Syrian activists have raised doubts over the status of the Chinese company, Fidi Contracting, that’s just signed a major contract to invest in the Hasiya Free Trade Zone in Homs and the Adra Free Trade Zone in rural Damascus. The activists revealed that their investigations could find no online presence for the company and they’ve been unable to find any trace of its involvement in business in China or any other countries.

It was another fine speech. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, with his usual mournful gravity, warned the world this week that the situation in Gaza had reached “the cruellest phase yet.” A humanitarian catastrophe. Famine. Children dying. “A moral outrage,” he called it. And then what? A press release. Another grim statement filed under “Too Late, Again.” If the UN were judged not by the eloquence of its leaders but by the lives it failed to save, its headquarters might as well be a mausoleum.

The UN’s Original Sin: Doing Nothing Loudly

US President Donald Trump today concludes a historic whirlwind Middle East tour, but the message he leaves behind is louder than any press conference: Saudi Arabia is in ascendance, and Israel — under Benjamin Netanyahu — is being shown the door.

Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Alexei Yerkhov, on Tuesday offered his country’s help in stabilizing Syria, warning that the country’s unity is under growing threat. Speaking to Turkish media, Yerkhov pointed to worsening sectarian tensions, infrastructure collapse, and expanding Israeli control in the south, adding: “It is clear that the country is experiencing internal divisions, with the potential for these divisions to worsen.”

In a statement that might have been mistaken for satire if it weren’t official policy, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian announced this week that Iran would "pause engagement" with Syria "until stability is restored."

The remark, from an interview with Russia Today, also published by Russian state news agency TASS on Friday, comes just over four months after the collapse of the Assads' bloody regime, propped up by Tehran for almost 14 years.

Britain’s Lord Peter Hain, formerly Tony Blair’s foreign minister, has uncharacteristically expressed concern about human rights in Syria, though only insofar as these extend to the PKK/SDF, which has been reliant on Western military support since 2014.

After the US government announced on Monday (December 9) that it is to impose sanctions on Fawaz al-Akhras, the father of Asma al-Assad, the ‘First Lady of Hell’, now in Moscow with her deposed tyrant husband, attention is turning to the other connections of the Assads and their extended family.