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The Syrian regime is threatening to move against an antigovernment stronghold in the country’s southwest, raising pressure on Russia to keep Iran and its proxies out of a fight that could inflame tensions with Syria’s neighbor, Israel.
The Syrian military has dropped leaflets urging rebels to surrender and carried out scattered artillery attacks on their positions in the southwest province of Daraa. One of the regime’s strongest militia has been redeployed from the capital Damascus to the region, where proregime media have reported preparations for a “full-scale assault” by government forces.
Rebels say, however, that the regime is trying to pressure them into a negotiated settlement without a fight. “We haven’t seen the army amassing in the south,” said Raed Radi, a commander of a Daraa rebel group. “There is a propaganda war being waged by the regime.”
The maneuvers have cast a spotlight on a particularly complicated corner of Syria bordering both Israel and Jordan. For nearly a year, Russia, the U.S. and Jordan have backed a tenuous cease-fire that has allowed Syrian rebels to establish relative stability in the country’s southwest, stretching across the provinces of Daraa and Quneitra. Now the prospect that Iranian-backed forces, broadly present in regime-controlled areas, could join an offensive there is raising tensions with Israel and complicating Moscow’s ties with Tehran.
Russia has joined with Iran to back Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in retaking large parts of the country, but Moscow also wants to avoid getting drawn into a fight with Israel and the U.S. The current cease-fire in the region sti[CENSORED]tes that no foreign forces should be present there.
With Islamic State nearing defeat in Syria, Israeli officials said they see a welcome and growing opportunity for Russia to push Iran out of the country entirely.
“My assessment is the Russians are interested in stabilizing their achievements in Syria, formidable achievements, and I think they too understand that if the Iranians continue on the present course, this will lead to escalation and will blow their plans out of the water,” Chagai Tzuriel, director general of Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence told reporters Monday. “I think they don’t want this either.”
In a surprise meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “It is necessary for all foreign forces to withdraw from” Syria. The comment, widely interpreted as a swipe against Iran, came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow earlier this month. It was echoed on Monday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said only Syrian forces should be deployed in southern Syria.
Iran has been facing growing pressure over its presence in Syria.
Earlier this month, Israel carried out its largest-ever military operation against Iranian positions in Syria, striking dozens of Iranian military sites across the southern and central parts of the country, including targets related to logistics, intelligence and ammunition storage.
In the preceding weeks, Israel carried out other smaller strikes on Iranian military targets, having said it wouldn’t allow Tehran to entrench itself in Syria.
The U.S. has also increased pressure on Tehran, with President Donald Trump withdrawing from a nuclear deal with Iran that eased sanctions on its battered economy. This month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined 12 requirements for a new nuclear deal with Iran, including Tehran curtailing its military interventions in the Middle East and withdrawing all its forces from Syria.
On Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu reaffirmed Israel’s position that Israel won’t allow any Iranian military entrenchment anywhere in Syria.
Russia, which directly intervened on behalf of the Assad regime in 2015, has vowed not to carry out airstrikes in support of any military offensive in the southwest. But reeling in Iran could prove challenging.
Israeli officials say there are indications Russia is prepared to compel Iranian forces, including the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah, to move back from the Israeli border with southwestern Syria.
Israel isn’t counting on that possibility alone, however. “We are acting against an Iranian military presence anywhere on Syrian territory,” Mr. Netanyahu said Tuesday. “An Iranian departure from southern Syria alone will not suffice.”
It remains unclear how much leverage Russia actually has over Iran, whether in the south or any other part of Syria. Southern rebel commanders say Iranian and other foreign Shiite militias have remained stationed in regime-held parts of Daraa province.
As the Syrian regime has emerged victorious against antigovernment rebels elsewhere in Syria, the relationship between Russia and Iran has come under strain as they pursue diverging interests. Russia’s response to Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria has been muted.
The U.S., meanwhile, has expressed concern that any offensive in southwestern Syria could jeopardize stability along Jordan and Israel’s borders. On Friday, the State Department warned the U.S. “will take firm and appropriate measures in response to Assad regime violations” of the regional cease-fire, but officials haven’t said what such steps would be.—Suha Ma’ayeh, Dov Lieber, Thomas Grove and Michael R. Gordon contributed to this article.
Write to Raja Abdulrahim at raja.abdulrahim@wsj.com and Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com
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Pro for helper. Waiting other Admins for Vote
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Pro for helper.
Waiting other Admins for Vote
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Accepted : as helper
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accepted : as helper
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South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held a surprise meeting at the demilitarized zone Saturday aimed at keeping inter-Korean relations, and a possible summit between Mr. Kim and President Donald Trump, on track.
South Korea’s presidential office announced the two-hour meeting after it had wrapped up, saying the two leaders met on the north side of the demilitarized zone and discussed how to successfully stage a summit between Messrs. Trump and Kim.
The meeting—the fourth in history between leaders of the two Koreas—was the latest dramatic turn in a series of diplomatic maneuvers as the U.S. and South Korea seek to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
It followed an April 27 summit between Messrs. Moon and Kim on the south side of the line dividing the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, at which the two men signed a Panmunjom Declaration vowing an end to war and hostilities between the two sides.
It also came days after Mr. Trump abruptly scrapped a planned summit with Mr. Kim in Singapore on June 12—only to say a day later that it might still take place.
“The two leaders exchanged frank opinions on the implementation of the April 27 Panmunjom Declaration and the successful staging of a U.S.-North Korean summit,” said Yoon Young-chan, a spokesman for South Korea’s presidential office, in a statement Saturday evening.
Mr. Moon will share the details of the meeting Sunday at 10 a.m. Seoul time, Mr. Yoon added.
Photos and video released by the presidential Blue House on Saturday showed Mr. Moon in a bear hug with Mr. Kim, and of the two men wearing broad grins as they shook hands. They met at Unification Pavilion, a building on the north side of the military demarcation line, the South said.
Other photos showed Mr. Moon being greeted by Mr. Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo Jong, and of the South Korean leader sitting across a table with Mr. Kim and Kim Yong Chol, a four-star North Korean general who has been a constant presence at the North Korean leader’s side in recent weeks. Mr. Moon was accompanied by Suh Hoon, the South’s spy chief.
The meeting was the second between Messrs. Moon and Kim in as many months, and the fourth ever between the leaders of the two Koreas. Kim Jong Un’s father Kim Jong Il met with South Korea’s presidents in 2000 and 2007, both times in Pyongyang.
Saturday’s summit showed that Messrs. Kim and Moon are both eager to keep the diplomatic momentum going despite recent setbacks, said Markus Bell, a lecturer in Korean and Japanese studies at the University of Sheffield in the U.K.
“ Donald Trump has been flip-flopping on whether he’s going to get involved and move forward on a summit, and he’s given the window for North Korea to look like the levelheaded, rational actor,” Mr. Bell said.
Jenny Town, a research analyst at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington and managing editor of 38 North, a North Korea-focused blog, said Mr. Moon’s ability to hold a snap meeting with Mr. Kim highlights the willingness of both leaders to engage in back-channel diplomacy.
“They feel comfortable enough to have direct communication and to be able to meet on short notice,” Ms. Town said, adding that the body language between them underscored that.
Mr. Kim greeted Mr. Moon, she said, “like an old friend, instead of an awkward handshake.”Mr. Moon had been a chief proponent of direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang, and said he was “perplexed” by Mr. Trump’s cancellation of the meeting.
Go Myong-Hyun of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a private think tank in Seoul, said the two Korean leaders may also have been motivated by an attempt to stave off a return to U.S.-led pressure and sanctions against Pyongyang, as Mr. Trump said this week.
“The ultimate goal of this summit was to ensure that ‘maximum pressure’ doesn’t surface again in Washington after the cancellation of the U.S.-North Korea summit,” Mr. Go said.
Mr. Moon, eager to keep talks on track, was able to draw on his historically high domestic approval ratings to continue to push things forward with the North, even in the face of Mr. Trump’s calls for a return to “maximum pressure,” Mr. Bell said.
“Moon has positioned himself as the peacemaker, and he’s riding the wave of 80% approval to basically push forward his agenda to reach out to North Korea,” he said.
The message from Messrs. Moon and Kim, he added, was: “Why do we need the U.S. doing anything if Trump is going to oscillate between ‘fire and fury’ and sharing a hamburger with Kim? Maybe we should move things forward by ourselves.”
—Andrew Jeong contributed to this article.
Write to Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com
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Of course, not! CR7 ?
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The suspect in the shooting that injured multiple people in an Oklahoma City restaurant died after he was shot by an armed civilian, police said.
The Oklahoma City Police Department said on Twitter that investigators were on the scene of the shooting at Louie's Grill & Bar, near Lake Hefner Parkway.
Both the suspect and the civilian were armed with a handgun, police said.
The "bystander with a pistol confronted the shooter outside the restaurant and fatally shot him," OKCPD wrote on Twitter :https://twitter.com/ABC/status/999815116458774528/photo/1
The customer was outside when the suspect walked into the restaurant and opened fire around 6:30 p.m. local time, Oklahoma City Police Public Information Officer Bo Matthews said at a press conference.
Two female customers are among the injured, Matthews said.
The victims are expected to survive, according to ABC affiliate KOCO.
The conditions of the victims were not disclosed, but at least one was in surgery, Matthews said.
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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Thursday that it had destroyed its only known nuclear test site, three weeks before its leader, Kim Jong-un, is scheduled to meet with President Trump.
North Korea allowed a select group of journalists from Britain, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States to watch its engineers destroy and close tunnels in its mountainous Punggye-ri test site, where the country has conducted all six of its nuclear tests. No independent outside nuclear monitors were invited to verify the dismantlement of the site.
The action came two days after Mr. Trump backed away from his demand that Mr. Kim completely abandon his nuclear arsenal without any reciprocal American concessions.
In the ceremony on Thursday, North Korea used explosives to destroy three of its four tunnels at the Punggye-ri test site, according to dispatches by reporters at the scene. The fourth tunnel had already been closed for fear of contamination after the North’s first nuclear test in 2006.
The North Koreans also blew up test-observation facilities, as well as barracks for site personnel and a metal foundry, the reports said. Two dozen international journalists were invited to witness explosives rigged inside the tunnels, and they were then escorted outside to viewing decks 500 yards away where they filmed the detonations.
North Korea invited mostly TV journalists to ensure that its action was broadcast worldwide.
Although some analysts feared the moves would be reversible, the reported demolition was the first concrete step North Korea has taken toward what Washington hopes will be a complete nuclear dismantlement under Mr. Kim.
North Korea announced last month that it would end all nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests as well as close the Punggye-ri test site. It said it no longer needed to condct such tests because the country already possesed nuclear weapons and wanted to focus on rebuilding its economy.
It is still unclear whether it will give up its nuclear arsenal. It was not even clear whether North Korea had destroyed all the tunnels at the test site on Thursday, or had done so in a way that would allow the site to be used again. No independent experts were present to view the blasts and assess the extent of the destruction.
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Arsenal confirmed Unai Emery as their new head coach on Wednesday morning
Arsenal have confirmed the appointment of Unai Emery as their new head coach, replacing Arsene Wenger at the Emirates.The 46-year-old Spaniard arrives at the club following a two-year spell at PSG. He led the club to a domestic treble this season, but his contract was not extended and was replaced by Thomas Tuchel.
Emery told Arsenal's official website: "I am thrilled to be joining one of the great clubs in the game.
"Arsenal is known and loved throughout the world for its style of play, its commitment to young players, the fantastic stadium, the way the club is run. I'm very excited to be given the responsibility to start this important new chapter in Arsenal's history.
"I have met Stan and Josh Kroenke and it's clear they have great ambitions for the club and are committed to bringing future success. I'm excited about what we can do together and I look forward to giving everyone who loves Arsenal some special moments and memories."
Unai Emery poses at the Emirates with Arsenal's new home shirt for 2018/19
Former Arsenal captain Mikel Arteta was believed to be a front-runner for the job, but Sky Sports News understands he withdrew from the running due to concerns over the extent of the role he would have in the club's transfer policy.Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis said the club conducted a "rigorous" recruitment process, with Emery emerging as the unanimous choice.
"Unai has an outstanding track record of success throughout his career, has developed some of the best young talent in Europe and plays an exciting, progressive style of football that fits Arsenal perfectly", said Gazidis.
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