Faisal Devji, "Waning Crescent: The Rise and ...

In 2012, US President Barack Obama stated that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its population would cross a red line that would require the US government to reconsider its approach to the civil war then underway in Syria. Syria subsequently used such weapons, c ...  Show more

Eleven days into the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, starting on Feb. 28, 2026, I speak with Vali Nasr, a renowned analyst of Iran. He’s the author of several books dealing with Iran, including most recently Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History (Princeton Un ...  Show more

Professor Samer Abboud from Villanova University is an expert on Syrian politics. He joins us to discuss the intricacies of Syria's political history from 1946 to the present, including the impact of French colonial rule, frequent coups, the United Arab Republic, the rise and ...

ANOTHER EMERGENCY EPISODE Things are, as ever, moving at lightning speed in the Middle East, as last weekend on December 8th, Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian regime fell. After 13 years of civil war, and more than 50 years of his family’s rule, in an extraordinary turn of events r ...  Show more

When Bashar al Assad’s government fell just a couple of days ago, after a two week whirlwind campaign by opposition forces which surprised the entire world, it signalled the end of more than 54 years of rule by the Assad family and it’s the so called Ba’th-party. While it has bee ...  Show more

In the month since Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by a coalition of rebel forces, thousands of political prisoners have been released while many more remain missing, assumed lost to the regime. The most powerful group among the rebels, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ...  Show more