“It is time we gave them the wherewithal to fight back and stop the slaughter,” said Senator John McCain on Monday, referring to Syria’s opposition amid the carnage being wrought by the Assad regime’s efforts to quash a year-old …
Turkey
Could Arming the Rebels Bring an End to Syria’s Suffering?
All Western interventions in messy civil wars on distant shores seem impossible until they become inevitable. Yet, not even the horrors being visited on an effectively defenseless civilian population by the Syrian regime’s …
Why Syrians Fight, and Why Their Civil War May be a Long One
The reason that there’s no plausible end-game in Syria anytime soon — and that thousands more Syrians may be fated to die before the conflict is ended — is that the Assad regime is fighting a very different war to the one …
Russia and China Challenge the West on Syria: What Implications for Iran?
The breach among the Permanent Five members of the U.N. Security Council in Saturday’s vote on Syria’s increasingly bloody power struggle could have profound implications for Syria’s immediate future. But it may also signal …
How a Regional ‘Great Game’ Reinforces Syria’s Deadlock
Syria itself was the product of a “Great Game” among rival empires. The nation-state we know as Syria today was invented by France and Britain, which carved it out of the old Ottoman province of Syria (which back then included …
U.N. Security Council Meets: Syria’s Assad May Be Under Pressure, but He’s Not on His Way Out Yet
As geopolitical heavyweights gather in New York on Tuesday for a U.N. Security Council discussion on Syria’s increasingly bloody struggle for power, the Obama Administration insists the writing is on the wall: Syrian President …
Israel’s Bombing Threat Helped Spur Iran Sanctions, How Will it Affect Iran Diplomacy?
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are due to start three days of talks in Tehran, Sunday, “to resolve all outstanding substantive issues” over Iran’s nuclear work. They plan to hear Tehran’s response to questions raised in the most recent IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear work, which cited evidence of research activity — …
French Draft Law On Armenian Genocide Rocks Franco-Turkish Relations
Anyone who hoped that calm and harmony might somehow prevail after the passage of a French bill criminalizing denial of the 1915 genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was mightily disappointed Monday night. Adoption of that …
Amid New Sanctions, Obama Confronts the Challenges of Diplomacy with Iran
Despite the deafening racket of the mass-media drums of war, neither President Obama nor the Pentagon has an appetite for a confrontation with Iran that could unleash havoc across the Middle East and would at best simply delay …
The Fate of Bashar Assad: Will He Be the Next Gaddafi or the Next Milosevic?
The fighting words from Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who vowed Tuesday to hold on to power and crush his opponents with “an iron fist”, were optimistically interpreted by some as the bluster of a doomed man. To be sure, the …
Fareed Zakaria: It’s Not the Islamists You Should Worry About
In his column in the latest issue of TIME magazine, Fareed Zakaria points to the specter seemingly hanging over the Middle East — the rise of Islamist political parties in Arab Spring countries like Egypt — and dispels its menace. Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood appear genuine in their commitments to democratic and constitutional …
Can Diplomacy Save an American Condemned to Death in Iran?
The bad news for Amir Mirzai Hekmati, the 28-year-old American sentenced to death in Tehran on Monday for allegedly spying for the CIA, is that the state of relations between Iran and the U.S. makes Iran’s leaders indifferent, at …
Why New Sanctions Raise Danger of Iran Building Nuclear Weapons
The White House believes the latest round of saber rattling from Iran is a sign that sanctions are beginning to bite. Perhaps. But as the U.S. and its European partners move to throttle Iran’s economy by cutting off its ability
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