The battle over the Syrian town Ras al-Ain on the border to Turkey damaged Turkish relations with the Kurds in Syria, and with parts of Syrian opposition… Continue reading
Should Iran give more importance to Syria than to the Khuzestan region… Continue reading
The Turkish-Iranian relationship is primed for problems due to differing geopolitical and sectarian interests… Continue reading
Israel forces carried out a strike overnight on a convoy coming from Syria in the Lebanon-Syria border area… Continue reading
What can the United States can do to counteract the glaring Islamization of rebel ranks… Continue reading
Western policy is now putting into power yet another anti-Western regime that will oppress its own people and put a high priority on trying to wipe out Israel… Continue reading
Turkey’s membership in NATO has many unique dimensions, including in the number of missile-related crises the country has experienced… Continue reading
The civil war in Syria is moving into the end-game… Continue reading
Of all the Christian communities in Syria, the Assyrians, that is, those Christians who identify as such by virtue of belonging to the Assyrian Church of the East, arguably have the most complex relationship with the Assad regime… Continue reading
Is the resurgent of Al-Qaida in Iraq a result from the growing civil war in Syria… Continue reading
The Syrian crisis is a good test of the strength of the Russia-Turkish detente… Continue reading
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, proposed that the crisis in Syria be addressed through diplomatic methods and called for the establishment of an international mechanism for dialogue… Continue reading
It is obvious that the Syrian National Council was a Muslim Brotherhood front group, yet the Obama Administration backed it any way… Continue reading
The Turkish government appears to hope to deter the continued Syrian – and Iranian – deployment of the Kurdish card against Turkey… Continue reading
Focus is everything — knowing what the central problem is, and dealing with it… Continue reading
The closer one gets to ground level in the Middle East, the crazier things become… Continue reading
One of the mantras from Israel’s supposed foreign well-wishers is that the country is now “isolated.” Sure, on the surface this makes sense… Continue reading
Ammar Abdulhamid may know more about Syria’s civil war than anyone else in the world. That’s no exaggeration. Barry Rubin interviewed Abdulhamid on the latest developments and trends… Continue reading
The tide seems to be turning in Syria… Continue reading
After Syria’s downing of a Turkish aircraft over the eastern Mediterranean, the question is not so much why Syria shot it down as why the two neighbors have become embroiled in a confrontation in the first place… Continue reading
Here’s still another of a series of self-serving leaks from the Obama Administration. In this case, it reveals something very important about policy… Continue reading
There are three possible outcomes to the Syrian civil war… Continue reading
Spain 1936. An army revolt against the democratically elected government sets off a civil war. Syria 2012. The people revolt against the dictatorship setting off a civil war… Continue reading
When a delegation of Syrian Kurdish rebels recently visited Washington DC, the State Department met them to ask for a favor. What was it?… Continue reading
Suppose you read in the Washington Post about a democratic politician who was a refugee from persecution by a dictatorship. Would you be surprised to learn that he was in fact a vicious antisemite… Continue reading
The Muslim Brotherhood was established in Syria in 1945 by disciples of Hassan al-Banna. At first it focused on educational and societal activities… Continue reading
The Damascus Declaration was a statement of unity by Syrian opposition figures issued October 16, 2005 criticizing the Assad regime… Continue reading
Authoritarian regimes have traditionally been disinclined to accept any political or social opposition and have been hostile to the development of an independent civil society that could form a counterweight to state power… Continue reading














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