سوریه

On March 19, journalists Adam Entous, Michael Isikoff, and Josh Rogin addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute moderated by Cameron Hudson of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The panel was introduced by Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow in the Institute's Program on Arab Politics. The following is

Although the regime does not publicly boast about its crimes, it is just as vicious as ISIS.

The regime is entirely pragmatic when choosing what groups to fight with or against, making it an unreliable prospective coalition ally, at best, against the self-styled Islamic State.

Arab Spring success stories have generally not been easy to come by, yet one may be playing out in a regional non-Arab state, Turkey, where ties between the Turks and their Kurdish adversaries have been improving.

While strikes against ISIS are capturing the headlines, the United States and its international partners risk overlooking the potential strategic significance of developments in Syria's south.

Greater Sunni acceptance of Israel as a regional power, however grudging and conditional, may give Washington more room to pursue longstanding peace goals.

A serious alliance against ISIS built on Sunni Arab states and Turkey cannot hold together over the long term without a more forceful U.S. policy toward the Syrian regime.

The best line of defense for regional states worried about the threats posed by ISIS -- including unexpected game changers like Ebola -- is to enhance border and port security.

This study documents the highly organized geostrategic effort by Iran to use a global network of Shiite proxy groups to salvage the Assad regime's crumbling military position in the early years of the Syrian Civil War.