Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria did not have a good winter. His forces lost a provincial capital, Idlib, and despite repeated efforts could not even seize northern and eastern suburbs adjoining Damascus. There were also failures in Aleppo and Dara‘a. He had to relieve heads of two of the regime’s four secret police services. The economic situation worsened.
For the majority of Arabs, Syria symbolizes all that is wrong with Iranian influence in the Middle East. Since 2011, Tehran and its regional proxies have poured men, money, and weapons into Syria to prevent President Bashar al-Assad’s military defeat. In June 2013, Hezbollah’s intervention in the western city of Qusayr single-handedly turned the tide of the war in Assad’s favor.
Collection Spotlight: In the Name of Oil: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1950-1958
Ivan L. G. Pearson’s In the Name of Oil: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1950-1958 provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent to which British interests in the Middle East influenced or were furthered by the United States between 1950 and 1958.
Do Kerry’s Remarks on Syria Represent a Break with Previous Policy?
Over the weekend, the Western and Arab media reported extensively on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks, given on the fourth anniversary of the Syrian revolution, that the United States must negotiate “in the end” with Bashar al-Assad. Are his remarks anything new, or do they represent a continuation of previous policy? MEI’s Robert Ford weighs in.
It has long been known that the Assad regime, facing a shortage of manpower in its regular army, has had to rely on irregular paramilitaries in its bid to reverse rebel advances. This became particularly apparent in 2013, when Hezbollah openly declared its participation in the capture of Qusayr, a town in Homs Province on the border with Lebanon.
In his recent National Interest blog post entitled “Assad Will Have to Stay for Awhile,” Paul Pillar advises the Obama administration to ignore regional calls to help bring down the Assad regime, for three reasons: the resilience of the regime; the need to avoid fighting it and ISIS simultaneously; and the need to preserve stability in Syria. Pillar’s three reasons are flawed.
Hind Kabawat is a senior program officer at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and a senior research associate at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution (CRDC) at George Mason University. Since 2012, she has been conducting periodic conflict resolution and peace-building workshops for communities within Syria and for Syrian refugees living in Jordan and Turkey.
Analysis of Syrian civil war dynamics tends to draw a sharp contrast between the southern front, referring to the southernmost provinces of Deraa, Quneitra, and Suwayda, and the north. Most observers point to the south, in contrast to the north, as lacking a significant Islamic State (ISIS) presence. How true does this general assessment hold? Are radical or extremist groups much less influential in the south?
The Syrian Opposition Meeting in Cairo: One Small Step
Around 100 Syrian opposition figures recently concluded a conference in Cairo. The meeting was noteworthy for two reasons. It signaled Cairo’s cautious but unmistakable entry into the Syrian minefield, and it marks the still-fragmented opposition’s first careful steps in the direction of a compromise with the Assad regime.
Virtuoso French-Swiss qanun player Julien “Jalal Eddine” Weiss, who tirelessly promoted classical Arab and Syrian music to international audiences from his home in Aleppo, Syria, died this month in Paris. Forced to flee Syria’s brutal civil war like millions of other Syrians, Weiss’s death is a sad reminder of the ongoing threat to Aleppo’s rich cultural traditions, as well as an occasion to remember the city’s heritage, which played such an important role in inspiring his unique Middle Eastern compositions.
An Israeli helicopter fired rockets on a convoy in the Golan Heights on January 18, killing six members of Hezbollah and an Iranian general. MEI’s Randa Slim explains the context surrounding the attack and the likely repercussions.
Why did Israel choose this time to attack Hezbollah and Iranian targets in the Golan Heights?
It is no longer accurate to describe the war in Syria as a conflict between Syrian rebels on the one hand and Bashar al-Assad’s regime forces “supported” by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG), Hezbollah, and Iraqi militias on the other. Most major battles in Syria—along the frontlines of regime-held areas—are now being directed and fought by the IRG and Hezbollah, along with other non-Syrian Shi‘i militias, with Assad forces in a supportive or secondary role.
Ivan L. G. Pearson’s In the Name of Oil: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1950-1958 provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent to which British interests in the Middle East influenced or were furthered by the United States between 1950 and 1958.
