سوريا

During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Syria's Assad regime was helping insurgents to cross the border and kill Americans. In response to the Syrian provocation, the Bush administration considered a broad range of policy options. But one family of options always remained off the table: regime change or any combination of pressures that might destabilize Damascus. At the Department of Defense, we held a dissenting view.

With anti-Asad regime protests in Syria raging for a seventh straight day, with reports of significant numbers killed, the United States should consider designating under Treasury Department sanctions Mahar al-Asad, Bashar's brother and head of the elite units of the Republican Guard.

The outbreak of anti-regime protests in Damascus offers the Obama administration an opportunity to reiterate America's call for universal freedoms and to push for change in a country that consistently aligns itself against Washington.

The seemingly never-ending story of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was established by the U.N. Security Council to prosecute the killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, reached a landmark this week when the court's prosecutor submitted his indictment to pretrial judge Daniel Fransen. Diplomats from Washington to

President Obama assumed office in 2009 with an ambitious Middle East policy agenda. Atop the list of his campaign pledges, then Senator Obama vowed to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace and re-engage in diplomacy with Tehran and Damascus. Given these grand plans, perhaps not surprisingly the first two years of the Obama

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad's trip to Beirut this week will likely produce a flurry of rhetorical challenges against Israel and perhaps even a visit to the Israel-Lebanon border. But one purpose of the trip may be aimed at influencing the fate of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), charged with

On September 17, 2010, Jeffrey White and Andrew Exum addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute to mark the release of Mr. White's new Institute report If War Comes: Israel vs. Hizballah and Its Allies, an assessment of potential future conflict between Israel and Hizballah and its

The Ghosts of Martyr's Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle By Michael Young (Simon & Schuster, 295 pages, $26.00) This past February, Le Monde published a detailed report suggesting that Hezbollah participated in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The story was old news

In late March, reports emerged in the Kuwaiti press that Syria had transferred Scud missiles to Hizballah. One month on, news of the Scud transfer continues to reverberate in Washington and the Middle East. A congressional resolution condemning Syria has been drafted and the confirmation of the Obama administration's ambassador-designate