Tag: syria

International Atomic Energy Agency Digs TONS of Nuclear Material Buried in Clandestine Site in Syria! al-Sharaa Regime Reverses Plan and REFUSES To Hand Over the Findings

A former al-Qaida terrorist is now sitting on a treasure trove of nuclear material that can be weaponized.

A United Nations team has excavated a ‘previously undisclosed site’ in Syria and found several tons of nuclear material from the days of the Bashar al-Assad rule.

The agreed plan was for the International Atomic Energy Agency to remove the material from Syria – but that’s not what’s going to happen, anymore.

Syria is now holding the nuclear material, and refuses the handover, saying ‘it will remain under IAEA safeguards for peaceful civilian use’.

The Telegraph reported:

“Rafael Grossi, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Tuesday that ‘tons of nuclear materials that could be put to bad use’ had been found at the site, dating from the time of Syria’s authoritarian Assad government.

‘After your courageous decision to inform us that there was another place, another site where nuclear material had been stored, we were able to access this place’, Mr. Grossi said during a press conference with Asaad al-Shaibani, Syria’s foreign minister, in Damascus. ‘We are talking about a few tons of nuclear material that could be put to bad use’.

The IAEA had previously said it was preparing to remove the nuclear material, left over from the era of dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown by a coalition of rebels in 2024. They now form the Syrian government.

However, Mr. Shaibani said the nuclear material was not dangerous and would remain in Syrian custody, subject to IAEA guarantees, adding that Syria had the right to use it for civil and ⁠peaceful purposes.”

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The Two Terrorists: Britain Jails Tweets While the West Crowns al-Qaeda’s Man in Damascus

Two men, one word. Next Monday, at Kingston Crown Court in London, a 72-year-old grandfather goes on trial for terrorism; the evidence is a tweet of seven words, and the maximum sentence is 14 years. Nine months ago, a man who founded al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch and carried a $10 million American bounty on his head became the first Syrian head of state ever received at the White House. Tony Greenstein and Ahmed al-Sharaa have never met. Between them they define what the word “terrorist” now means – and for American readers there is a further twist: the seven words that may cost the pensioner his freedom are fully protected speech in the United States, which is why Washington has developed other methods for its own dissidents.

Take the pensioner first, and take his record in full, because the prosecution will. Greenstein was expelled from the Labour Party in 2018; he lost a libel action against the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which had called him a “notorious antisemite,” the court finding the phrase protected as honest opinion; he accepted a suspended sentence over a Palestine Action attack on an Elbit arms factory. He is abrasive, litigious and unrepentant – a Jewish socialist from Brighton, a carer, the son of an Orthodox rabbi who marched against Mosley’s Blackshirts. None of that is the charge. The charge is that in November 2023, goaded by an anonymous account demanding he declare himself, he posted: “I support Hamas against the Israeli army.” Five weeks later, at 6:30 in the morning, counter-terrorism officers took his computers and phones, held him for nine hours, and released him under conditions that banned him from posting about the war at all. “This is Orwellian,” he told the arresting officers. He undersold it.

Now the other man, whose record requires no libel lawyer to establish, because the United States government wrote it down. Ahmed al-Sharaa – then Abu Mohammad al-Jolani – joined al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2003, was captured by American forces and imprisoned for five years, then crossed into Syria to found al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, pledging allegiance on video to Ayman al-Zawahiri. The State Department’s own wanted notice recorded that under his leadership the group “carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians” – and itemized them: roughly 300 Kurdish civilians abducted from a checkpoint; 20 residents of the Druze village of Qalb Lawzeh massacred in Idlib; suicide bombings claimed in Damascus, Homs and Quneitra. In 2014 he called for retaliatory attacks on the American-led coalition itself. For this the UN froze his assets and banned his travel, and the $10 million bounty placed him among the five most wanted jihadist leaders on earth, on the same short list as Baghdadi and Zawahiri. That is the conduct the word “terrorist” was coined for: emptied villages, detonated city centers, a decade of American soldiers and Syrian civilians in the ground.

While the state prepared its case against the tweeter, it laid siege to the man. Eleven months to charge him; a trial date pushed back the better part of a year; thirty-two months, in the end, between the dawn raid and the jury. And one by one, his banks left him. In a statement published two weeks before trial, Greenstein described being cut off by five institutions since his arrest: Nationwide after a quarter-century, HSBC and First Direct – closing, among others, the account kept for the care of his autistic son – then Santander, which froze his personal accounts and those of a registered charity he serves as treasurer, then a savings bank that shut out his family entirely. None gave a reason; none has to, since banks warned about a customer are forbidden by law to tip him off. Nor is his suspicion of state involvement far-fetched: the government’s own Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation warned in 2023 that proscription enforcement would push banks toward jettisoning clients – “de-risking,” the trade calls it. When Coutts closed one account belonging to Nigel Farage, the affair drew condemnation from the prime minister and toppled a chief executive. A pensioner debanked six times en route to a terror trial has drawn silence. A defendant is presumed innocent; his accounts are not.

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Iran Claims It Launched First Attacks on Syria

Iran claimed it attacked an American position in eastern Syria early Friday morning. If true, it would mark the first time the terrorist regime has violated Syria’s sovereignty during the conflict with the United States that began at the end of February.

Both U.S. and Syrian military officials denied any such attack took place.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed it “executed a surprise strike on the enemy’s special operations command center located in the al-Tanf region of Syria,” ostensibly in retaliation for “the martyred soldiers of Bampur in Iranshahr.”

This was a reference to a U.S. airstrike on Wednesday that reportedly struck the Bampur Army garrison in southeastern Iran, killing at least seven soldiers. Some reports place the casualty count from the attack much higher, with at least 50 serious injuries sent for treatment at local hospitals.

The IRGC claimed it destroyed American helicopters and a radar system in its assault on al-Tanf, and killed multiple U.S. service members.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) quickly rejected these claims as “false,” stating, “No U.S. troops in the region have recently been killed or captured.”

Also, the U.S. military announced in February that it completed its withdrawal from al-Tanf, which served as a hub for operations against the Islamic State from 2014 to 2019, and handed the base over to the new Syrian government. The Trump administration said the fall of Iran-backed dictator Bashar Assad in 2024 removed the last reasons for keeping a substantial American force at the base.

The National noted that the Iranian attack came the day after Syria announced the seizure of weapons hidden inside an oil tanker that was attempting to cross from Iraq into Syria at the al-Tanf crossing. The Syrian Interior Ministry said the weapons were destined for Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Lebanon.

The Iranian strike might, therefore, have been meant as punishment for Syria interfering with Iran’s illicit arms shipments – if the strike claimed by the IRGC happened at all.

There was no independent confirmation of the purported attack on al-Tanf from media operations or the Syrian government, although some people living in the area reported hearing distant explosions.

Al-Tanf is near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan, and Iran launched missiles and drones at Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait overnight. The Jordanian military said on Friday it shot down three Iranian ballistic missiles that entered its airspace.

A Syrian military source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) late Friday morning that no Iranian attack took place.

“We deny any Iranian bombardment targeting the Al-Tanf area,” the source said.

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Syria Arrests ‘ISIS-Linked’ Suspects in Damascus Bombings

Syrian officials said on Thursday that a preliminary investigation of the July 7 bombings in the capital city of Damascus — perpetrated during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron — suggests that a terrorist cell linked to the Islamic State was responsible.

Police have taken an unspecified number of suspects belonging to the cell into custody.

Two explosions shook Damascus on Tuesday, just before Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa met with Macron. One of the bombs was detonated near the Ministry of Tourism. The other was near the Four Seasons Hotel, where Macron was believed to be staying.

The Syrian Interior Ministry said on Tuesday that the bomb near the hotel was “outside the security zone designated for the French president’s residence,” and posed no “direct threat” to Macron or his entourage, especially since he had already departed for his meeting with Sharaa.

The bombs, described as “primitive” by police, detonated as explosives experts were attempting to disarm them. One person was killed and 36 injured by the bombings, most of them members of the security forces.

Brig. Gen. Ahmad al-Dalati, commander of Syria’s national police force, said on Thursday its investigation pointed to an ISIS-linked cell as the culprits.

Dalati said one member of the cell was positively identified by security camera footage, and that individual was “monitored” to learn the identities of the other members.

Interior Minister Annas Khattab announced on Thursday that several members of the cell had been arrested in raids across rural Damascus.

“The cell responsible for the terrorist bombings that targeted Damascus two days ago is now in our custody,” he said.

Khattab promised that more details about the suspects and their terrorist cell would be revealed after the investigation was complete.

The Interior Ministry statement said that raids were conducted in four neighborhoods “across Damascus and its countryside,” including two that are heavily populated with Alawites, the Shiite Muslim minority that claimed deposed dictator Bashar Assad as a member.

The Alawites are now resented by some other groups in Syria because they were privileged and favored by the dictatorship, and some accuse the Alawite community of harboring Assad loyalists and terrorists like ISIS.

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Syria blocks deportations from Germany, leaving more than 11,000 deportation orders in limbo.

Germany is facing a serious administrative bottleneck in its migration policy after it emerged that Syria is allegedly preventing the issuance of travel documents required to carry out thousands of already ordered deportations by German authorities.

The case affects, according to European sources, more than 11,000 Syrian nationals who have received notices to leave the country as part of legal return procedures. However, the lack of consular cooperation from Damascus has effectively stalled a large share of these expulsions.

A system blocked in practice

Although deportation orders have been issued in accordance with German law, their execution depends on a key requirement: official identification and the issuance of travel documents by the country of origin.

Without this documentation, German authorities cannot complete the process, which turns many of these decisions into open cases with no immediate possibility of execution.

The result is a silent but significant blockage within the European migration system, where national decision-making power collides with international reality.

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‘Buffer Zone’ Is Media’s Euphemism for Israeli Occupation

Since October 2023, Israel has occupied vast stretches of territory in Gaza, Syria and, most recently, Lebanon. Corporate media have been reluctant to use clear, direct language to characterize US-backed Israeli land grabs in each of these places, preferring to describe Israel’s policies with euphemistic terminology.

“Buffer” is chief among these. For instance, a Wall Street Journal article (4/9/26) told readers that “Israeli forces now hold buffer zones inside Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.”

Merriam-Webster defines a “buffer zone” as “a neutral area separating conflicting forces.” The UN defines it as “neutral space created by the withdrawal of hostile parties or a demilitarized zone.”

The Journal‘s uncritical use of the term makes it sound as if these Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian lands are demilitarized zones, when in reality they have been taken over by a belligerent foreign army that intends to remain for the long term.

A Boston Globe piece (4/5/26) noted that

Israel has said even after the war with Hezbollah, it plans to occupy part of southern Lebanon, setting up a buffer zone inside the area and keeping security control over the territory. Some analysts say that the move could lead to the permanent displacement of communities from the region.

“Setting up” is part of the same obfuscatory process as “buffer zone.” Amnesty International’s Kristine Beckerle (3/6/26) offered this account of the evacuation orders Israel issued to over 100 villages and towns in Lebanon’s south and east, and the entirety of Beirut’s southern suburbs, key components of how Israel has gone about “setting up a buffer zone”:

The sweeping evacuation orders have sown panic and terror, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and fueled yet another humanitarian catastrophe for a population already exhausted and reeling from multiple crises.

And it’s not just “some analysts” who say that creating this “buffer” could lead to “permanent displacement.” Israeli Defense minister Israel Katz (BBC, 3/31/26) said that the state plans to maintain control over Lebanon south of the Litani River, a 19-mile stretch of territory, even after Israel’s current war on the country ends. Katz added that Israel will demolish “all houses” in Lebanese villages near the Lebanon/Israel armistice line, a move that would make the displacement of the residents of those houses seem awfully permanent. That’s not a “buffer zone”—that’s occupation.

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OPCW Inadvertently Admitted Burying Critical Evidence on Syria Chemical Weapons Investigation

For the first time in a prolonged cover-up scandal, the world’s top chemical watchdog has acknowledged censoring a finding that undermined allegations of a toxic gas attack by the former Syrian government.

According to previously leaked documents, expert German military toxicologists consulted by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) ruled out chlorine gas as the cause of death of dozens of victims in an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma in April 2018.

The experts even raised the possibility that the incident was a false flag. The OPCW suppressed this finding and released a final report asserting that chlorine gas was likely used. The OPCW’s conclusion aligned with the claims of the U.S., U.K. and France, which bombed Syria in April 2018 over what they alleged was a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma.

After years of stonewalling, the OPCW has admitted that the Germans’ input, along with the fact that they were even consulted, was concealed.

The concession came during a legal battle with Dr. Brendan Whelan, a veteran OPCW inspector and senior member of the team that deployed to Syria for the Douma mission. Whelan and another Douma team member, Ian Henderson, raised concerns about the manipulation of the investigation’s findings.

After their complaints became public, the OPCW leadership publicly disparaged the two dissenting inspectors and penalized them for alleged breaches of confidentiality.

Whelan successfully challenged his censure before the Geneva-based Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILOAT), which recently awarded him damages and instructed the OPCW to withdraw its impugned decision.

One of the allegations against Whelan was that he improperly sent two letters in March and April 2019 to Fernando Arias, the OPCW director-general, raising concerns about unethical conduct in the Douma investigation.

In trying to make its case against Whelan, the OPCW inadvertently admitted to the censorship that he had challenged.

In his letters to Arias, the OPCW complained, Whelan included

“specific and detailed information gathered by FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] investigators from toxicology experts. This information, classified as OPCW Highly Protected, was not included in the Final Report which was publicly released.”

The OPCW’s confirmation that it excluded the toxicologists’ “Highly Protected” information from the publicly released Final Report confirms one of Whelan’s key grievances.

“Critical information, like the expert opinions of the toxicologists… has, shockingly, been omitted,” Whelan wrote in his April 2019 letter.

“There is even no record in the report of those consultations… To say that this selective use of expert opinions and facts is disturbing is an understatement.”

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Israelis with dual nationality behind ‘large-scale’ acquisition of Syrian agricultural lands: Report

Israel is expanding its control over territory in southern Syria, not merely through military means, but also through the purchase of agricultural lands by individuals of Jewish descent holding multiple nationalities, Al-Akhbar reported on 4 May.

According to a local source in the Deraa Governorate of southern Syria, extensive purchases of agricultural land are underway in the Yarmouk Basin, an area with significant water resources bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

These transactions are reportedly being orchestrated by individuals linked to Jewish agencies and holding passports from various countries, including Canada, Australia, and the UK.

The reports specifically name an organization called the “Pioneers of Bashan” as one of the key parties involved in the land purchases.

According to these sources, the total land area involved in these transactions amounts to approximately 200,000 dunams (200 square kilometers).

The sales have been formalized through official contracts, amid apprehension among local residents regarding the suspected links between some of these deals and Jewish entities.

The sources speaking with Al-Akhbar also reported that an Israeli delegation recently visited archaeological sites in the region – including several hills believed to contain ancient Jewish burial grounds.

In a related context, reports indicate that former Syrian army military sites in the Deraa countryside – including the headquarters of the 61st Brigade and the 128th Battalion (part of the 5th Division) – have been purchased by an Australian businessman. This individual is reportedly acting on behalf of a Jewish agency dedicated to expansion and settlement activities.

Since Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government was toppled by formerly Al-Qaeda-linked Salafist extremists in December 2024, Israel has expanded its occupation of the Golan Heights and other territories in southern Syria.

Jewish settler groups in Israel say it is their goal to occupy land in southern Syria and southern Lebanon in a bid to expand the borders of Greater Israel through military conquest and Jewish settlement.

Israeli forces carry out nearly daily incursions into southern Syria, facing no resistance from Syria’s new government, led by the former ISIS commander Ahmad al-Sharaa.

Sharaa’s new army has instead been targeting Syria’s religious minorities, including carrying out major massacres of the country’s Alawites and Druze, as well as at times against Christians and Kurds.

In the 2024 documentary “In Israel: Ministers of Chaos,” Israeli Finance Minister and settler leader Bezael Smotrich stated, “It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus.”

Smotrich claimed that Israel would expand “little by little” and eventually encompass all occupied Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

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Far Right Israeli Settler Movement Enters Syria in a Push for “Greater Israel”

yrian journalist Oudai Efnikher is deeply familiar with life under Israeli occupation. He was born in Kafer Hareb, a village in Syria’s Golan Heights, from which he and his family were expelled after Israel seized the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Now he is once again facing down Israeli forces, as they “take our land, kill our crops, and abduct our fathers.”

“This is a slow occupation, but soon, we will lose what they have not yet taken,” Efnikher told Truthout.

After Bashar al-Assad was ousted by Syrian rebels in December 2024, Israeli forces wasted no time before launching a massive aerial bombardment campaign on the country, destroying almost 80 percent of the military capacity left behind by the Assad regime.

Israeli forces also entered the demilitarized buffer zone established by a UN Security Council resolution in 1974 between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria. They seized the territory and then established a “security buffer” beyond the last demarcation line administered by UN observer forces.

The area now under Israeli military control is off-limits to Syrian civilians and government forces. Farmers have been unable to tend to their land, and landowners have little hope they will ever be able to access it again

In total, Israel now occupies an additional 177 square miles of Syrian territory than it did before the fall of Assad.

“Maybe Israel will take it all. They already have a safe zone in southern Syria, so that could ultimately be the best option for Israel,” Syrian political analyst Issam Khoury told Truthout.

But what is most concerning for Efnikher is not the Israeli military’s presence in Syria, but what has become regular incursions by Israeli settlers.

On April 22, a group of roughly 40 settlers affiliated with the far right Halutzei HaBashan movement, or the Pioneers of Bashan — a reference to the name in the Torah for the fertile territory located northeast of the Sea of Galilee, which the Torah says was once ruled by the tyrant King Og before Moses defeated him — entered Syrian territory and asked the Israeli government to legalize settlement activity there.

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Last US Convoy Exits Syria After Brutal 14-Year Regime Change Proxy War

Widespread reports on Thursday say the very last US military convoy has finally departed Syrian territory, with the years-long occupation of the primarily northeast oil and gas rich sector over in a ‘mission accomplished’ fashion.

It brings to a final close the 14-year long bloody proxy war which overthrew the Assad government and ultimately installed a pro-US/Saudi axis puppet, in the person of founding Syrian Al Qaeda Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, now known as President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Hundreds of thousand of people lost their lives in the regime change war, with the country and its economy left in a sanction-starved and conflict-demolished state of ruins.

The US-backed Syrian Foreign Ministry declared Washington had decided to “complete its military mission” in the country. “The Syrian state is today fully capable of leading counter-terrorism efforts from within, in co-operation with the international community,” it said, happy to now be back in control of the domestic oil and gas supply.

The ministry “welcomes the completed handover of military sites where United States forces were previously present in Syria to the Syrian government,” adding that “the handover of these sites was carried out … in full coordination between the Syrian and American governments.”

While Pentagon propaganda had for years touted an ‘anti-ISIS’ mission, the real purpose of the troop presence was to cut off Damascus under Assad of its sovereign natural resources, and to arm and prop up a Kurdish-Arab coalition called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). 

All the while, the CIA supported Sunni hardline jihadists who were indistinguishable from ISIS in their ideology in the fight against the Syrian Army, and the civilian population which often largely supported the secular Ba’ath government. The broader strategy has long been to destroy the Tehran-Baghdad-Hezbollah ‘Shia axis’ – even if that meant using ISIS as a tool of regime change.

Ironically, in the process of this US handover of oil and gas facilities back to post-Assad Damascus, the Kurds were thrown under the bus. Their dream for an autonomous enclave (Rojava) once again proved illusory, and in the long term the Kurds will find themselves at the mercy of Sunni fanatics on the one hand, and Turkish state under Erdogan on the other.

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