Barack Obama Syria

President Donald Trump made his first visit to a conflict zone as commander in chief this week, visiting troops at Al Asad Airbase in western Iraq on Wednesday. The unannounced journey took place just days after announcing that he planned to remove U.S. troops from Syria and saw his own defense secretary resign in response.

From the surprise resignation (then un-resignation) of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to the intra-Gulf crisis with Qatar to the battle for influence in post-Islamic State Iraq and the vicious civil wars in Yemen and Syria, the signs of the regional battle royale between Saudi Arabia and Iran are everywhere.

US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis visited Israel on Friday for talks expected to focus on Iran, Syria and the two countries' close strategic relations despite recent tensions with Barack Obama's adminstration.

When President Donald Trump began receiving his intelligence briefings in January, his team made a request: The president, they said, was a visual and auditory learner. Would the briefers please cut down on the number of words in the daily briefing book and instead use more graphics and pictures?

A Pentagon-led preliminary plan to defeat the ISIS has been delivered to the White House and US Defense Secretary Jim (James) Mattis has briefed senior administration officials, a Defense Department spokesman told reporters.

Planning for the final assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State's caliphate, had been grinding on for more than seven months. There had been dozens of meetings of President Barack Obama's top national security team, scores of draft battle plans and hundreds of hours of anguished, late-night debates.

The United States has provided Syrian fighters battling the Islamic State group with armoured vehicles for the first time, a US official and a spokesman for the anti-jihadist force said Tuesday.

Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize may have confounded critics and created enormous expectations, but ultimately it had little influence on his refusal to get drawn into the bloodshed in Syria. In accepting the prize on December 10, 2009, the young US president, elected only a year earlier, gave a steely speech about "war and peace," outlining what w...

Russia has invited the incoming Trump administration to Syrian peace talks it is sponsoring later this month with Turkey and Iran, part of a process from which President Barack Obama's administration pointedly has been excluded.

US President-elect Donald Trump said on Friday his administration would build "safe zones" to try to help civilians trapped in Syria's bloody conflict, an idea that President Barack Obama said would be too hard to enforce.

Responsibility for atrocities committed in Aleppo lies with Syria and its Russian and Iranian backers, US President Barack Obama said Friday as Damascus suspended the evacuation of civilians and fighters from the city's last rebel-held areas.

Both President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump believe the United States never should have invaded Iraq in 2003 (or, at least, Trump claims he now does). The war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath in many ways prefigure the present moment in the Middle East; it triggered a sectarian unraveling that now haunts both Iraq and Syria and lo...

US President Barack Obama denounced the "horror" in Aleppo Friday and called for impartial observers after Syria's government suspended the evacuation of civilians and fighters from the last rebel-held areas.

President Barack Obama is expected to face questions about claims of Russian interference in the US election and about the fall of Aleppo in Syria when he holds his year-end news conference Friday.

The fall of Aleppo was a defeat for US President Barack Obama's administration, which failed to broker a ceasefire in Syria's civil war, but may prove to be an opening for Donald Trump, who wants to change course with Moscow.

President Donald Trump made his first visit to a conflict zone as commander in chief this week, visiting troops at Al Asad Airbase in western Iraq on Wednesday. The unannounced journey took place just days after announcing that he planned to remove U.S. troops from Syria and saw his own defense secretary resign in response.

From the surprise resignation (then un-resignation) of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to the intra-Gulf crisis with Qatar to the battle for influence in post-Islamic State Iraq and the vicious civil wars in Yemen and Syria, the signs of the regional battle royale between Saudi Arabia and Iran are everywhere.

US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis visited Israel on Friday for talks expected to focus on Iran, Syria and the two countries' close strategic relations despite recent tensions with Barack Obama's adminstration.

When President Donald Trump began receiving his intelligence briefings in January, his team made a request: The president, they said, was a visual and auditory learner. Would the briefers please cut down on the number of words in the daily briefing book and instead use more graphics and pictures?

A Pentagon-led preliminary plan to defeat the ISIS has been delivered to the White House and US Defense Secretary Jim (James) Mattis has briefed senior administration officials, a Defense Department spokesman told reporters.

Planning for the final assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State's caliphate, had been grinding on for more than seven months. There had been dozens of meetings of President Barack Obama's top national security team, scores of draft battle plans and hundreds of hours of anguished, late-night debates.

The United States has provided Syrian fighters battling the Islamic State group with armoured vehicles for the first time, a US official and a spokesman for the anti-jihadist force said Tuesday.

Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize may have confounded critics and created enormous expectations, but ultimately it had little influence on his refusal to get drawn into the bloodshed in Syria. In accepting the prize on December 10, 2009, the young US president, elected only a year earlier, gave a steely speech about "war and peace," outlining what w...

Russia has invited the incoming Trump administration to Syrian peace talks it is sponsoring later this month with Turkey and Iran, part of a process from which President Barack Obama's administration pointedly has been excluded.

US President-elect Donald Trump said on Friday his administration would build "safe zones" to try to help civilians trapped in Syria's bloody conflict, an idea that President Barack Obama said would be too hard to enforce.

Responsibility for atrocities committed in Aleppo lies with Syria and its Russian and Iranian backers, US President Barack Obama said Friday as Damascus suspended the evacuation of civilians and fighters from the city's last rebel-held areas.

Both President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump believe the United States never should have invaded Iraq in 2003 (or, at least, Trump claims he now does). The war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath in many ways prefigure the present moment in the Middle East; it triggered a sectarian unraveling that now haunts both Iraq and Syria and lo...

US President Barack Obama denounced the "horror" in Aleppo Friday and called for impartial observers after Syria's government suspended the evacuation of civilians and fighters from the last rebel-held areas.

President Barack Obama is expected to face questions about claims of Russian interference in the US election and about the fall of Aleppo in Syria when he holds his year-end news conference Friday.

The fall of Aleppo was a defeat for US President Barack Obama's administration, which failed to broker a ceasefire in Syria's civil war, but may prove to be an opening for Donald Trump, who wants to change course with Moscow.