Though the pro-regime axis has its own reasons for wanting to avoid an Idlib offensive, there is ultimately no reason to think last week’s cessation of hostilities has any more chance of holding than its predecessors, argues James Snell.

Ever since the Egyptian “Friday of Rage” on January 28, 2011, the Arab Spring revolutions in general—and the Syrian revolution in particular—were distinguished by the weekly event of the Friday demonstration, when mass crowds came out across the country’s cities and towns. Among the most important rites of this tradition was the selection of a single name for the day under which the demonstrators would…

The Israeli air force targeted a number of sites in Latakia Governorate late Monday night, chief among them a warehouse linked to the so-called Technical Industries Institute, east of Latakia city, said by the Israeli military to have housed advanced weapons manufacturing systems “about to be transferred on behalf of Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon.” After the strikes, the Russian defense ministry announced the loss…

The problems of solidarity recently outlined by Yassin al-Haj Saleh are indeed part of a wider, historic breakdown in the values and impact of the Western left, writes Jules Etjim, who offers a “sketch” of one possible way forward.

In an open letter to the United Nations, over 100 prominent writers, academics, and activists say the time has come to consider radical reform of the U.N. Security Council, given its abject failure to protect Syrians from the Bashar al-Assad regime’s mass violence.

A new biography lays bare the extremist ideology that drives Benjamin Netanyahu, an early champion of the demagoguery that has now brought us his old friend, Donald Trump.

Jimmy Carter’s proposal to rehabilitate Assad and ignore Syrians’ demands for justice isn’t just morally bankrupt in the extreme, it also would fail to produce even the “ugly peace” of his imagination.

All eyes in the region are on Friday’s tripartite summit bringing together the Turkish, Russian, and Iranian presidents in Tehran, which is expected to play an essential role in determining the fate of Syria’s Idlib, the last opposition-held province in the country, where an imminent military offensive by the Bashar al-Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian patrons is now widely anticipated. The three states…

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 29 August, 2018] One could say the objectives of the United States in the Middle East have become clearer of late, after the appointment earlier this month of James Jeffrey as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Representative for Syria Engagement. Jeffrey, who previously served as ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, holds clear ideas that have…

Islam, culture, nationalism, revolution, exile, and the West’s anti-democratic Middle East policies are just part of the ground covered in this in-depth interview, to be published in the upcoming book, Dissidents of the International Left.