#bashar assad

by Melanie Phillips

The eagerness to assume that Islamists have reformed themselves accompanies the West’s suicidal refusal to see what is so plainly the case—that whether it involves Shia or Sunni Muslims, Hezbollah or the Houthis, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamists are waging world war against unbelievers wherever they are.

The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, set in train a series of events that have shaken the geopolitical kaleidoscope. Tiny Israel is now well on the way to smashing the Shia axis and—in the words of a member of the Iranian regime—becoming the foremost power in the region.

This also represents a shattering defeat for the strategy of former President Barack Obama, which has been continued by the Biden administration. This strategy was—remarkably—to empower the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To this end, the Obama and Biden administrations spared no effort to appease and protect the Tehran regime. In the war that followed the Oct. 7 pogrom, Washington refused to respond appropriately to repeated Iranian attacks while putting Israel under enormous pressure also not to do so.

And, after Donald Trump won the presidential election last month, the United States renewed a controversial sanctions waiver that will allow Iran access to some $10 billion in payments from Iraq.

The stupendous developments in the Middle East are a cause for unprecedented optimism. With the likely destruction of the Shia axis, the way will be set for Saudi Arabia finally to make its peace with Israel and thus end, once and for all, the Arab war against the Jewish state. The cause of the Palestinian Arabs, who never were the issue until the West chose to make them so, would simply evaporate.

To envisage this is not to fall into the trap of wishful thinking. The dangers for Israel and the free world remain acute and unresolved. Iran is poised to get the nuclear bomb, and there are fears that with its back to the wall, it will now do just that.

But Iran now has no military defenses or proxy shields. This is therefore the moment to destroy totally its nuclear program and maybe finish off this evil regime altogether.

To do this, however, Israel needs America to be involved. Will Trump be willing to do this? Or will he believe that he alone can make a deal that will tame the Iranian regime?

Any such deal would be illusory. Iran has lied about its activities for more than four decades and won’t stop now.

(Also, Bashar is part dolphin because he's autistic, but then again, so is Muammar 😛♾️)

I'm with Bashar!! I for some reason couldn't learn to swim until I was 11, but you couldn't keep me out of water. Had at least three near drowning incidents where my life flashed before my eyes and the whole thing.

yeah Muammar is very likely autistic (mildly enough to be able to mask really well, like me) but I think he just really didn't like to swim or get his clothes wet. Maybe it's a sensory issue where for him is annoying instead of soothing. That being said, when he was depressed (or maybe having a panic attack) he went into a quiet room and lay with a cold wet cloth over his face.

Also interesting to note he was very interested in/protective of water as a concept and a resource. Building the Man Made River, claiming and protecting the Gulf of Sirte...

🤫

di Thierry Meyssan https://www.voltairenet.org/article221627.html Con sorprendente sfacciataggine la stampa internazionale ci assicura che in Siria è in corso non già un cambiamento militare di regime, bensì una rivoluzione per rovesciare la Repubblica Araba siriana. Ci nascondono la presenza dell’esercito turco e delle forze speciali statunitensi. Ci inondano con una propaganda, peraltro più…

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei gave a speech yesterday to a large group of women. 

The main takeaway is that his words have become irrelevant, and everyone knows it.

Khamenei warned that any Israeli attempts to target Hezbollah through Syria would lead to Israel's own destruction while pledging continued support for regional resistance movements. 'The Zionist regime is preparing itself through Syria, in their imagination, to besiege and eradicate Hezbollah, but it is Israel that will be eradicated,' Khamenei said in a speech to thousands in Tehran. Addressing Assad's fall, he dismissed claims of the resistance axis's weakening: 'With the events that occurred in Syria, and with the crimes of the Zionist (Israel) regime and America and others' help to them, enemies thought the resistance issue was finished, but they are deeply mistaken.'

His specific words about women were even more absurd that his fantasies about the strength of the "axis of resistance."

 “Everyone, especially women, should be vigilant about the enemy’s soft tactics and not be deceived by slogans and temptations,” Khamenei said in a meeting with a group of women on Tuesday. "They label it as defending women, advocating for women's rights, or supporting a group of women," he added, pointing to the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement. "Yet, under the pretext of defending a single woman, they incite unrest in the country."

He said this only days after his government was forced to postpone a proposed draconian law to severely punish women who don't cover their hair properly according to the mullahs' standards. Khamenei probably engineered this speech to make it appear that Iranian women support him when they were the ones who forced the law to be stopped, at least for now. 

Dictators think they can change reality by making declarations. They lie so much that they start believing their own lies. They consistently underestimate the intelligence of their own people. By doing so, they sow the seeds of their own downfall.

There's a "very high probability" that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was killed in a plane crash as it was a mystery why the plane took a surprise U turn and disappeared off the map according to data from the Flightradar website, Reuters report.

The Fall of Damascus marks a turning point for Syria, shattered by 13 years of civil war which has turned cities to rubble, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and forced millions abroad as refugees.