The United States has revoked the visa of a top Syrian diplomat who tried to enter the country to take up a post at the war-torn country's embassy, a US official said Wednesday.

Ali Daghman was stopped from entering the US when he arrived Tuesday at Dulles airport in Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"We can confirm that his visa has been revoked," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters, also confirming his identity.

"Given the Syrian regime's continuing assault on its own people... we have taken steps to further restrict entry of even the few remaining Syrian officials."

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an AFP inquiry about whether Daghman had already been deported.

Although the US embassy in Damascus has been shuttered due to the fierce fighting in the country as the rebel opposition seeks to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Syria has maintained its mission in Washington without an ambassador.

The Journal said Daghman was possibly meant to take up the post of charge d'affaires, which would have made him the embassy's number two.

The United States has insisted for months that the Syrian regime no longer has any legitimacy and is no longer recognized by Washington.

Psaki refused to go into specifics about where and how the Syrian diplomat was granted a visa.

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Despite the chaos, the blood and the democratic setbacks, this is a long process. Do not give up hope.

ROUGHLY two-and-a-half years after the revolutions in the Arab world, not a single country is yet plainly on course to become a stable, peaceful democracy. The countries that were more hopeful--Tunisia, Libya and Yemen--have been struggling. A chaotic experiment with democracy in Egypt, the most populous of them, has landed an elected president behind bars. Syria is awash with the blood of civil war.

No wonder some have come to think the Arab spring is doomed. The Middle East, they argue, is not ready to change. One reason is that it does not have democratic institutions, so people power will decay into anarchy or provoke the reimposition of dictatorship. The other is that the region's one cohesive force is Islam, which--it is argued--cannot accommodate democracy. The Middle East, they conclude, would be better off if the Arab spring had never happened at all.

That view is at best premature, at worst wrong. Democratic transitions are often violent and lengthy. The worst consequences of the Arab spring--in Libya initially, in Syria now--are dreadful. Yet as our special report argues, most Arabs do not want to turn the clock back.

Putting the cart before the camel

Those who say that the Arab spring has failed ignore the long winter before, and its impact on people's lives. In 1960 Egypt and South Korea shared similar life-expectancy and GDP per head. Today they inhabit different worlds. Although many more Egyptians now live in cities and three-quarters of the population is literate, GDP per head is only a fifth of South Korea's. Poverty and stunting from malnutrition are far too common. The Muslim Brotherhood's brief and incompetent government did nothing to reverse this, but Egypt's deeper problems were aggravated by the strongmen who preceded them. And many other Arab countries fared no better.

This matters, because, given the Arab spring's uneven progress, many say the answer is authoritarian modernisation: an Augusto Pinochet, Lee Kuan Yew or Deng Xiaoping to keep order and make the economy grow. Unlike South-East Asians, the Arabs can boast no philosopher-king who has willingly nurtured democracy as his economy has flourished. Instead, the dictator's brothers and the first lady's cousins get all the best businesses. And the despots--always wary of stirring up the masses--have tended to duck the big challenges of reform, such as gradually removing the energy subsidies that in Egypt alone swallow 8% of GDP. Even now the oil-rich monarchies are trying to buy peace; but as an educated and disenfranchised youth sniffs freedom, the old way of doing things looks ever more impossible, unless, as in Syria, the ruler is prepared to shed vast amounts of blood to stay in charge. Some of the more go-ahead Arab monarchies, for example in Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait, are groping towards constitutional systems that give their subjects a bigger say.

Fine, some will reply, but Arab democracy merely leads to rule by the Islamists, who are no more capable of reform than the strongmen, and thanks to the intolerance of political Islam, deeply undemocratic. Muhammad Morsi, the Muslim Brother evicted earlier this month by the generals at the apparent behest of many millions of Egyptians in the street, was democratically elected, yet did his best to flout the norms of democracy during his short stint as president. Many secular Arabs and their friends in the West now argue that because Islamists tend to regard their rule as God-given, they will never accept that a proper democracy must include checks, including independent courts, a free press, devolved powers and a pluralistic constitution to protect minorities.

This too, though, is wrong. Outside the Arab world, Islamists--in Malaysia and Indonesia, say--have shown that they can learn the habit of democracy. In Turkey too, the protests against the autocratic but elected prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have more in common with Brazil than the Arab spring. Turkey, for all its faults, is more democratic today than it was when the army lurked in the background.

The problem, then, is with Arab Islamists. That is hardly surprising. They have been schooled by decades of repression, which their movements survived only by being conspiratorial and organised. Their core supporters are a sizeable minority in most Arab countries. They cannot be ignored, and must instead be absorbed into the mainstream.

That is why Egypt's coup is so tragic. Had the Muslim Brotherhood remained in power, they might have learned the tolerance and pragmatism needed for running a country. Instead, their suspicions about democratic politics have been confirmed. Now it is up to Tunisia, the first of the Arab countries to throw off the yoke of autocracy, to show that Arab Islamists can run countries decently. It might just do that: it is on its way to getting a constitution that could serve as the basis of a decent, inclusive democracy. If the rest of the Arab world moves in that direction, it will take many years to do so.

That would not be surprising, for political change is a long game. Hindsight tends to smooth over the messy bits of history. The transition from communism, for instance, looks easy in retrospect. Yet three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe was overrun by criminal mafias; extremist politicians were prominent in Poland, Slovakia and the Baltics; the Balkans were about to degenerate into war and there was fighting in Georgia. Even now, most people in the old Soviet bloc live under repressive regimes--yet few want to go back.

Don't hold back the tide

The Arab spring was always better described as an awakening: the real revolution is not so much in the street as in the mind. The internet, social media, satellite television and the thirst for education--among Arab women as much as men--cannot co-exist with the deadening dictatorships of old. Egyptians, among others, are learning that democracy is neither just a question of elections nor the ability to bring millions of protesters onto the street. Getting there was always bound to be messy, even bloody. The journey may take decades. But it is still welcome.

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America's top military officer told a Senate committee that the Obama administration is considering the use of military force in Syria, Richard Lardner of the Associated Press reports.

U.S. Army General Martin Dempsey testified that he has provided President Barack Obama with options for the use of force in Syria, including "kinetic strikes."

The military is constantly laying out potential courses of action, but Dempsey's comments signal at least a willingness to directly enter the conflict.

The issue "is under deliberation inside of our agencies of government," the four-star general said.

In March Dempsey implied military force would be a bad idea: "I don't think at this point I can see a military option that would create an understandable outcome. And until I do, it would be my advice to proceed cautiously."

U.S. military options range from one-off missile strikes on infrastructure linked to chemical weapons, to funneling more weapons to rebels, to carving out no-fly zones, and even as far as putting 20,000 U.S. troops in Jordan for a ground invasion.

"Senator, I am in favor of building a moderate opposition and supporting it," Dempsey said on Thursday. "The question whether to support it with direct kinetic strikes ... is a decision for our elected officials, not for the senior military leader of the nation" (emphasis ours).

Also on the table are drone strikes targeting rebels linked to al-Qaeda, which indicates that America would actually be attacking the strongest elements on both sides of the conflict.

Consequently, all signs point to a quagmire as American goals would include attempting to arm only moderate rebels and marginalizing the opposition's best forces while simultaneously attempting to topple Assad's regime.

Meanwhile Assad has regained the upper hand on the battlefield in the west of the country while jihadists control much of the north and east.

“Assad is powerful now, not as a president who controls a state but as a warlord, as someone who has more and more sophisticated weapons than the others,” Hassan Hassan, a Syrian journalist at the Abu Dhabi-based English-language newspaper The National, told The New York Times. “He is not capable of winning back the country.”

The scope of the conflict continues to expand as Syria's borders blur, which provides an opportunity for the radical rebels in Lebanon and northeastern Syria.

@ShamiWitness @charles_lister Right, and to me it blow doors open on the scope of conflict http://t.co/schThrCZza pic.twitter.com/4KWk5JUBRe

— Michael Kelley (@MichaelKelleyBI) July 18, 2013

Dempsey's statements come days after the U.N. envoy to Iraq told the U.N. Security Council that the Syrian civil war and the escalating violence in neighboring Iraq can no longer be separated because "the battlefields are merging."

The envoy, Martin Kobler, noted that the last four months have been among the bloodiest in Iraq in the last five years as nearly 3,000 people have been killed and more 7,000 injured.

"These countries are interrelated," Kobler stressed. "Iraq is the fault line between the Shia and the Sunni world."

The Iraqi government has backed Assad, but Sunni jihadists in Iraq's western Anbar province have poured into Syria to fight with al-Qaeda-affiliated rebels.

Basically, the U.S. would be throwing their hat into a very messy ring.

Here's a look at the battlefield from an interactive graphic from Al Jazeera:

The CIA has a presence on at least three of Syria's borders.

In March The Wall Street Journal reported that since 2011 the U.S. has been expanding the CIA's role in Iraq as radical Syrian rebels threaten the border region.

Last June The New York Times reported that CIA officers in southern Turkey were funneling weapons to Syrian rebels.

In December NPR reported that CIA officers were training rebels in Jordan on how to identify and safeguard chemical weapons (while Der Spiegel reported that it had been happening since May).

In October and November we reported on potential but unconfirmed indications that the CIA may have been funneling heavy weapons from Benghazi, Libya to Turkey. Overt U.S. promises to provide arms to the Free Syrian Army have stalled amid concerns that the weapons would fall into the wrong hands.

The Syrian war began in March 2011 as a nonviolent revolution with an Arab Spring "Day of Rage" when 200 mostly young protesters gathered in the Syrian capital of Damascus to demand democratic reforms and the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.

Assad swiftly cracked down on the dissent, and over the next 28 months the conflict transformed into a proxy war and then a full-blown sectarian conflict exacerbated by by radical jihadists and local militias loyal to Assad.

Air superiority remains Assad's greatest asset, but recently he has been bolstered by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, guerrilla training from Iran, and continued support from Russia.

In November Russia sent six warships from its Black Sea Fleet to the Mediterranean in response to the Israel-Gaza conflict. That month the U.S. also began making moves to increase the American military presence in the east Mediterranean.

In May a detachment from Russia’s Pacific Fleet entered the Mediterranean waters for the first time since the Cold War, and the next month the Kremlin sent its only aircraft carrier to the region.

"The Russian Defense Ministry started setting up a special force of warships in the Mediterranean in order to protect Russia's interests in the region," Syria's state-run news agency, citing a spokesman for Russia defense ministry, reported.

Over the course of the conflict, the Kremlin has provided Assad with supplies including guns, grenades, tank parts, fighter jets, advanced antiship cruise missiles, long-range air defense missiles, military officers as advisors, diplomatic cover, and lots of cash.

SEE ALSO: UK ARMY CHIEF: Invading Syria Would Be The Only Way To Topple Assad

SEE ALSO: The US Doesn't Have Any Good Military Options In Syria

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The outgoing head of the British Army said the West would have to invade Syria if it wanted topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

 “You have to be able, as we did successfully in Libya, to hit ground targets,"General David Richards told The Telegraph. "If you want to have the material effect that people seek [i.e. Assad's ouster] ... you would be going to war if that is what you want to do.”

Britain's most senior military officer explained that the West would need to destroy the Syrian government’s air defenses, tanks, and armored personnel carriers.

The general's comments came the same day his U.S. counterpart, U.S. Army General Martin Dempsey, told a Senate committee that the Obama administration is considering the use of military force in Syria.

The four star general, who is America's top military officer, said that he provided President Barack Obama with options for the use of force in Syria, including "kinetic strikes," and that the issue "is under deliberation inside of our agencies of government."

"Senator, I am in favor of building a moderate opposition and supporting it," he said. "The question whether to support it with direct kinetic strikes ... is a decision for our elected officials, not for the senior military leader of the nation."

Thus the West is at a crossroads when it comes to Syria. Britain has abandoned plans to arm Syrian rebels, noting that it won't make a significant impact on the outcome, and similar plans have stalled in the U.S.

“That is rightly a huge and important decision,"UK Army chief Richards said. "There are many arguments for doing so but there are many arguments for not doing so too.”

In March Dempsey implied military force would be a bad idea: "I don't think at this point I can see a military option that would create an understandable outcome. And until I do, it would be my advice to proceed cautiously."

U.S. military options range from one-off missile strikes on infrastructure linked to chemical weapons, to funneling more weapons to rebels, to carving out no-fly zones, and even as far as putting 20,000 U.S. troops in Jordan for a ground invasion.

SEE ALSO: Top US Military Officer: America Is Considering Entering Syrian War

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is considering canceling a fall summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a move that would further aggravate the already tense relationship between the two leaders.

The White House is dangling that option over the Russians as Moscow considers a temporary asylum petition from Edward Snowden, the American accused of leaking information about classified U.S. intelligence programs.

But officials have privately signaled that scrapping the bilateral talks would also be retaliation for other areas of disagreement with Russia, including its continued support for Syrian President Bashar Assad's attacks against civilians.

Regardless of what happens with Snowden, the White House says Obama will still attend an international summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. But officials have gone out of their way in recent days to avoid publicly committing to the meetings in Moscow.

"The president intends to travel to Russia for the G20 Summit," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "And I have no further announcements to make beyond what we've said in the past about the president's travel to Russia in the fall."

By simply considering cancellation of the trip, the Obama administration is indicating its concern the Kremlin will allow Snowden to take refuge in Russia. The White House has called on Russia to return the 30-year-old former government contract systems analyst to the U.S. where he is facing espionage charges.

Snowden, in a temporary asylum request submitted by his lawyer Tuesday, claimed he faces persecution from the U.S. government and could face torture or death.

Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the White House's cancellation threat could be effective leverage over Putin, who likely wants to avoid an embarrassment on the world stage.

"When the spotlight of the world is on him and Russia, he doesn't want that spotlight to reveal a lot of negative things which are going to be distractions," Kuchins said.

Pulling the plug on the U.S.-Russia talks would deepen the tensions between the two leaders. And it would likely make it even more difficult for the two countries to find common ground on areas of disagreement that plague the relationship.

The U.S. accuses Russia of providing military support to Assad that has allowed him to cling to power during more than two years of clashes with rebels seeking to overthrow his government. The U.S. deeply angered Russia earlier this year when it announced sanctions against 18 Russians as part of a law named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested in 2008 for tax evasion after accusing Russian police officials of stealing $230 million in tax rebates. Russia also announced last year that it was banning U.S. adoptions of Russian children, a move seen as a retaliation for the Magnitsky act, passed last year.

On Thursday, the White House also said it was "deeply disappointed and concerned" by the conviction of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who challenged the Kremlin with exposures of high-level corruption and mocked the leadership with biting satire. He was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday in a verdict that fueled street protests near Red Square and drew condemnation from the West.

Kuchins said that while granting Snowden asylum would certainly be the impetus for canceling Obama's Moscow trip, it would not be the only reason.

"It would be saying at least two things to the Russians," Kuchins said. "That granting asylum to Edward Snowden was a bridge too far, and secondly that we don't feel like we're actually losing so much out of the cancellation of the summit because we didn't expect to get much out of it."

Some U.S. lawmakers are calling on Obama to go beyond simply canceling his talks with Putin. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has also called on the U.S. to boycott next year's Winter Olympics scheduled for Sochi, Russia.

___

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On Thursday Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told a Senate committee that the Obama administration is considering the use of military force in Syria.

On the following day, the four-star general provided United States Senate Committee on Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) with an unclassified letter that details recommendations for U.S. policy options regarding the "potential use of U.S. military force in the Syrian conflict."

Gen. Dempsey warned "the decision to use force is ... no less than an act of war," adding that the U.S. "must anticipate and be prepared for the unintended consequences of our action. ... Deeper involvement is hard to avoid."

Before going over the options, Dempsey reiterated his non-committal stance: "The decision over whether to introduce military force is a political one that our Nation entrusts to its civilian leaders. I also understand that you deserve my best military advice on how military force could be used in order to decide whether it should be used."

Train, Advise, and Assist the Opposition

This involves using nonlethal forces "to train and advise the opposition on tasks ranging from weapons employment to tactical planning," Dempsey wrote. "We could also offer assistance in the form of intelligence and logistics."

This option is reportedly already in play. In May Der Spiegel reported that Americans were training Syrian anti-government fighters in Jordan, noting that the program aimed to build around a dozen units totaling some 10,000 fighters.

The U.S. currently also at least 900 combat-ready troops in Jordan.

Conduct Limited Stand-off Strikes

This option using lethal force "to strike targets that enable the regime to conduct military operations, proliferate advanced weapons, and defend itself," Dempsey said. "Over time, the impact would be the significant degradation of regime capabilities and an increase in regime desertions."

Israel has reportedly carried out four airstrikes in Syria this year:

• The first, in January, targeted a convoy located at a major military research facility outside of Damascus (satellite photos here).

• On May 3 jets bombed two locations at Damascus International Airport on May 3.

• A strike on May 5 lit up the Syrian military's fortress on Qasioun Mountain — hitting the headquarters of the army’s Fourth Division, the elite and feared unit run by the president’s brother Maher, as well as the command of the government’s elite Republican Guard. The strike killed at least 42 Syrian soldiers.

• According to American officials, an Israeli strike on Jul 5 targeted advanced anti-ship cruise missiles sold to the Syria government by Russia.

Establish a No-Fly Zone

After a largely successful U.S.-led no-fly zone helped topple Col. Muammar Qaddafi in Libya in 2011, many have wondered why the Obama administration hasn't explored a similar mission in Syria.

"Impacts would likely include the near total elimination of the regime’s ability to bomb opposition strongholds and sustain its forces by air," he says.

Establishing a buffer zone, most likely across the borders with Turkey or Jordan, where U.S. forces could safely train Syrian rebels is considered one of the most viable options.

"The opposition could use these zones to organize and train," Dempsey notes." They could also serve as safe areas for the distribution of humanitarian assistance."

But in order to do this, the U.S. would need thousands of ground forces to defend those zones and hundreds of aircraft to create a provisional no-fly zone.

Dempsey estimates that a limited no-fly zone and training operations would push costs of this operation into the $1 billion per month range.

What Dempsey Thinks

In March Dempsey implied military force would be a bad idea: "I don't think at this point I can see a military option that would create an understandable outcome. And until I do, it would be my advice to proceed cautiously."

And in the letter, he stressed that officials must "understand risk-not just to our forces, but to our other global responsibilities. ... Some options may not be feasible in time or cost without compromising our security elsewhere."

Check out the full letter >

SEE ALSO: Top US Military Officer: America Is Considering Entering Syrian War

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In an almost palpable irony, Russian and U.S. officials simultaneously announced their intent to move forward with controversial arms transfers to opposing sides in the Syrian civil war Monday.

If there were any doubts about the proxy nature of Syria for the two sides, the announcements should put them to bed.

Congressional hurdles have been lifted and weapons will soon flow into the hands of Syrian rebels, according to a Reuters report

"We believe we are in a position that the administration can move forward," House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told Reuters Monday.

Half a world away, a representative of Syria's embattled President Bashar al Assad left a meeting with Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

“All agreements between Russia and Syria in the area of arms deliveries are in place,” said Qadri Jamil on Monday. “The contracts continue and are in force.”

The representative of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also asked Russia for a monetary loan, one that Moscow is still as of yet considering.

Meanwhile, the weapons Russia intends to deliver are of the S300 surface-to-air variety — which make enforcing a Western-backed no-fly zone all that much more dangerous, not to mention improbable.

The weapons transfers for the Americans have met resistance from within Washington political ranks. Vetting rebel groups in the middle of a civil war is a very difficult process.

"I think we also have to expect that some of the weapons we provide are going to get into the hands of those who would use them against us,"Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Reuters.

Washington has urged Russia not to arm Assad — especially with weapons that can threaten Israeli airliners in Israeli airspace and, importantly, block Israel from further strikes in Syria.

Israel has outright told Russia that any S300 shipments would be destroyed. Analysts have said bombing those systems would result in Russian casualties.

In the thick of it all, Lavrov leaves his meeting with the Syrian rep and states that Assad is ready to talk peace.

All the U.S. has to do is bring the opposition forces to the table.

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If you are an American citizen named Amiir Farouk Ibrahim and you're fighting with al-Qaeda linked rebels in northern Syria, your passport has been found. 

Among documents recovered in northern Syria by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was a passport issued by the United States, belonging to the 32-year-old, who has dual citizenship between the United States and Egypt.

He was born in Pennsylvania, and his passport was issued in 2012. 

He is not the first American to be linked with the Syrian rebellion. Back in May, a Michigan woman was killed while fighting alongside rebel forces.

And in March, we reported on a U.S. Army veteran in trouble with the F.B.I. for taking up arms with known terrorist organizations in fighting the Syrian regime. 

All told fighters from more than 25 countries have enetered the conflict.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights found identifying paperwork from Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Turkey, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

SEE ALSO: US And Russia Simultaneously Announce Intent To Arm Opposing Sides In Syria

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Iraq's massive prison break made big headlines, but Baghdad has worse problems than 500 escaped jihadis.

Namely, looming civil war.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — a partisan Shi'ite — tried to blame Iraq's sectarian unrest on the Syrian Civil War, but Iraq's problems run far deeper than that.

To start, Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims have been feuding for more than a thousand years.

Saddam Hussein stoked those tensions with a secular, Sunni-dominated government, which cracked down on religious rights and persecuted Shi'ites.

After the fall of Saddam, sectarian in-fighting came to a tipping point in 2006.

General David Petraeus, inspired by successful grass-roots, Sunni-led security forces in the west, enlisted Shi'ite militias around the country, promising each side that if they ousted al Qaeda, they'd have a seat at the table in a new government. Although the strategy was successful in stabilizing the country for a time, it soon became apparent that it was a false peace, as described by Michael Hastings at Buzzfeed.

As the American presence dissipated, the Shi'ite majority, led by Maliki, quickly sought to consolidate power and mete out retribution on their former Sunni rulers.

Maliki's aggressive consolidation of power immediately aggravated domestic tensions. Rising to power in mid-2006, by 2007 he had staffed the higher positions of government with Shia loyalists. Then he began distancing his government from Sunni and Kurdish leaders, despite Petraeus' reassurances to Sunni leaders.

In 2009, he accused the Sunni security forces, known as the Sons of Iraq, of being infiltrated by Al Qaeda and Saddam-loyal Ba'athists — and analysts expressed worry that Maliki would actually declare war on the Sons of Iraq the moment the U.S. exited the country. This was rough treatment for the group that was largely responsible for taming Al Qaeda in Iraq and bringing peace to the restive western Anbar province.

Maliki could have reached out an olive branch to his rival, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose Sunni-backed, secular-Shiite coalition — called Iraqiya — represented a marginalized but relevant political body in Iraq. Instead, he turned to Iran, seeking monetary backing from the orthodox Shi'ite government.

Granted, the big worry among religious Shi'ites was a return to a Sunni-run Saddam-like government, that physically abused, killed, and imprisoned Shi'ites.

Maliki's knee-jerk fear of the Sunnis and secular Shi'ites, however, led to his creation of "extra-constitutional security bodies" designed to give him a direct chain of command over security forces, a command that conveniently side-stepped the Ministries of Defence and Interior.

Such consolidations allowed him to take an unprecedented move: what Maliki claims was an arrest, but what many call an assassination attempt on Rafi Issawi, Iraq's former finance minister and arguably the Sunni sect's highest ranking representative. Issawi, who was under the protection of the powerful Abu Risha clan, avoided his fate, whatever it might have been. That was in 2012, roughly six years following Maliki's ascendency.

The following year, 2013, would see bloody clashes between Sunni and Shi'ite clans, battling for control of Baghdad streets.

Car bombs became a daily occurrence. In the days after America's Boston Bombing, a series of bombs ripped through Baghdad, killing 27.

Maliki has responded to the 2013 bombings by killing dozens of opposition demonstrators and openly censoring the otherwise relatively free post-Saddam media.

Now the country is on the brink of total dissolution, the Kurds are acting autonomously, and the rise of Sunni and Shi'ite militias is more akin to 2006 than to 2013. Just this past Saturday, 11 car bombs detonated in Baghdad, bringing the year's death toll to 2,700.

As Kim Kagan notes in the Weekly Standard, “Some of the militia activity is occurring within sight of Iraqi Security Forces checkpoints,” suggesting Maliki, “is either tolerating it or has lost control over the escalation.”

Most of these militias are U.S. military-trained, and most of these bombs target mosques and holy sites.

Meanwhile one of the only groups that could stem the tide of civil war — the Sunni Awakening Council —is fleeing the countryside, trying to get away from the wave of Al Qaeda militants whom they helped America jail.

Rest assured though, there's more reason than 500 freed prisoners to flee Iraq — the country is a pile of tinder, awaiting just the right spark to turn into all-out civil war.

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been forced gradually to cede power to Iran to prop up his regime during the grinding conflict in Syria.

The implications for the Middle East could be dramatic.

"Whether Assad stays or goes is becoming irrelevant," a diplomat in the region told Khaled Yacoub Oweis of Reuters. "The conflict is now bigger than him, and it will continue without him. Iran is calling the shots."

Assad has been increasingly leaning on Iranian troops, Hezbollah guerrilla fighters from Lebanon, and Shi'ite militias from Iraq as he preserves his elite loyalist units after 28 months of fighting.

Consequently, Hezbollah and Iranian troops have become directly involved in the command structures of Assad's forces.

"Now the operations are well-planned and the objectives are precise," Rami Abdel, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP in April. "This is because Iranian officers are on the ground, leading operations, while new Iranian weapons conceived for this kind of battle are flowing in."

Iran has had troops on the ground to fight for Assad's regime in August, and Quds forces from the foreign operations arm of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)may have been there as early as 2011.

More recently Iran has been training Syrian militias in guerrilla tactics while Iranian officers and Hezbollah fighters lead in battle.

"[Assad] can no longer call a division head and tell him to bomb the hell out of this neighborhood or that," Abu Nawar, a Jordanian military analyst, told Reuters. "His command has been eroded and the command structure is now multinational."

Right now the fighting inside Syria is most intense in Homs, which is a key corridor between Damascus, Lebanon, and the coastal Alawite heartland.

There is also talk that Assad is aiming to form an Alawite state between Homs and the coast to sequester himself and his less fervent sect of Shia Islam from wider Sunni-Muslim war playing out in Syria and Iraq.

Martin Chulov and Mona Mahmood of the Guardian report that Assad asked a well-known diplomatic figure "to approach the former Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, late last year with a request that Israel not stand in the way of attempts to form an Alawite state."

(Previous reports of sectarian cleansing of Sunnis along the coast corroborate that notion.)

Iran is primarily concerned with maintaining the Shi'ite crescent — which includes Shi'ites from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria — and is fully determined to keep its geographical link to Lebanon intact.

Here's a map of the religious breakdown of the region (click for full map):

Essentially, Iran holds sway over a huge swath of the Middle East right now (i.e. the Shi'ite crescent), with the crux being Syria.

The ongoing war in the area could drag on for years, and the outcome will alter the balance between Shias and Sunnis as well as between Iran and Israel/U.S.

As Iranian-American journalist Ali Gharib recently wrote in a Daily Best piece about the hawkish stance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "The U.S. and Iran are on a collision course, one that ends very badly for everyone involved."

SEE ALSO: Hezbollah Is Launching An Offensive That Will Profoundly Change The Syrian War

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How does a dictator define victory? In 1991, Saddam Hussein convinced himself that he had beaten America in the First Gulf War. Saddam’s army had been routed and his air force and navy pretty much destroyed. During a ground campaign lasting only 100 hours (in which, incidentally, not a single US or British soldier was killed by enemy fire in battle), Iraq was ignominiously expelled from Kuwait.

So why did Saddam think he had won? Well, at the moment of the ceasefire, he was still alive in Baghdad and able to call himself “president of Iraq”. Never mind that his foreign adventure had resulted in one of the most comprehensive military defeats of all time.

The lesson is that when it comes to claiming victory, dictators set the bar very low. We may now be seeing a version of this phenomenon in Syria. President Bashar al-Assad has lost control of swathes of his country, including the northern and southern border regions and the largely Kurdish area of the north-east. Syria's biggest city, Aleppo, is now contested territory.

True, Assad has won a series of battles in recent months, but the aim of this offensive is not to reimpose his rule over all of Syria. Instead, his relatively modest objective is to dominate a corridor of territory linking Damascus with the Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean coast around Latakia.

Put simply, Assad has written off most of Syria. He is strengthening his grip on an area of the country. But he is not, in any real sense, the president of all Syria. His writ no longer runs over most of the country – and he is not trying to change that in anything but a limited sense. In reality, he is fighting to secure his position as the most powerful warlord in a country of warlords.

In his own mind, however, Assad might believe he is winning because he still holds Damascus and his traditional heartland. I wonder if he will succumb to the Saddam definition of victory: as long as you are alive and in your capital – and your entourage of sycophants still calls you “Mr President” – then you have won.

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Hackers are are working overtime trying to embarrass Israeli startup Viber. Yesterday evening Viber’s account on the App Store was compromised and the description of the app was changed to the following message: “We created this app to spy you, please download it.” The description was changed shortly thereafter but it’s still unclear whether this was the only adjustment the hackers made to the account or whether there was more damage that has not come to light yet.

The Syrian electronic army strikes again

There’s good reason to believe that the attackers are once again from members of the hacker group calling themselves the Syrian Electronic Army, which debuted last week when they crashed Viber’s Customer Service, published details about some of Viber’s users and Tweeted a warning to Viber users to uninstall the app.

Providing context to their attacks, the hackers claimed that Viber is a branch of Israeli secret intelligence and other international spying outfits stating: “Dear Viber users, The Israeli app Viber is spying on you. We were not able to bring down all of Viber’s systems but most were designed to spy on you and to track you.” Given this history, the description change in the App Store is consistent with this particular hacker groups MO. What is shocking is how a large company like Viber hosting over 200 million users would allow itself to be embarrassed like this twice within the timeframe of a single week.

Viber argued in response that this was the result of a phishing attack against employees who have administrative access to the App Store account. It is not clear whether this is a new attack or the continued effects of the breakin from last week. The practical side to this question is will we be seeing further embarrassing episodes perpetrated against the company in days to come.

Warning: If you have “Viber” app installed we advise you to delete it, more details on: http://t.co/F5eKHPRu51#SEA#SyrianElectronicArmy

— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA12) July 23, 2013

Viber’s response – “Apple is responsible”

“A few days ago, a hacker gained access to several e-mail accounts associated with the domain Viber.com through a phishing attack. The account has since been updated. Hackers were able to recover data allowing them to corrupt our support site and gain access to our iTunes account which in turn allowed them to change the description text of our app – they also did it a few days ago while vandalizing our support site at the same time. We fixed the problem and removed the problematic account from iTunes.

“Unfortunately, on Saturday it happened again. Upon further investigation we found out that this security loophole in iTunes is still connected. It seems that when you remove a user, that user still remains connected to the account. We hope that Apple will solve the problem soon, because now we have no way to disconnect this user from our side. We have contacted Apple about this and we are waiting for their response.

“We want to reassure users and explain to them that there was no impact on the security of our users, the Viber system, the application or our databases. This is a disturbing and unfortunate case.

Viber hacked again: Viber says "Apple is at fault"

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In May CNN's Jake Tapper argued that the CIA's presence in Benghazi, where four Americans were killed in an attack on September 11, 2012, should be scrutinized.

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) agreed, saying: "There are questions that must be asked of the CIA and this must be done in a public way."

The Agency, for its part, doesn't want anyone knowing what it was doing in the Libyan port city.

On Thursday Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston of CNN reported that the CIA "is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret."

Sources told CNN that 35 Americans were in Benghazi that night — 21 of whom were working out of the annex — and that several were wounded, some seriously.

One source said: "You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation."

Among the questions are whether CIA missteps contributed to the security failure in Benghazi and, more importantly, whether the Agency's Benghazi operation had anything to do with reported heavy weapons shipments from the local port to Syrian rebels.

In short, the CIA operation is the most intriguing thing about Benghazi.

Here's what we know:

The attack

At about 9:40 p.m. local time on Sept. 11, a mob of Libyans attacked a building housing U.S. State Department personnel. At 10:20 p.m. Americans arrived from a CIA annex located 1.2 miles away, to help the besieged Americans. At 11:15 p.m. they fled with survivors back to the secret outpost.

Armed Libyans followed them and attacked the annex with rockets and small arms from around midnight to 1:00 a.m., when there was a lull in the fighting.

Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL and CIA security contractor, was with a team of Joint Special Operations Command military operators and CIA agents in Tripoli at the time of the attack. When they received word of the assault on the mission, Doherty and six others bribed the pilots of small jet with $30,000 cash for a ride to Benghazi.

At about 5:15 a.m., right after Doherty's group arrived, the attackers began shooting mortars at the annex, leading to the death of Doherty and fellow former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor Tyrone Woods.

At 6 a.m. Libyan forces from the military intelligence service arrived and subsequently took more than 30 Americans — only seven of whom were from the State Department — to the Benghazi airport.

Sources told CNN that 35 Americans were in Benghazi that night and as many as seven were wounded, some seriously, and 21 were working out of the annex.

So the CIA's response to go to the mission where Ambassador Christopher Stevens was located, after being held back for 20 minutes, saved American lives but also ended up exposing the annex.

And according to Paula Broadwell, the mistress of David Petraeus when he was CIA director, the CIA may have provided an impetus for the attack by holding prisoners: "Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back."'At its heart a CIA operation'

The top-secret presence and location of the CIA outpost was first acknowledged by Charlene Lamb, a top official in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, during Congressional testimony in October.

Representatives Jason Chaffetz and Darrell Issa immediately called a point of order when Lamb exposed the location of the annex, and asked for the revelation to be stricken from the record.

“I totally object to the use of that photo,” Chaffetz. said. “I was told specifically while I was in Libya I could not and should not ever talk about what you’re showing here today.”

In November The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. mission in Benghazi "was at its heart a CIA operation."

In January, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress that the CIA was leading a "concerted effort to try to track down and find and recover ... MANPADS [man-portable air defense systems]" looted from the stockpiles of toppled Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi.

The State Department "consulate" served as diplomatic cover for the previously-hidden annex.

Weapons from Benghazi to Syria

Also in October we reported the connection between Ambassador Stevens, who died in the attack, and a reported September shipment of SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles (i.e. MANPADS) and rocket-propelled grenades from Benghazi to Syria through southern Turkey.

That 400-ton shipment — "the largest consignment of weapons" yet for Syrian rebels — was organized by Abdelhakim Belhadj, who was the newly-appointed head of the Tripoli Military Council.

In March 2011 Stevens, the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan rebels, worked directly with Belhadj while he headed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Stevens' last meeting on Sept. 11 was with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi "to negotiate a weapons transfer in an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists."

Syrian rebels subsequently began shooting down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets with SA-7s akin to those in Qaddafi's looted stock. (The interim Libyan government also sent money and fighters to Syria.)

What did the CIA know?

Collectively these details raise the question of what the CIA knew, given that Agency operatives in Libya were rounding up SA-7s, ostensibly to destroy them, while operatives in southern Turkey were funneling weapons to the rebels.

The State Department told CNN that it was not involved in any transfer of weapons to other countries, but it "can't speak for any other agencies."

Ambassador Stevens certainly would have known if the new Libyan government was sending 400 tons of heavy weapons to Turkey from Benghazi's port.

Just like the CIA would know if those the weapons arrived in Turkey and began showing up in Syria.

Journalist Damien Spleeters created this sourced map, drawing info shared on social media such as YouTube, that gives an idea of the MANPADS presence in Syria.

We've added red tag noting the Turkish port, Iskenderun, where the massive SA-7 shipment docked.

And this map of nearby Turkish highways shows that the heavy weapons could have been transported from the port to the Syrian city of Aleppo in three hours.

Other intriguing details

This week Nancy Youssef of McClatchy reported that Ambassador Stevens twice turned down offers for additional security, despite specifically asking for more men in cables to the State Department.

Right after the attack American Matthew VanDyke, who fought with Libyan rebels during their revolution, told us he suspected that extremist groups in the nearby mountains — who felt marginalized by the new Libyan government — "saw their opportunity to pounce."

In May Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kent.) told CNN: “I’ve actually always suspected that, although I have no evidence, that maybe we were facilitating arms leaving Libya going through Turkey into Syria. ... Were they trying to obscure that there was an arms operation going on at the CIA annex? I’m not sure exactly what was going on, but I think questions ought to be asked and answered."

So now that the White House has released more than 100 pages of Benghazi emails, and the State Department's role during and after the attack have been probed ad nauseam, the only thing to explore is "whatever [the CIA] was doing."

SEE ALSO: There's A Reason Why All Of The Reports About Benghazi Are So Confusing

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Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev criticized western nations Sunday, describing interference in the Middle East as behaving "like a bull in a china shop," UPI reports. 

In an interview with Russia Today, Medvedev denounced western involvement in Syria as well as their support of the Arab Spring.

"Our Western partners sometimes behave like a bull in a china shop — they squeeze in, crush everything and then don't know what to do next," Medvedev told RT."I often find myself astonished at their analysts and how inconsistent their projects are that they push through by their superiors and at the outcomes they get."

Saying there was a civil war raging in Syria, Medvedev said, "we have always believed that the power to solve Syria's problems should lie with its people. But the active interference that we now see might potentially lead to the same problems and create yet another unstable country, in a permanent state of civil war."

Still, western nations aren't the only ones engaged in the two-year-old Syrian conflict. The U.S. has troops nearby and has been supporting rebels fighting the Assad regime with weapons and cash. On the other end lies Russia, doing the exact same thing for Assad.

Waging a proxy war isn't exactly leaving things up to the will of the people.

His comments come at a low point in U.S.-Russia relations, with NSA leaker Edward Snowden and disagreements over the situation in Syria leading the White House to consider canceling a trip to Moscow in September.

He also criticized the Arab Spring that swept a number of Middle Eastern countries:

"If we're being completely honest, what good did the Arab Spring bring to the Arab world? Did it bring freedom? A little, at best. In most countries it led to endless bloodshed, regime change, and continuous unrest. I have no illusions about that either. As for the pushing that you mentioned, yes, unfortunately, that's true," Medvedev said.

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Syria's crisis will only be solved by stamping out "terror", President Bashar al-Assad said, in reference to rebels fighting his regime.

In a rare speech on Syrian state television, Assad also dismissed the political opposition to his regime as a "failure" that could play no role in solving the country's brutal war.

"No solution can be reached with terror except by striking it with an iron fist," said Assad.

"I don't think that any sane human being would think that terrorism can be dealt with via politics," he added.

"There may be a role for politics in dealing with terrorism pre-emptively," said Assad, adding that as soon as "terrorism" has arisen, it can only be struck out.

In March 2011, a widespread protest movement calling for political change in Syria broke out.

In response, the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent, while systematically labelling dissidents and rebels as "terrorists" and refusing to recognise the existence of a popular revolt.

The movement later morphed into an increasingly radical insurgency and more than 100,000 people have since been killed, the UN says.

The war has also forced millions to flee their homes, while plunging Syria into an unprecedented economic crisis.

In his latest speech, Assad also said Syria's economic woes "are linked to the security situation, and they can only be solved by striking terror".

He meanwhile stressed the need for the army to fight on against the rebellion.

"It is true that there is a battle being fought in the media and on (the Internet), but the crisis will only be solved on the battlefield," said Assad in his 45-minute address.

He also said that any efforts towards a political solution should be combined with continued military operations.

"There cannot be any political efforts or political progress if terror is striking everywhere. Therefore terror must be struck in order to get the political process moving on the right track," Assad said.

"That does not mean that there cannot be parallel tracks. There is no reason why we shouldn't strike terror while at the same time working politically," he added.

Assad's comments come amid faltering efforts to push forward a US-Russian proposal for peace talks dubbed Geneva 2, which would see regime representatives and the opposition gathering for negotiations.

In his speech, Assad lashed out against the main opposition National Coalition, describing it as a "failure".

"This opposition is not reliable ... and it has no role in solving the crisis," Assad said.

He accused the Coalition of "being on the payroll of more than one Gulf country", and of "blaming the (Syrian) state for terrorism rather than blaming the armed men", or rebels.

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AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebels said on Thursday they targeted President Bashar al-Assad's motorcade heading to a Damascus mosque to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, but state television showed him unharmed and the government denied he had been attacked.

The Tahrir al-Sham rebel brigade, a unit of the Free Syrian Army, said it fired several artillery shells towards Assad's convoy in the heart of the capital and that at least some hit their target.

If confirmed, the attack would be one of the most direct against Assad in two years of conflict which have pitched mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against the Alawite president.

Rebels have targeted Assad's residences in Damascus and a bombing in the capital last year killed four of his inner circle, but there have been no reports of Assad himself coming under fire.

Video footage distributed by the Tahrir al-Sham rebels showed smoke rising from what it said was the Malki district, where Assad and his close aides have homes. Other activists also reported rocket fire into the area.

Syria's government denied the reports. "The news is wholly untrue," Information Minister Omran Zoabi said.

Firas al-Bitar, head of the Tahrir al-Sham brigade, said his fighters had carried out reconnaissance of the route of Assad's motorcade and fired 120 mm artillery towards the president's convoy early on Thursday.

"The attack rattled the regime, even if Assad was not hit," he told Reuters from an undisclosed location in the capital. "There were two motorcades, one containing Assad and a decoy. We targeted the correct one."

Bitar's brigade operates mainly in the Ghouta region on the eastern outskirts of the capital. Another official in Tahrir al-Sham said Assad's forces fired rockets and artillery "like rain" on the region in response to the reported attack.

Following the statement, Syrian state television showed footage of Assad praying alongside ministers and other top officials. It said the footage was from Thursday's Eid prayers at the Anas bin Malek Mosque in Malki.

Assad appeared unharmed and smiled at the worshippers as he entered the mosque.

Islam Alloush of the Liwa al-Islam, another rebel brigade, told Reuters earlier on Thursday that rebels fired rockets which struck Assad's motorcade.

"Assad was not hit but the information we have based from sources within the regime is that there were casualties within his entourage," Allooush said.

Other activists also reported rockets were fired into the Malki area, which was sealed off by security forces.

(Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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If this isn't absurd, I don't know what is.

The Atlantic today ran a post detailing how arms deals with Russia to supply Afghans with helicopters (that they can't even use) not only tie the Russian defense industry to continued influence over the Afghan government, but also inadvertently support a former KGB agent's efforts to arm Syria's Bashar al Assad.

In fact, this arms dealer is trying to supply Syria with S300 surface to air missiles, the same ones that Israel warned could take down one of their airliners.

Let that sink in for a second.

The Atlantic's Sonni Efron points out that the head of the defense company in question, Rosoboronexport, is "Sergey Chemezov, Putin's KGB buddy from their days together in East Germany."

That company is in line to get about a billion dollars in taxpayer dollars to help arm and then later supply the Afghan Air Force. Presumably, Afghanistan will pay the continuing service contracts, but considering the continued financial support the US has pledged to Afghanistan, it's safe to say Washington will be in bed with Rosoboroexport for a while.

Unless they cancel the contract.

This type of absurdity happened more recently when the U.S. OK'd Qatar and Saudi Arabia in 2011 to arm Libyan rebels. Shortly after, in 2012, Mark Mazetti of the New York Times wrote about how Washington freaked out upon realizing those weapons were getting in the hands of radical jihadis.

Ironically, Mazetti felt the need to note in the second graph of that post that "there was no evidence" that those same weapons were used in the assault on Benghazi.

In other words, no one has any idea if they were or not.

If there's ever a reason to cancel a dubious contract with a dubious KGB-run arms company, it's that Washington can't be sure of the consequences.

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Al Qaeda in Iraq has rebranded itself, adopted a new name, and some new tactics, and devoted itself to toppling the Bashar Al Assad regime in Syria, according to Liz Sly with the Washington Post. 

In addition to the suicide bombing, kidnappings, and beheadings the Islamic extremist organization is known for, they have added a new pitch to their repetoire — handing out Teletubbies.

The Post report details how Al Qaeda fighters in Syria recently handed out toys to children in the war torn city of Aleppo. It comes as an effort to "win hearts and minds," ironically the slogan the U.S. military used amidst counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

"The gift-giving suggests that the extremists have learned some lessons from Iraq, where they alienated local populations with their harsh tactics," writes Sly. 

Operating under a new name — the Islamic State — the fighters have emerged as one of the most violent and powerful factions in 2-year-old conflict that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

Their soft-side approach in Syria mimics that of a letter written by the head of Al Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula in 2012, Nasser al-Wahishi. The letter — sent to Qaeda's leaders and a copy of which Associated Press reporters found in Mali — encouraged water works and electricity projects, rather than Islamic summary maimings.

It even gave advice on how to best conduct trash pick-ups.

“Try to win them over through the conveniences of life, it will make them sympathize with us and make them feel that their fate is tied to ours,” wrote Wahishi.

From the Associated Press report about the Mali letter:

After its failure in Iraq, say experts who were shown the correspondence, the terror network realized that it is not enough to win territory: They must also learn to govern it if they hope to hold it.

Consequently, Al Qaeda conducted summary executions and maimings in Mali — they even outlawed music— and subsequently lost any potential support they might have ever gained from the people.

Check out the video of Al Qaeda winning hearts and minds in Aleppo:

SEE ALSO: Iran Is Increasingly Calling The Shots For Assad In Syria

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The Syrian Electronic Army — a group of hackers that may or may not be allied with the Assad regime in civil war-torn Syria — has struck again.

The hacks happened despite Twitter beefing up password security after several accounts, including the White House, were hacked several months ago.

This time, some reporters appear to be the victims. Here's who was hit:

Jason Reid, Washington Post sports columnist:

Mets beat reporter Mike Puma of the New York Post:

The social media management and analytic firm SocialFlow was also allegedly hacked, and the SEA showed this screen grab of the inside one of its dashboards:

The New York Post's main account is up and running , and seems to be unaffected.

UPDATE: This post originally said that Sara Morrison, media reporter for the Wrap, was hacked. While Morrison did tweet as if she had been hacked, she was, alas, joking.

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Nowhere has been hotter this summer in terms of war than Syria. 

The uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which is now in its 29th month, has broken the country into three parts, while Iran increases its influence over the Assad regime.

On the ground it's basically mayhem as the Syrian Army is counterattacking around the capital, al-Qaeda linked rebels are running most of the country's biggest city (i.e. Aleppo), the regime is besieging the third largest (i.e. Homs), and the Kurds are fighting rebels to gain control of the country's northeast.

All in all, it doesn't seem to be cooling down. 

Children holding guns is now a reality.

Same goes with children using them in battle.

No wonder children are "playing" by staging mock funerals.