After months of battlefield stalemate in Syria , a flurry of reports from Washington, Jerusalem, Amman and the Gulf suggests a major new clandestine effort is under way to open up a "southern front" against the regime of Bashar al-Assad . Central to the mooted plan is a renewed...

The brutal war in Syria could grind on for a decade as Iran and Russia prop up President Bashar al-Assad's regime and jihadist groups flood the battlefield, experts warned Thursday. Assad has chosen a deliberate "Machiavellian strategy" of standing by while militant groups such as...

 "The good times are over," a Doha-based diplomat told me glumly last week, as if foretelling the political earthquake about to hit Qatar. On March 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain announced in a joint statement that they were withdrawing their ambassadors...

   Two developments took place in the past month that point to remarkable changes within Syria's Islamist landscape. In early February, al Qaeda's central leadership disavowed the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) -- a favor ISIS repaid a few weeks later, when it...