Russia Says Syria Agrees to Cross-Border Aid Operations

Russia, one of Bashar al-Assad’s key allies, said that the Syrian government has agreed to allow cross-border aid access from Iraq, Turkey and Jordan. If true, the move would come after months of condemnation from the U.N. and other aid groups who say the lack of access has cut off hundreds of thousands of Syrians in rebel-held areas.

Reuters reports that Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said his country “has gained Syrian approval to open four border crossings from Iraq, Jordan and Turkey to deliver aid to millions of people under a ‘far-reaching formula’ proposed to U.N. Security Council members.”

Officials familiar with the plan “said it involved using international monitors to inspect humanitarian aid convoys entering Syria. Veto-wielding council members – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia – have been negotiating a humanitarian resolution drafted by Australia, Luxembourg and Jordan to boost aid deliveries in Syria, including across rebel-held borders. Russia presented its formula to those seven states on Tuesday.”

U.N. Warns of Wider Sectarian War Across Syria, Iraq

Reuters also says U.N. investigators released a report Tuesday warning that the Middle East appears to be on the brink of wider sectarian war that would engulf Syria and with extremist rebels kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians at will.

“We predicted a long time ago the dangers of spillover both ways, which is now becoming a regional spillover,” Vitit Muntarbhorn, an international law expert who took part in the inquiry, told the wire. “We are possibly on the cusp of a regional war and that is something we’re very concerned about.”

The report also said foreign Sunni jihadi militants and funds are flooding into Syria, where ISIS and other extremist groups have been committing acts of violence against remaining civilians.

“A regional war in the Middle East draws ever closer. Events in neighboring Iraq will have violent repercussions for Syria,” it said. Already in Syria, “growing numbers of radical fighters are targeting not only Sunni [Muslim] communities under their control but also minority communities including the Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Armenians, Druze and Kurds.”

OPCW: Chlorine Gas Likely Used in Syria

The Daily Star reports that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is working with the U.N. to remove the Syrian government’s chemical weapons cache, said that chlorine gas has likely been used in Syria in the last year.

“The information that was available to the fact-finding mission lends credence to the view that toxic chemicals – most likely pulmonary irritating agents, such as chlorine – have been used in Syria,” it said in a report. The group also referred to a May attack on OPCW personnel attempting to carry out a fact-finding mission in the Hama province village of Kafr Zeita, where chlorine has allegedly been used several times.

Though the OPCW did not say who was behind the use of the chlorine, anti-regime activists allege that the regime dropped it by helicopter, enmeshed in crude barrel bombs.

U.S. Weighs Anti-ISIS Strategy in Iraq and Syria

Massimo Calabresi of Time magazine reports on how the U.S. government is weighing what action, if any, it will take against ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq.

If “current and former government counterterrorism officials learned at least one important lesson from the fight against al-Qaida allies in Iraq and elsewhere: restraint,” he writes. “For them, ISIS looks like a growing threat to the U.S., but not an imminent one, for now focused more on its enemies in the region than on Americans thousands of miles away. That buys the U.S. time to see if others can address the threat and to weigh helping them if necessary.”

A U.S. counterterrorism official tells the magazine: “One of the big questions right now is whether [ISIS] can turn its tactical victories in Iraq into strategic gains. With only a few thousand fighters, [ISIS] couldn’t have moved as rapidly as it has without the support of some nationalist Sunni groups and sympathetic tribes, some of which are merely drafting off of [ISIS’s] advances and may not cooperate over the long haul.”

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team

NY Times: Don’t Fight in Iraq and Ignore Syria

WSJ: Shiite Militias Decamping From Syria to Fight in Iraq

BBC: Defiance Inside Damascus Rebel Suburb

AP: Activists Say Car Bomb in Eastern Syria Kills 5