Thanassis Cambanis claims that Lebanon’s Hizballah and the clerical regime in Iran are now fully vested factions in Syria’s civil war.

Hicham Mourad discusses the uneasy relationship between Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the leaders in Saudi Arabia. Read more »

The Turkish government’s tepid response to the car bombings in Reyhanli last Friday should help bring to a merciful end the prevailing meme in Washington that Ankara is poised to lead the Middle East.  Rather than providing leadership and a source of stability in the region, Turkey is now a party to regional conflicts, especially the civil war in Syria.  It is true that Turkey did not necessarily seek the position that it now finds itself in, but the mismatch between its grand ambitions and Ankara’s capacity to provide order to the Middle East contributed mightily to its problems. Despite all the talk of models and rising to the level of U.S. traditional allies in Europe—code for the United Kingdom and France—over the last few years, Turkey, like a variety of other countries in the region, needs rescuing. Read more »

Steven A. Cook probes the arguments against a No-Fly Zone over Syria.

Gary Schmitt says it is doubtful that the Pentagon really believes that Syria’s air defenses are a significant hurdle to intervening in that country’s war. Read more »

Since I first broached the subject of intervention in Syria sixteen months ago, I have had episodic debates with various former military officers and defense intellectuals concerning the wisdom of a more robust approach to the insurrection that began against Bashar al Assad in March 2011.  The most recent installment came last Friday in response to the following tweet: Read more »

The West’s overall approach to Syria since the uprising began in March 2011 has been a combination of empty sloganeering (“we strongly and unequivocally condemn this violence”), wishful thinking (“it is only a matter of time before Assad falls”), and hand wringing (“Syria is not Libya”).  Yet recently, there seems to have been a subtle, yet important shift that would augur a more active American and European role in managing the conflict.  The recent Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul gave Secretary of State John Kerry an opportunity to signal an evolution of U.S. policy and the British and the French have publicly entertained  the idea of lifting the arms embargo on the rebellion. This all seems to be good news, yet it may be more apparent than real.  This is not to suggest that Washington will renege on the pledge that Kerry made in Turkey or that the Foreign Office and Quay d’Orsay are not serious about the prospects of supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army, but this support is far from unequivocal. Read more »

The debate in Washington about Syria has picked up a bit lately.  The Obama administration is stepping up its aid to the rebellion and the civil war will no doubt be on the President Obama’s agenda when he meets with a parade of regional leaders at the White House starting next week. Although many members of Congress—taking cues from their constituents who are weary of the Middle East—are resolutely opposed to American involvement in Syria, others have expressed frustration that the United States is not doing more to bring the crisis to an end.  Like all things related to Syria there is little agreement even among the people who would like to see a more robust policy on what form a more active approach to the conflict would take. Read more »

Al-Monitor outlines the investigation of Egypt’s beloved comedian, Bassem Youssef.

Muftah discusses how nuances of the Arabic language reflect and affect the ever turbulent politics of the region. Read more »

The Jordanian perspective on Jordan’s current political situation and King Abdullah’s recent commentary in the Atlantic. Read more »

Haifa Zaaiter argues that the “Harlem Shake” craze that has hit Tunisia may end up disarming the Salafists of their most potent weapon: denouncement of apostasy.

The Impatient Bedouin reflects on the recent outburst of violence in Jordan’s parliament over the country’s decision to raise fuel prices last week. Read more »

There has been a lot of Syria news in the last week or so.  Elements of Syria’s armed opposition took over al Jarrah airbase in the Aleppo province and rebels and government forces are engaged in a pitched battle on the eastern side of Damascus in what some regard (as with other flare-ups of violence in the Syrian capital) as a prelude to the Syrian “end game.” Just before that, the president of Syria’s National Coalition of Opposition Forces, Mouaz al Khatib, stated that he was ready for talks with representatives of the Assad regime, a statement that was followed by meetings with the Russian and Iranian foreign ministers in Munich.  It doesn’t seem that the National Coalition is much of a coalition and it is unclear who exactly al Khatib is leading since other elements of the opposition quickly and vehemently denied their willingness for such talks to the government.  These developments come as the pace of people streaming out of Syria has picked up considerably.  There are now 374,000 refugees in Jordan, 180,000 have fled to Lebanon, about 185,000 Syrians in Turkey, 90,000 are displaced in Iraq, and 16,000 in Egypt—in other words, about four percent of Syria’s population.  Let’s not forget that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 Syrians have lost their lives in the civil war.  Expect the numbers of refugees and deaths to climb. Read more »