From the category archives:

Syria

Iraq burns its bridges with Syria

August 27, 2009

Iraq burns its bridges with Syria
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, August 27, 2009
Relations between Iraq and Syria plunged abruptly on Tuesday after Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Damascus over the recent bombings in the Iraqi capital in which 100 Iraqis were killed.
The attacks, which ripped through government buildings on August 19, were the worst in [...]

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Damascus agrees to help monitor Iraqi border

August 19, 2009

Damascus agrees to help monitor Iraqi border
By Jay Solomon and Julien Barnes-Dacey, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2009
The Obama administration and Damascus tentatively agreed to establish a tripartite committee, with Baghdad, to better monitor the Syrian-Iraqi border as the Pentagon draws down American troops from Iraq in coming months, said senior U.S. officials.
The proposed three-way [...]

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Syria key to regional power shift

July 29, 2009

Syria key to regional power shift
By Mark Levine, Al Jazeera, July 28, 2009
It is hard not to feel like it is déjà vu all over again.
A US Middle East peace envoy travels to Damascus and then to Israel in an effort to jump start Israel-Syrian negotiations over a land for peace deal involving the Golan [...]

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EDITORIAL: Syria’s nuclear reactor

April 25, 2008

The Al Kibar nuclear reactor in Syria
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, April 25, 2008
As someone who voiced great skepticism about the initial claims that Israel destroyed a nuclear facility in the Syrian desert on September 6, 2007, I’ll be the first to admit that the evidence provided in the DNI background briefing presents proof [...]

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FEATURE: What did Israel bomb in Syria?

February 4, 2008

A strike in the dark
By Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, February 3, 2008
Shortly after the [Israeli] bombing [in Syria, last September], a Chinese envoy and one of the Bush Administration’s senior national-security officials met in Washington. The Chinese envoy had just returned from a visit to Tehran, a person familiar with the discussion told [...]

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NEWS ROUNDUP: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Syria

January 15, 2008

Bush prods Saudi Arabia on high oil prices
By Stephen Lee Myers, New York Times, January 16, 2008
President Bush urged the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Tuesday to take into account the toll that high oil prices are having on the American economy, gingerly touching on an issue that has begun to color the [...]

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NEWS: Egypt outrages Israel; Israel ready to talk to Syria; Syria alienates France

January 3, 2008

Egypt opens crossing so Palestinians can return
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, January 3, 2008
Egypt opened its main crossing into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to allow more than 2,000 Palestinian pilgrims — including at least one official of the armed Hamas movement — to return to their homes there, outraging Israel in [...]

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NEWS: Syria waiting for Bush to go; Egypt critical of Israel Lobby; Israel not planning to reprimand itself for use of cluster bombs

December 26, 2007

Israel’s Foreign Ministry: Syria feels peace must wait for next U.S. president
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, December 25, 2007
She Syrian administration is waiting out the Bush presidency, and only intends to enter a serious diplomatic process with Israel when the next United States administration takes over in 2009, according to the Foreign Ministry’s intelligence assessment.
“Damascus is [...]

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NEWS: Syria turned away A.Q. Khan

December 20, 2007

Syria spurned atom smuggler approach in 2001: Assad
Reuters, December 19, 2007
Syria rebuffed a possible approach in 2001 from Pakistani-led traffickers in nuclear arms technology, President Bashar al-Assad said.
In an interview with Austrian daily Die Presse, Assad said an unnamed person delivered to Syria a letter purportedly from A.Q. Khan, the now-disgraced father of Pakistan’s atom [...]

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ANALYSIS: Détente with Syria

December 5, 2007

The Syrians are back
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, December 6, 2007
The report of UN prosecutor Serge Brammertz on the Harriri assassination came out last week. Not only did it fail to name any Syrian suspects (contrary to original reports in 2005) but also praised Syria’s cooperation in the UN probe. Simultaneously, the US Department of [...]

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EDITORIAL: Diplomacy on the ascent

November 30, 2007

A “different dynamic” in American diplomacy
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, November 30, 2007
If war follows the failure of diplomacy, it’s natural that the failure of war should lead to the resurrection of diplomacy. George Bush might not clearly grasp this, but there are strong indications that it is obvious to many of his closest [...]

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: Confronting Iran

November 23, 2007

War is peace, sanctions are diplomacy
By Carah Ong, MERIP, November 23, 2007
The White House is pressing ahead with its stated goal of persuading the UN Security Council to pass far-reaching sanctions to punish Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear research program. Sanctions are what President George W. Bush is referring to when he pledges [...]

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Deep in the (well-populated, well-connected, fertile) desert

November 5, 2007

Tourist trips to the Box-on-the-Euphrates
By Jeffrey Lewis, ArmsControlWonk, November 5, 2007
Is the Box-on-the-Euphrates in a remote place?
Details like that might seem insignificant, but they are not. Often, it seems to me, intelligence judgments are supported by informal bits of “color” or what you might call the gouge — circumstantial details that aren’t part of any [...]

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