Syria

The Barbara Walters interview with Bashar al-Assad underscores how completely he has lost his grip on the reality of the violence in his country.

Although the Arab League's new sanctions on the Asad regime are welcome, they are unlikely to result in real transformation within the organization.

The debate over whether to sanction the Central Bank of Iran must consider the effectiveness of such action and the consequences for the world economy.

Testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. With the Asad regime using brute force to maintain its grip on power, and Syrians increasingly pursuing parallel tracks of both peaceful and armed resistance, the United States needs to develop a concerted plan to prepare for all contingencies and bring about

Turkey, Iran, and the Assad regime are locked in a power game over Syria's future: either Ankara will win and Assad will fall, or Tehran will win and Ankara, hurt by PKK attacks, will throw in the towel and let Syria be.

By telling the Syrian opposition to remain nonviolent and explicitly ruling out military intervention, the Obama administration is laying out unrealistic expectations.

On October 14, 2011, Robert S. Ford and Andrew J. Tabler addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria and a career member of the senior foreign service, joined the discussion from Damascus via Skype. He has visited cities under siege by Syrian

Turks judge the world through the prism of the PKK.

Testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. The alarming state of human rights and freedom in Iran and Syria is a matter not only of moral urgency, but of vital importance to U.S. national security. I drafted this testimony sitting in a crowded coffee shop