Syria's military pounded rebel bastions in Damascus on Tuesday and   Saudi Arabia   demanded an arms embargo on what it called President Bashar al-Assad's genocidal and illegitimate regime. Attacking  Iran , Russia and Lebanon's Hezbollah for supporting Assad,...

    The  Syrian  regime is using its sweeping Counterterrorism Law and its recently established special court against human rights defenders and other peaceful activists. On June 26, 2013, the court will resume the trial of Mazen Darwish and four of his...

The Assad regime inked a secret deal that gives Russia the license to control natural gas resources in Syria, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials, World Net Daily (WND) reported. The officials said Assad last month agreed to sign the document, considered an understanding...

I'm in Oslo to give a seminar and a public lecture at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, and I'm looking forward to hearing how world politics looks from a Nordic perspective. I haven't been to Norway since 2009, when my visit coincided with the Norwegian Nobel Committee's surprising...