Syria

Recent developments indicate a credible, previously unseen rebel threat to Damascus.

Before Hezbollah's massive intervention in 2013, Bashar al-Assad's forces were nearing exhaustion, Syrian Opposition Coalition chief of staff Monzer Akbik said during a panel discussion at The Washington Institute's 2014 Weinberg Founders Conference on May 8. Assad was facing a catastrophic human-resources and materiel crisis, Akbik said, which the dictator

Martin Indyk, U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, diagnosed the collapse of recent peace talks in a frank keynote address to the Institute's 2014 Weinberg Founders Conference. Watch his remarks and download a transcript. Also view other sessions, with speakers including Sen. Tim Kaine, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, and former French ambassador to Washington Jean-David Levitte.

A Syrian Kurdish group's hostile reaction to the digging of a trench along the Iraqi border is doing more to undermine Kurdish unity than the trench itself.

America's Asian allies questioned the president about Syria not because it is a vitally important issue to them, but because of what it says about Washington's willingness to act.

A close look at the group's military and ideological credentials seems to reveal a model candidate for greater U.S. and allied support, including lethal military assistance.

Washington does not need to put boots on the ground to show Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus that is it serious about exercising U.S. power in the region.

Regardless of how much relief money is spent, life for the refugees in Lebanon and Jordan will become increasingly inhospitable absent a horizon for return to Syria.

The Party of God is not only hurting its domestic standing in Lebanon, but also inviting a wider regional conflict it cannot control.