Worldcrunch
After an attack on soldiers by supporters of the former Assad regime, a wave of violence has left more than 1,300 dead in the Alawite region, the Assad stronghold. The transitional president is calling for unity, but he must reassure minorities and rein in his more radical supporters.
Israel has killed thousands of Hamas fighters. But the Gaza-based terrorist organization has not yet been completely destroyed, nor have its allied militias in the region.
Replacing the dominant roles of Russia and Iran exerting influence over Syria, following the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey and Israel are best positioned to divide up their respective roles on the territory of the shared neighbor.
After meeting Bashar al-Assad, then heir to the Syrian dictatorship, then Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said he feared for the country’s future.
Events have moved very quickly in the past week in Syria, with the demise of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Amid questions over how the country will be run and fears of more conflict, experts parse the national and international influences at play.
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, there are many questions about the future of Syria. Yet the regional and international powers who planned his collapse did not consider the Syrian people or their future in their calculations. Syrians may be out of Assad’s frying pan, but they’ve been thrown into a fire of armed fundamentalist groups.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out a careful plot to push and ultimately shatter the long-established “rules of engagement” in the Middle East. It caught everyone, from Iran to Hezbollah to the White House, by surprise. The aim is to remake the whole region to revolve around Israel.
Russia’s decision to send troops into Syria in defense of its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, is now at the center of a major diplomatic standoff between Moscow and the West. But the move by Russian President Vladimir Putin to send military support to combat ISIS insurgents is also a sign of concerns at the military […]
SAFED — Two unarmed UN peacekeepers stand beside a rusty telescope observing the Syrian border from the Golan Heights on the Israeli side of the 1974 ceasefire line. The air is cold and wintery. Nearby, in the Coffee Anan store (anan, meaning cloud in Hebrew), an Israeli intelligence officer points down towards the bottom of […]
While Syrian rebels and Assad’s soldiers fight each other near the border, Israelis accustomed to rhetoric but relative tranquility are getting ready to defend themselves for real.