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Israel’s interests are simple: a post-conflict Syria in which Iran has as little role as possible. No role is not possible. But Israel’s focus is to keep Iranian forces or Iranian proxies several tens of miles back from Israel’s borders at a minimum (50-60 kilometers, this article says)

The other just as critical goal is to keep Iranian missiles and air defense systems from anywhere on Syrian soil.

Entous’s article argued that UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel each want a rapprochment between the US and Russia because only that will make possible or give Russia an interest in pushing back or restraining Iran, most specifically in Syria

Russia has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution extending the mandate of the only official mission investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Russia has rejected a separate report from UN human rights investigators blaming the Syrian government.

But Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzia accused the US and others of trying to embarrass Russia.

Don't back North Korea into a corner, Putin warns

Putin did not mention the U.S. specifically on Thursday, but warned of the growing possibility of conflict and pointed out that North Korea is a "sovereign country."

A series of missile and nuclear tests has rattled North Korea's neighbors. The U.S. has responded with sanctions. North Korea's foreign minister last month stated that Trump had "declared war" on his country and that Kim's regime would consider shooting down American bombers. The White House later described the notion that the U.S. had declared war "absurd."

No one really knows all that much about North Korea's nuclear or conventional military capability or its strategic agenda. Are its nuclear missiles reliably lethal, are they as long-ranged and accurate as hyped, and are they under secure command and control?

North Korea: The knowns and unknowns

Beijing enjoys playing dumb from time to time as it unleashes North Korea to threaten the West and consume American time, money and military resources in Asia and the Pacific.

Another day, another threat by North Korea to stage an "unimaginable" strike on the U.S. amid tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

"The U.S. is running amok by introducing under our nose the targets we have set as primary ones. The U.S. should expect it would face unimaginable strike at an unimaginable time," the North's Korean Central News Agency said Thursday. 

Donald Trump on Saturday said “only one thing will work” in dealing with North Korea, after previous administrations had talked to Pyongyang without results.

Trump did not make clear to what he was referring. Amid rising tension and exchanges of insults with the nuclear-armed regime of Kim Jong-un, Trump has previously said the US will destroy North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies.

Asked to clarify his cryptic “calm before the storm” remark earlier this week, which was made to reporters ushered into a dinner with military leaders, he said: “Nothing to clarify.”

North Korea building its BIGGEST EVER submarine to put enemies in nuke firing line

The U.S. Navy is conducting joint drills with South Korea navy in a show of sea and air power designed to warn off North Korea from any military action. Including the deployment of USS Ronald Reagan, a 100,000-ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Pyongyang does not plan to hold any talks with Washington about its nuclear program, a senior North Korean diplomat said on Friday, declaring that possessing nuclear weapons was a matter of life and death for North Korea, the RIA news agency reported.

Tension has soared on the peninsula following a series of weapons tests by North Korea and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“We are convinced that its implementation will promote the lessening of military activity and tension on the Korean peninsula and the forming in Northeastern Asia of a system of equal and indivisible security,” he said.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime as a threat to regional security

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis

“North Korean provocations continue to threaten regional and global security despite unanimous condemnation by the United Nations Security Council,” Mr. Mattis said

No sitting US president has ever met a North Korean leader. Mr Trump reportedly accepted the offer to do so on the spot when it was relayed by South Korean envoys on Thursday, taking his own administration by surprise.

Another top White House official, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, stressed the "clear" objective of the talks was getting rid of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula, and restated that the US expects there to be no missile or nuclear test ahead of the meeting.

Trump: North Korea 'wants peace'At a political rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Mr Trump told supporters he believed North Korea wanted to "make peace".

US President Donald Trump has said his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could either fail or lead to the "greatest deal for the world".At a political rally in Pennsylvania, Mr Trump told supporters he believed North Korea wanted to make peace. But he said he might leave the talks quickly if it didn't look like progress for nuclear disarmament could be made.In his speech, the US leader warned of tariffs on European cars, and launched his slogan for re-election in 2020.

He also said he believed the North Koreans would honour their commitment not to test any more missiles. Mr Trump told the crowd: "I think they want to make peace, I think it's time."

The US has made "zero concessions" with its sanctions, said Vice-President Mike Pence, following news of the upcoming meeting being agreed. He said he believed North Korea's willingness to talk proved the US strategy of isolating the country was working.

Trump's team has repeatedly criticized previous administrations for giving North Korea concessions in exchange for negotiations that never halted the state's nuclear weapons program. The Republican may now be making that same mistake, analysts warned.

The rogue state has extended a number of olive branches in recent weeks, including peace talks with Seoul and participation at the Winter Olympics. Kim also pledged to refrain from further nuclear or missile tests and understands that joint military exercises between Seoul and Washington — one of the North's major points of contention — must continue, South Korea's National Security Office head Chung Eui-yon said on Thursday.

Trump is being "played by Pyongyang" and is "unwittingly preempting himself of the one effective non-lethal policy he has, sanctions enforcement," according to Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korean studies professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

President Donald Trump accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the White House said Thursday, a meeting that would mark the first time a serving U.S. president has sat down with the leadership of the heavily militarized and diplomatically isolated country.

American officials acknowledged that it was unusual for such a face-to-face session to be arranged without an extensive series of preparatory meetings between lower-ranking officials

But a failure by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim to make headway could lead each side to double down on their demands and perhaps heighten the possibility of conflict.

Donald Trump’s sudden acceptance of a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has cast a cloud of uncertainty over Washington, with few details emerging over the terms of a potentially historic meeting that is fraught with risk.

Trump later tweeted that “the deal with North Korea is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the world. Time and place to be determined”.

Nonetheless, Trump has expressed his confidence in the North’s sincerity. On Saturday, he tweeted: “North Korea has not conducted a Missile Test since November 28, 2017 and has promised not to do so through our meetings. I believe they will honor that commitment!”

The good news is that the Trump administration has adopted an approach toward North Korea that goes beyond trading insults, or missiles. They are going to talk.  The bad news? Donald Trump intends to do it himself.“I’m elated and horrified at the same time,” said Jim Walsh, a senior research associate at the MIT Security Studies Program and a board member of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “Elated because the parties are talking; horrified by the prospect of the two most unusual leaders in the world together in a room—what could possibly go wrong?”

So, why not have Trump and Kim meet? Direct talks between America’s and North Korea’s heads of state have never been tried, and nothing else has worked. A summit might be a good idea because it is unprecedented.

Trump may have fantasies of being a ruler like Kim, but he is not. In most matters—and certainly those pertaining to Korea—he is his opposite. He is no policy expert, and he has driven out or failed to appoint specialists to advise him. He disdains expertise and experience as a matter of rule, preferring to make great decisions by instinct—his faith in his gut is wider than his considerable waist. He is driven first and foremost by self-promotion, his degree of calculation is tweet deep; and he has set himself up—“I alone can fix this!”—to be a sucker for the grandstand play. He craves spectacle.

As South Korea’s national-security adviser told it on Thursday, Donald Trump will meet with Kim Jong Un this spring for one purpose only: to achieve the “permanent denuclearization” of North Korea. But according to one of the U.S. officials who came closest to striking that kind of deal, the president better lower his expectations. By a lot.

“I don’t think [the North Koreans are] going to want to negotiate giving up all their nuclear weapons,” he added. “But even if they did … I have no idea how we could verify it.”

The years since have brought a series of nuclear agreements that at times froze the North Korean nuclear program, but over the long term failed to prevent the North from becoming a nuclear-weapons state. The achilles heel of many of these accords was the Kim government’s refusal to disclose all its nuclear activities and permit outside monitors to verify that those activities had ceased.

One is an egomaniacally unhinged, nuclear-armed neophyte, who scares his allies and enemies alike. So is the other. The extraordinary prospect of direct talks between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un would be a delicious moment of karma among kooky world leaders. If it weren’t for their ability to destroy half the planet.

One thing is already clear about this half-baked idea: Trump is more likely to spill his guts about classified intelligence than he is to get the upper hand with any kind of meaningful deal.

We have some recent history to underscore that point. It was only on Saturday that our dear leader spilled his guts about this North Korean deal at the Gridiron dinner.

Kennedy was in Springfield to campaign for Democrats running for House and Senate seats in the 1962 midterm elections. Before delivering a public speech at the Illinois State Fairgrounds, the president paid a private visit to Lincoln’s tomb. On his way to the tomb, an “employee of the Illinois Department of Public Safety” noticed two men along the president’s motorcade route with a rifle.

If Kennedy had been killed or wounded in Springfield, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and a core of advisers already leaning toward some type of airstrike or invasion of Cuba probably would have approved such an attack. An assassination attempt on a U.S. president amid an “eyeball to eyeball” confrontation with the Soviet Union would have led many officials to suspect Kremlin involvement. The Soviets had already been caught lying over the missiles in Cuba, and any Soviet denials regarding the attempted assassination of Kennedy would have been seen in the same light.

According to the Secret Service report, the alert public safety official “saw a rifle barrel with telescopic sight protruding from a second-story window. The local police took into custody and delivered to Special Agents of the Secret Service” two men who were brothers-in-law. The Secret Service noted that “a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle and a full box of .22 long rifle ammunition was seized.” The men admitted “pointing the gun out the window on the parade route. However, they claimed that they had merely been testing the power of the telescopic sight to determine if it would be worthwhile to remove it in order to get a better look at the President when the motorcade returned.

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met for the first time at a historic summit Friday.The neighbors technically remain at war.

One of the key issues to be addressed is North Korea’s nuclear program, which has been at the center of tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang, as well alarming China and the United States.The inter-Korean meeting precedes an equally high-stakes diplomatic gambit involving President Donald Trump and Kim. However, the date and location for that summit remains uncle

If the current overture bears fruit, it will be one of the ironies of history that Kim Jong Un’s bloody consolidation of power provided him with the impunity to pursue peace with his nation’s mortal enemy, the United States. Believed to have ordered the deaths of anyone viewed as a potential threat to his rule, Kim also personally oversaw the acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile programs. The biggest question now is whether he is actually willing to cede ground on what has been North Korea’s long-held ambition to be a nuclear power.

President Donald Trump is likely to scrap the Iran nuclear deal, French President Emanuel Macron said, adding that he is working on containing the damage with an ambitious new diplomatic framework.Macron made the comments during a roundtable with reporters Wednesday night on the eve of his trip home following three days of high-stakes meetings with Trump about the thorniest foreign policy issues facing the two leaders.

acron said he told Trump during their private talks that killing the deal “would open Pandora’s box,” adding: “I don’t think your president wants to make war with Iran.

Macron acknowledged that, while he has had talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, he does not know how Iran would respond given deep divisions in the regim