, Washington together with its British and French vassals launched an attack on Syria after days of threats and speculation. Initial reports seem to indicate that over 100 missiles were fired into areas of the Damascus and Homs provinces. It was expected that the strikes would occur before the weekend and the Syrian military had been placed on high alert on Friday
By Aram Mirzaei for the Saker blog In recent weeks, there’s been a lot of politics behind the ongoing East Ghouta military operation. Western government officials have all been “outraged” at the carnage resulting from the Syrian Army siege of the Islamist-held East Ghouta region of Damascus. They have all right to be angry, after all it’s their terrorist investments that are being battered on the battlefield. The success of
By Aram Mirzaei for the Saker blog It’s been 8 weeks since Turkey together with its jihadist forces launched operation Olive Branch to clear the Afrin region of US-backed Kurdish militias (YPG). During these weeks, YPG forces have been taking a beating, losing well over 70 % their territory, including Afrin city itself. It should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the situation that the
By Aram Mirzaei for The Saker Blog After weeks of belligerent rhetoric and preparations, Turkey finally invaded Afrin last week. It came as no surprise that Turkey would go for this vulnerable Kurdish-held region in north-western Syria first. So how does this affect the war? Previous Turkish incursions have been limited and aimed at stopping what Ankara deemed to be Kurdish expansionism right at Turkey’s border. Turkish President Erdogan has
By Aram Mirzaei for the Saker blog The wars in Iraq and Syria are entering a final phase as ISIL is about to end up where it belongs, history’s trashcan. ISIL as a fighting force is about to be destroyed and in Syria, Takfiri terrorists belonging to the Al-Qaeda linked Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham are next up, yet peace is something still unimaginably far away for this conflict-ridden region. The reason
By Aram Mirzaei As predicted, the Kurdish referendum ended in a conflict over the disputed areas in northern Iraq, areas that have been occupied by Kurdish Peshmerga forces since the 2014 ISIL invasion of Iraq. Throughout these weeks, Kurdish media close to Kurdish president Masoud Barzani have acted very much like their western counterparts, spreading atrocious lies about the Iraqi Army and Hashd Al Shaabi (PMU). One example was the ridiculous
By Aram Mirzaei 2017-09-26. Last Sunday, the Kurdish regional authority defied the world and went forward with the scheduled independence referendum in Northern Iraq. With the definite result of the referendum not being official yet, there can be little doubt that an overwhelming majority of Kurds have voted Yes to independence. Despite Kurdish leaders announcing that the referendum is non-binding and that it is only the beginning of a negotiation
By Aram Mirzaei Since the start of this year, with the Russian brokered “de-escalation” zones imposed on several areas in Syria where Washington’s “moderate” rebel proxies are operating, virtually all other forces in Syria have committed themselves to engaging the self-declared Islamic State. With these developments, it did not take long for ISIL to feel the effects of this change in priorities. Starting from January/February, the Syrian government forces and
By Aram Mirzaei Just as many observers of the Syrian conflict had been thinking that the tragic crisis playing out for the past six years in the Arab country was finally about to see and end, things quickly turned around on April 4 as Syrian “opposition controlled” areas were allegedly hit by chemical weapons, a terrible crime purportedly committed by the “Assad regime”, who apparently decided to defy all logic
By Aram Mirzaei “They say we are a nation of tears, but with these tears we have overthrown an empire” – Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. As the Iranian people are celebrating the 38th anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Washington has recently installed its 7th president since that cold winter day of February 11, 1979. To many Iranians, the Islamic Revolution represented a defining moment in Iranian history, one
By Aram Mirzaei On December 8, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorist group launched a major offensive in a bid to recapture the ancient city of Palmyra, which was otherwise lost to the Syrian Army earlier in March this year. ISIL managed to not only muster between 4000-5000 fighters, but managed to travel across the eastern Homs desert unnoticed until they reached the gates of the ancient
By Aram Mirzaei Described by the Western media as a “shadowy organization” involved in “clandestine activity” across the Middle East, not much is truly known about the “Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps” (IRGC) in the West as Western governments and media outlets are having an increasingly difficult time figuring out the IRGC and the role it plays in both the domestic and foreign relations of Iran. You can’t understand Iran and
By Aram Mirzaei For 18 months now, Yemen has been embroiled in a devastating conflict that has killed at least 10 000 people according to official sources, that number is however probably far higher. The Yemeni conflict is characterized by the asymmetric ways it’s being fought on the battlefield and by the massive amount of suffering for the civilian population in the impoverished country. Background The current Yemeni conflict can be
By Aram Mirzaei Since the onset of the Turkish invasion of northern Syria back in August of 2016, Turkish-backed Jihadists managed to capture a host of villages and towns from both the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and the US-backed “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF). Within weeks, a total of 900 square kilometres had been captured by the Turkish-backed Jihadist operations room, also called “Euphrates shield”. Not long
By Aram Mirzaei The “Ceasefire” One week ago I and many other analysts predicted that the ceasefire agreement brokered by the US and Russia last week was doomed to fail. I said this because of the fact that there are no “moderate” rebels, and that any group trying to disassociate itself from Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham (formerly Jabhat Al-Nusra) would commit both political and military suicide. Right from the first day
By Aram Mirzaei On 12 September a new nationwide ceasefire agreement was implemented in Syria, one brokered by the US and Russian Foreign Ministers after weeks of crunch talks. There had been several attempts to reach a deal in the previous weeks, but finally last Friday when foreign ministers Kerry and Lavrov announced their agreement, the world was lit with hope for some reason. Perhaps this time people believed the
By Aram Mirzaei With Multiple interventions and multiple offensives, the situation in northern Syria is messy to say the least. There are several frontlines with different parties struggling for the same piece of territory. Two weeks ago, the Turkish army made an intrusion into the northern Aleppo countryside, in the small ISIL controlled border town of Jarabulus. The so called “Euphrates Shield Operation” offensive was aimed at creating a new
Foreword by the Saker: the latest article by Aram Mirzaei is truly a rare gem as it outlines an Iranian view on the conflict in Syria and on the Russian involvement in it. As I, and others, have mentioned several times, Russia and Iran are de-facto allies in this war, but unlike AngloZionist “coalitions”, that does not mean that one is subordinated to the other and that there is only
by Aram Mirzaei In the previous articles, we explored the origins of the sectarian ideology in the early days of Islam, the Khawarij. We also examined surge of the Wahhabi mission, a similar Takfiri ideology that originated in the 18th century, one that continues to live until this day through the support of different imperial powers, the British Empire and the US. In this final part, we will examine the
