Syria

Eliminating Assad's chemical arsenal, while somewhat helpful, would do nothing to stem the more potent conventional means that his regular and irregular forces have used to kill thousands of civilians.

Since Policy Focus 130 was first published in October 2013, the number of registered Syrian refugees in Turkey has nearly doubled, from roughly 440,000 to 747,000. Although Turkey's national burden is relatively small when compared with Syria's other neighbors—namely Lebanon and Jordan—pressures are increasingly intense in five southern Turkish provinces

Watch the 2013 Zeev Schiff Memorial Lecture on Middle East Security with Amos Gilad, director of the Political-Military Affairs Bureau at Israel's Ministry of Defense.

Any effort to counter the jihadists' growing hearts-and-minds campaign in Syria will require significant U.S. support for mainstream rebel forces.

Syria's Bashar al-Assad may have thrown a wrench into Iranian President Hasan Rouhani's plans for nuclear negotiations with the West -- if the United States learns the right lessons from the Syria experience.

The Obama administration should take steps to ameliorate the negative effects of the chemical disarmament agreement, restore Washington's credibility, and preserve its ability to use force if necessary.

Although a military response to Syria's August 21 chemical weapons attack is on hold, Washington can restore credibility and pressure by threatening to strike immediately if the Assad regime uses such weapons again.

If U.S. strikes are seen as seriously undermining the Assad regime's viability, Hezbollah's global networks could be called on to retaliate against Israeli or Western interests.

This two-part PolicyWatch assesses how ISIS has gained a foothold in Syria by learning from past jihadist mistakes in Iraq. Part I discusses the group's recent successes; Part II discusses jihadist mistakes in other countries and whether ISIS is repeating them. In August, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham