Russia and Iran will be keen to see Bashar al-Assad step down as soon as his seven-year term is up in 2014,  according  to  Professor Fawaz Gerges , the director of the Middle East centre at the London School of Economics. He said that the way Russia and the United States...

Russia is to go ahead with deliveries of  anti-aircraft missiles  to the Syrian government,  the BBC reports . Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, has said the S-300 missiles were a “stabilising factor” that could dissuade “some hotheads” from joining the...

For the past year, rebel groups that took their war to  Syria 's main cities have been unable to finish what they started. Pinned down by air power and shelling that can hit them wherever they are, opposition fighters have barely advanced in Aleppo and Damascus; their gains in some areas...

UK’s Hague says EU failure to agree on extending arms embargo effectively ends ban on supplying arms to Syrian rebels. European foreign ministers have lifted an arms embargo on Syria, paving the way for individual EU member states to provide weapons to the Syrian rebels.   The...