With the swearing-in of Israel’s new coalition government that ended the 12-year tenure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attention has now been drawn to the possibility of reviving the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that have been halted since April 2014. Peace talks between...

The fourth anniversary of the start of the battle for Raqqa has just passed, during which time the city was recaptured from the Islamic State (IS). Raqqa had been IS' Syrian capital, and it took over four months for the liberators, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to wrest back control of...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's presidential election on Friday, though likely more a coronation for a hard-line candidate long cultivated by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, still carries implications for a wider Middle East already roiled by years of tensions between Tehran and...

In July 2018, when US President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Putin did most of the talking. Much of it was about Syria. It was clear, Trump told his national security adviser John Bolton after an almost two-hour one-on-one session with his Russian...

Bashar al-Assad, once seen as a reformer but viewed by his many foes as a tyrant after a decade of war and repression, looks set to extend his family's dynastic rule of Syria further with an election on Wednesday. Branded "an animal" by the United States for gassing his people and a...

he last time Syria held presidential elections, in 2014, there was no question over whether President Bashar al-Assad would win – but with opposition forces in control of the country’s cities, as well as the suburbs of Damascus, his future was still far from certain. Seven years later, after...

While the Biden administration is still in the midst of a policy review of the Middle East, Russia has intensified its military deployments in Syria, in particular the northeast, to weaken the influence and interests of the US in the war-torn country. Russian troops recently blocked an...

 Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran and its allied proxies inside Syria since the country’s descent into civil war over a decade ago, with officials in Tel Aviv making it clear they will refuse to tolerate any Iranian entrenchment along their northern border....

Recent weeks have seen a crescendo of rumors claiming that local, regional, and international support is growing to establish a Syrian Transitional Military Council (TMC). It would allegedly be led by defected Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, whose mandate would be to midwife the war-ravaged...

BERLIN (AP) — Negotiations to bring the United States back into a landmark nuclear deal with Iran resumed Thursday in Vienna amid signs of progress — but also under the shadow of an attack this week on Iran's main nuclear facility. After more than two hours of talks characterized by Russia's...

The recent sabotage at Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility is just the latest setback for the country's Revolutionary Guard, though the paramilitary force is rarely publicly criticized due to its power. But with some of its leaders now considering vying for the presidency, the...

Anwar al-Bunni does not hide his joy over the sentencing, on 24 February 2021, of former Syrian intelligence agent Eyad al-Gharib to four and a half years in prison for ‘complicity in crimes against humanity’. “This is a historic verdict. I am happy, not because of the conviction of this...

A decade since the start of the popular uprising, the Syrian lira is in an unprecedented freefall after years of armed conflict, an economic crisis in neighboring Lebanon, deep-seated corruption and cronyism, and Western economic sanctions targeting Syrian government officials as well as...

(Eqtsad)- Two weeks after its rectification, the Syrian pound has one again collapsed dramatically, its value reaching 4000 to one US dollar. The exchange rate of the pound is likely to hit a new low in light of the Central Bank’s operations to reap more profit by interfering in the float...

In the two years since Kurdish forces wrested away the Islamic State's last Syrian bastion, the jihadist group has proved it does not need a stronghold to pose a potent threat in more countries than ever. At their apogee, the extremists controlled a territory the size of Britain...

As the 10th anniversary of the Syrian revolution approaches, Germany's relationship with the war-torn nation remains historic — and complex. Last month, Germany became the first country in the world to convict a former employee of the infamous Syrian military intelligence under...

By Bassam Barabandi and Deyaa Alrwishdi A decade ago, civilian protests broke out across Syria. The regime has met the demands of civilians with excessive violence, which led to militarizing these protests and made Syria an arena for proxy wars and battles waged by many countries....

After a decade of unfathomable violence and human tragedy that has made Syria the defining war of the early 21st century, the fighting has tapered off but the suffering hasn’t. In 2011, Bashar Assad and his government briefly looked like another domino about to fall in the whirlwind of...

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised to make a pariah out of Saudi Arabia over the 2018 killing of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi. But when it came time to actually punish Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, America’s strategic interests prevailed. The Biden administration made...

The failure of the last round of United Nations-led talks between the Syrian regime and the opposition in Geneva last month has left diplomats and analysts pondering how to redirect diplomatic efforts in the face of Damascus’s staunch refusal to engage in any negotiated process. The...