Foreign Digest: Philippines, Syria, Persian Gulf States, Ukraine and Iran

Philippines: Two United States citizens were among 19 Communist guerillas killed in a raid by the Filipino armed forces earlier this month. Communists have been conducted a long-time insurgency in the Philippines. The Filipino Government warned Americans not to join the insurgency through left-wing recruiters in America. Marxists believe in advancing socialism and dictatorship through any means necessary, including violence. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, several Marxist insurgencies have been put down, but the Philippines and Colombia are the two battlegrounds in the world where Communists and Marxists remain engaged in armed conflict. Syria: The first trial of Syria’s Assad regime members for human rights violations have begun. The Baathist tyrant Bashar Assad was overthrown in September 2024, after his family had ruled for 24 years before Turkish-backed Islamist rebels overthrew him, after an eleven-year civil war. As I have posted, the new Syrian Government has begun a transition to an elective parliamentary government that includes religious and ethnic minorities and women, and has been unifying autonomous provinces ruled by minorities, has dismantled the state-run Captagon narcotic industry, is making peace with Lebanon and other neighbors, and is cooperating with the United States against Islamist terrorists like the Islamic State, the offshoot of al-Qaeda that had committed the deadliest terrorist attacks in history in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks on America. Assad was a terrorist-sponsoring ally of Iran who was backed by the Islamic Republic and the Russian Federation, which still maintains a naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean Coast. Syria is engaging Ukraine diplomatically, as Iran has been supplying Russia with missiles used in its aggression against Ukraine. Persian Gulf States, Ukraine and Iran: Ukraine has negotiated security agreements with several Arab States in the Persian Gulf to defend them against Iranian missiles, based on Ukrainian experience defending against Russian-launched Iranian missiles with drones. The Islamic Republic of Iran launched missiles last week at several Arab States, Cyprus, Turkey and Israel after Israel and the United States launched attacks against the Iranian nuclear warhead and missile programs. American bases were among the targets of Iran. Ukraine is thus supplanting America’s role as the protectress of the Gulf. Ukraine, which is emerging as the leader of the Free World, recognizes the geopolitical security need to confront Russia and its allies, like Iran, around the globe. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Iran has been fomenting Islamist revolutionary, especially among fellow Shi’ites around the Islamic world, and is the worst state sponsor of terrorism. The Islamic Republic has been in conflict with the U.S. from its inception, when it tolerated the takeover and hostage-taking of the American Embassy in late 1979, had clashed with American forces in the Persian Gulf in the 1980s, and has sponsored terrorists and guerillas who have killed hundreds of Americans around the Middle East over decades. Iran has sponsored terrorist attacks Muslims and Jews throughout the Middle East, and even as far away as Argentina.