Colonel Davoud Jafari, a senior official of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division, was assassinated in Syria on 22 November. The IRGC claimed that Israel was responsible for the attack.
On 24 November, the Iraqi government announced its decision to redeploy troops to the borders with Iran and Turkey, following recent attacks by Tehran and Ankara against Kurdish positions in the Iraqi Kurdistan semi-autonomous region, Al-Awsat news reported.
On 19 August, 2014, ISIS released a video of the beheading of American journalist James Foley who was kidnapped by the terrorist organization in 2012 while reporting on the conflict in Syria.
Foley’s shocking execution became one of the most widely followed news stories of the Syrian war. Foley’s killer, Mohammed Emwazi, popularly known as “Jihadi John” by the western media, was a Kuwaiti-born Brit from West London. In the Foley execution video, Emwazi’s unmistakable London accent can be heard.
A Turkish drone strike on a top Kurdish commander’s headquarters came within 130 meters of US troops in Syria on Tuesday.
The Pentagon warned on Wednesday that Turkey’s airstrikes against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria endanger US troops and threaten to undermine years of progress in the war against the Islamic State.
The Turkish president adds that “there is no resentment or bitterness in politics.”
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has aired fresh interest in a possible meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as Ankara is doubling down on its threat for a ground operation against Syrian Kurdish groups.
The police of the Syrian National Army assaulted protesters near the city of al-Bab following civil protests calling for controlling the security situation in the city and holding the killers of a prominent activist accountable.
The Turkish Ministry of Defense said on its official Twitter page, “It’s payback time,” in reference to last week’s attack in Istanbul that Turkey blamed on Syrian Kurdish forces, threatening more escalation.
The US military says it opposes Ankara’s plans to send ground troops against Syria’s Kurds, but it has stood down in the face of similar attacks in the past.
A suspected Turkish drone strike hit a Kurdish-led militia base in northeast Syria on Tuesday, killing two members of a local US-backed Syrian counterterrorism unit and wounding three others, spokespeople for the group told Al-Monitor.
The Iranian government’s escalating violence against protesters in Kurdish cities has led to chains of funerals.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deployed helicopters and rows of military vehicles and machine guns to the Kurdish city of Javanroud as part of its clampdown on anti-government protests that have gripped the country since mid-September.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that Iraq is “committed to keeping terrorists away from Iran’s borders.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke to reporters today at the Foreign Ministry, addressing a wide range of issues.
Following Turkish airstrikes on his headquarters in northeast Syria, SDF commander Mazlum Kobane spoke with Al-Monitor about Erdogan’s threats of a new ground offensive.
In his first interview with international media following Tuesday’s drone strike on his main headquarters in northeast Syria, Mazlum Kobane (also known as Mazloum Abdi), the commander of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said that the most likely target of a potential Turkish ground offensive against the Kurdish-controlled areas would be his native city of Kobani.