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.

Iranian militiamen on Tuesday (June 16) killed a group of shepherds in the countryside of Raqqa Governorate in northeastern Syria.

Citing the Al-Khabour news website and local sources, Call Syria reported, "The massacre took place yesterday afternoon, Tuesday, when Iranian militias launched an attack on the homes of shepherds near the village of "Ghanem Al-Ali" in the southeastern countryside of Raqqa."

Horrifying 'souvenir' footage taken from a member of the Iraqi regime-backed 'Imam Ali' extremist Shiite militia shows a Sunni Iraqi man being burnt alive by members of the militia, which is is one of those currently involved in fighting against Daesh (the so-called 'Islamic State') in Iraq.

A United Nations report revealed that Iran has been arming the Houthis since 2009, confirming accusations made by Arab and Western countries against Tehran regarding its support of the Houthis who have been in control of Yemeni state institutions since last September.

The details were revealed in an UN report by a panel of experts was presented to the Security Council's Iran Sanctions Committee at a time when the UN is seeking to broker a return to peace talks.

Syrian state TV Thursday abruptly suspended its non-news and political programming in a telling sign of how sharply the tide has turned against President Bashar Assad’s regime in recent weeks.

01-04-2015: The geographic range of the Tehran-backed foreign mercenaries deployed in Syria to fight for the Assad regime continues to expand, with Souria.Net publishing photographs from rebels in Jisr al Shughour in Idlib province of an African mercenary killed in clashes there. Rebels in the region report that they are now seeing increasing numbers of African fighters alongside the regime’s Shiite mercenaries from Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, with North Korean and Filipino fighters also fighting for Assad.

Iraq and Syria no longer exist.

By now, the world has gotten used to maps showing how ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Free Syrian Army, the Assad regime, the Baghdad government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Sunni tribes, Iranian-backed militia groups, and various other actors have filled the vacuum in the countries still officially known as Iraq and Syria.

#Iran, 30-04-2015: 'Iranian destroyers, sent to the Gulf of Aden to protect commercial ships, have reached the entrance of Bab el-Mandab, a strategic strait between Yemen and Djibouti, Iran's navy said Thursday.

In another sign of tensions between Gulf rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, the Saudi charge d'affaires was summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran to hear a "strong protest" over Saudi military action which prevented an Iranian plane from landing in Sanaa.