Shortly after Israeli warplanes struck inside Syria to take out Iranian missiles intended for Hezbollah, Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said, "The attack carried out by the Zionist regime will shorten this fake regime's life."
Qatar is poised to turn over control of the Syrian Embassy in its capital city of Doha to the main opposition group fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.
Governments around the world expelled Syrian ambassadors and diplomats Tuesday, an unusual, coordinated blow to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime following a gruesome massacre that the United Nations said involved close-range shootings of scores of children and parents in their homes.
Syrian troops advanced Wednesday on a key rebel-held neighborhood in Homs, and an official vowed it would be "cleansed," raising fears of a ground operation to retake all of the central city, which has become a symbol of the uprising to oust President Bashar Assad.
The United States and Syria this week engaged in a diplomatic showdown that resulted in Washington and Damascus recalling their ambassadors, as tensions increased over Syria's bloody assault on unarmed demonstrators.
The Obama administration pulled its ambassador out of Syria over security concerns, blaming President Bashar Assad's regime for the threats that made it no longer safe for Robert Ford to remain. The Syrian government quickly ordered home its envoy to the United States, raising the diplomatic stakes.
The Justice Department has charged a Syrian-born U.S. citizen with spying on Americans demonstrating against Syria's Assad regime and passing that information on to Syria intelligence officers to intimidate the protesters.
Syrians protesting against the Assad regime in London and elsewhere abroad say that Syrian Embassy officials have harassed them and that their families in Syria have been intimidated, beaten and even tortured.
The State Department is investigating charges that Syrian diplomats are spying on Syrian anti-government demonstrators in Washington and other U.S. cities in order to intimidate their relatives in the restive Middle Eastern nation.
