In early April 2020, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) released its Investigation and Identification Team’s (IIT) report on the chemical weapons use in Syria. The IIT’s mandate is very critical. While the OPCW’s Fact Finding Mission (FFM) focuses on the use...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is confronting the biggest challenges to his hold on power since Syrians first rose up against him nine years ago, as a rift within his family, a collapsing economy and rising tensions with his key ally Russia lay bare the fragility of his regime. The rebels...

Russia’s relationships with its client states have never been easy. Of course, managing client states is always a complicated exercise. The Kremlin’s closet is full of skeletons – Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Cuba (1962), Afghanistan (1980), Ukraine (2014) and so on....

Israeli planes made another round of airstrikes in Syria last week, targeting Iranian militia bases in the east and an alleged chemical weapons research laboratory in Aleppo province. The number of Israeli strikes in Syria over the past nine years is estimated to be in the hundreds, but the...