Important Takeaways:
- U.S. reporter Pamela Geller cited reports of “nearly 17,000 dead and 15,000 missing” and said she is receiving “hundreds of emails from people in Syria begging for help.”
- We, the Alawites on the Syrian coast, are facing extermination. Ethnic and religious cleansing is unfolding before the world’s silent eyes. They are burning our homes, slaughtering our families, and torturing our children. They rip out the eyes of our young, tear out their hearts, and leave their lifeless bodies as warnings.
- Foreign fighters, coming from all regions, are hunting us down. They are invading our homes, destroying our existence, and soon, they will reach us all. The world watches in silence because we are a minority—because we are deemed expendable.
- This is not war. This is annihilation.
- I beg you—grant us asylum, grant us protection before it is too late. We are running out of time. We will do whatever is asked of us, just let us live.
- According to Syrian journalist and human rights activist Nizar Nayouf, 15,000 Alawites have been executed. Nayouf claims the massacre had been planned since February 24:
- Nayouf claims the Syrian “Ministry of Defense” and the terrorist militia “distributed detailed digital maps to their faction leaders, marking Alawite, Christian, and Ismaili neighborhoods and villages in Syria’s coastal region, as well as the primary and secondary roads leading to them”
- Religious clerics affiliated with President Al-Jolani “delivered lectures to some faction leaders, instructing them on how to distinguish Alawites from others in the coastal region. They warned that Alawite men are circumcised, just like Sunni Muslims, making them harder to identify—even by dialect in some areas.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The United States is condemning the murder of religious minorities in Syria, as reports circulate online that more than a thousand innocent civilians have been killed by Islamic terrorists.
- On X, Senator Marco Rubio condemned the violence, saying, “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities.”
- In recent days, graphic videos of the alleged killing of Christians in western Syria have emerged.
- According to the Iraqi Christian Foundation, which advocates for Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, the death toll is 1,800. It alleges that entire villages are being slaughtered
- The attacks marked the worst violence Syria has seen since Assad’s ouster.
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Important Takeaways:
- For 14 years, Syria has been engulfed in a civil war. Until three months ago, dictator Bashar al-Assad controlled the government, but he was overthrown by the Jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist organization.
- While Assad had many faults he did protect the Christian minority in Syria. However, as noted by commentator Tucker Carlson, as the civil war progressed, “The percentage of Christians in Syria went from ten percent to two percent.”
- His removal was celebrated by neocons in this country, the same ones who worked to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. While both were brutal dictators, their removal led to even worse results. Today, Iraq is a strong ally of Iran, the world’s foremost benefactor of terrorism, while Libya has been splintered into regions controlled by rival Jihadist organizations.
- On Thursday, predictable revenge killings started in coastal areas of Syria, such as the town of Baniyas, still loyal to Assad. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, over 1,000 people were killed, including 745 innocent civilians.
- Throughout the region, innocent civilians were killed by Sunni Muslim gunmen affiliated with the HTS government. The victims included Christians and “members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.” Christian holy sites were also desecrated.
- He said the Jihadist murderers “asked residents for their IDs to check their religion and their sect before killing them. He said the gunmen also . . . stole cars and robbed homes.” To avoid the “executions,” some Alawites fled to Lebanon, while others took refuge at a Russian airbase in Hmeimim, Syria.
- In response to the carnage, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that our country “stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities.” He called for a full investigation by Syrian authorities. France also expressed its “deep concern” about the massacre and called for an independent investigation to “shed full light on these crimes.”
- Unfortunately, much of the international community has been silent about these atrocities. Even worse, the European Union (EU) exonerated the Jihadist government for the massacre. In their statement, the EU condemned “the recent attacks, reportedly by pro-Assad elements, on interim government forces in the coastal areas of Syria and all violence against civilians.” CBN News
- The new U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who predicted these problems in Syria was accused of being a Russian spy for meeting with Assad in 2017
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Important Takeaways:
- Syria: Muslims kidnapping, possibly torturing, Christians
- After forces from the al-Qaeda affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group conquered Damascus and overthrew Syria’s Assad regime in December 2024, they urged the residents of the Valley of the Christians to surrender any weapons they kept for self-defense, telling them that civilians would not be harmed. Since the jihadists’ takeover of Syria, however, around 500,000 Christians in the country have been faced with increased persecution and abductions
- On February 16, more Christians… were abducted from another village in the area. Their kidnappers, according to sources on the ground, are torturing them.
- “HTS’s successive renamings and ‘rebrandings’ appear to echo al-Qaeda’s own strategy in Syria of establishing branches and presenting them as locally-grown organizations arising in response to Syrians’ needs…” — US Commission on International Religious Freedom, November 2022.
- Al-Sharaa recently started dressing in a suit and tie, and is now presenting himself to the West as a “moderate.” He has spoken of plans to form an inclusive transitional government representing diverse communities that will build institutions and run the country until it can hold free and fair elections. In schoolbooks, however, his government has been replacing the word “law” with “sharia,” and has been using Islamic teaching to recruit the country’s new army.
- “Under HTS-control in Idlib, Christian clergy are not allowed to walk outside in any clothing that makes them recognizable as priests or pastors. Crosses have been removed from church buildings.” — Open Doors, December 2024.
- “Islam does not tolerate other cultures.” — “Christina,” a Greek Christian in Syria, to Gatestone, January 2025.
- “The new Syria should not be established without parties that represent the minority groups in the country, such as Christians, Kurds, Druze, and Alawites. The official recognition and acceptance of the jihadists by Western governments is like placing swords on the necks of Christians in particular and everyone who disagrees with them in general.” – “Christina,” a Greek Christian in Syria, to Gatestone, January 2025.
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Important Takeaways:
- Branches make gains in Africa, Middle East, and reach out to U.S. sympathizers
- Behind the ISIS-inspired assault in New Orleans on New Year’s Day is a disturbing reality: Military officials and national security insiders fear a perfect storm is forming around the world that could lead to more deadly terrorist attacks in the U.S.
- Even before U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar killed 14 New Year’s revelers by driving a vehicle into a crowd on Bourbon Street, a growing consensus in foreign policy circles acknowledged that conditions were ripe for an Islamic State resurgence abroad and a new pool of recruits in the U.S., Europe and Asia willing to carry out acts of violence.
- The more territory the group controls and the safer its leaders feel from attack, the easier it is to coordinate recruiting efforts online, teach would-be terrorists how to build bombs or map out jihadi missions around the globe.
- U.S. and international officials warn that weak central governments are ill-equipped to stop it.
- In Afghanistan, the Islamic State’s local affiliate organization, ISIS-K, has dramatically expanded its reach since U.S. troops withdrew in August 2021.
- The most immediate threat to the U.S. seems to emanate from Syria, where a surprise rebel offensive overthrew the government of longtime dictator Bashar Assad last month. The U.S. quietly increased the number of troops in Syria from 900 to about 2,000 during the regime’s collapse and carried out strikes against ISIS fighters who set up shop in areas once controlled by Mr. Assad’s forces and their Russian allies.
- With an untested rebel force now governing in Damascus, the door may be open for neighboring Turkey to pursue Kurdish rebels who have been key U.S. partners for the past decade in the war against ISIS.
- “We’re going to see a lot more Islamic State and copycat attacks,” said former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Islamic State is on the rebound, and tens of thousands of its militants might soon go free if Turkey or their proxies overwhelm the camp where Kurds keep them under guard in northeastern Syria
- “If ISIS goes free in Syria, don’t expect them to remain there,” Mr. Rubin told The Washington Times.
- “It would just be a matter of time until they began crossing the southern border or, for that matter, the northern border with Canada.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a secret raid to destroy an underground missile factory funded by Iran inside Syria prior to the fall of the Assad regime, Israeli military censors revealed on Thursday.
- The declassified photos and videos of the operation, which involved over 100 Israeli commandos from the elite Shaldag (“Kingfisher”) unit, went viral in Israel.
- In a statement, the IDF said:
- On September 8th, 2024, during a special operation by the Israeli Air Force, troops from the Shaldag Unit raided and destroyed an underground compound for manufacturing precision missiles in the Masyaf area, deep in Syrian territory.
- For years, the Intelligence Directorate conducted extensive intelligence gathering and monitoring, confirming the value of the target. In the months leading up to the operation, a plan was launched for the Israeli Air Force to destroy it.
- The soldiers landed using helicopters, with fire and intelligence-gathering support from aircraft, fighter jets, and naval vessels of the Israeli Navy. The raid’s target was an underground compound deep in Syrian territory, funded and supported by Iran. The compound was a flagship project for Iran’s efforts to arm its terror proxies on Israel’s northern border. The compound included advanced assembly lines designed to manufacture precision-guided missiles and long-range rockets, significantly increasing the supply of missiles to Hezbollah and other Iranian terror proxies in the region.
- During the operation, the forces reached critical machinery for manufacturing precision missiles, including a planetary mixer, numerous weapons, and intelligence documents, which were transferred for investigation. The soldiers destroyed the compound and safely returned to Israeli territory.
- The IDF will continue to act strategically and professionally with various methods and tactics to remove threats directed at the citizens of Israel.
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “I salute our heroic fighters for the daring and successful operation deep in Syria. This was one of the most important preventive operations that we have taken against the efforts of the Iranian axis to arm itself in order to attack us; it attests to our boldness and determination to take action everywhere to defend ourselves.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel conducted a commando raid on an underground Iranian missile production facility near the city of Maysaf in Syria in early September, the Jerusalem Post learned in later September, but was only allowed to confirm now after KAN News was permitted to publicize the IDF officially taking credit late Sunday.
- That a raid took place, but without Israeli confirmation, was first reported by Axios on September 12, with the Post receiving secret confirmation shortly after, but not permission to publicize the information.
- It appears that Israeli censor and secrecy rules regarding operations in Syria have become more flexible given the huge increase in IDF operations in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime.
- With the fall of the regime, information security officials likely view any threat of retaliation from Syria as being at a much lower risk level.
- The raid targeted two significant sites, which were the Syrian defense industry’s Scientific Studies and Research Center and the underground missile production facility run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
- The decision to carry out the strike was believed to be influenced by concerns over the ongoing war, along with the potential risk that the Iranian missile factory would begin mass-producing missiles.
- …weapons were reportedly intended to be used as a supply for Hezbollah.
- The operation occurred approximately 200 kilometers from Israeli territory and was deemed urgent to prevent the facility from reaching full production capacity.
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘Colossal’ explosions have filled the skies in Syria as Israeli strikes are said to have targeted military sites in the ‘the heaviest strikes’ in the area for more than a decade – with blasts which registered on earthquake sensors.
- A war monitor group said that Israeli strikes had targeted military sites in Syria’s coastal Tartus region.
- ‘Israeli warplanes launched strikes’ targeting a series of sites including air defense units and ‘surface-to-surface missile depots’, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in what it said were ‘the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012’.
- It has been claimed that the explosion was so large, it measured as a magnitude 3.0 on seismic sensors.
- Tartus has been the location of one of Russia’s two military bases in Syria and was used as a naval base, as well as an ammunition depot.
- The huge explosion, as well as secondary explosions, may indicate the presence of a large volume of stored armaments.
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Important Takeaways:
- Army Radio military correspondent Doron Kadosh reported on air that Israel had destroyed 86% of Syria’s surface-to-air missile capability, among 500 other sites that the IDF had targeted since the fall of the Assad regime Sunday.
- Kadosh elaborated, in a post on X, that Israel had used 1800 munitions in the attack on Syrian weapons — munitions that had been intended for other purposes, but were switched to the new mission once the fall of the regime began.
- Now, he said, with a “clear axis to Iran,” Israel’s military and intelligence officials were preparing operational plans for an attack on the regime’s nuclear facilities. The decision to launch a strike would be left to elected political leaders.
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Important Takeaways:
- Of all the winners and losers from Syria’s sudden change of power, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stands out as among those with the most to gain.
- Erdogan’s clout over his southern neighbor has increased dramatically with the fall of his one-time friend Bashar al-Assad, bolstering his political standing at home and in the international arena.
- The question now is whether Erdogan can convert his new clout into meeting long-held policy objectives — and if the Trump administration will help or hinder him.
- Turkey has already urged disparate opposition forces to work for a reunified Syria, while Turkey-backed rebels wasted no time in pushing out Kurdish forces from two northern towns to the west of the Euphrates River.
- But that risks running into US opposition.
- Kurdish forces allied with the US played a critical role in defeating Islamic State in Syria, yet Turkey regards them as terrorists and a threat to its unity because they are affiliated with the separatist Kurdish group, the PKK, which is waging a war for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast.
- The way Trump decides to handle the PKK presence in Syria will be decisive in how his administration’s relations with Ankara evolve, according to Turkish officials familiar with Erdogan’s strategy who asked not to be named discussing sensitive security matters.
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