Where is leadership in the European Union? Who dares to don its trappings, now that German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer seems to command the authority she did up until the end of the summer? After the attacks in Paris, and with refugees still knocking on the door …

In the wake of the recent escalation of tensions between Russia and Turkey and, de facto, between Moscow and NATO, experts consider if the rhetoric of a hot war between Russia and the West is not “before time?” Political analyst Ian Kearns believes the situation actually reminds “playing …

Russian Defense Ministry has presented photos of oil delivery convoys at Syria-Turkey border, the head of the Russian General Staff’s operative command said. The general staff has irrefutable evidence on Turkey’s involvement in illegal oil trade. Moscow has called on Turkey to open access to the places where, according to the retrieved Russian intel, …

Guess who just popped up in the Kremlin? Bashar al-Assad, Syrian dictator and destroyer, now Vladimir Putin’s newest pet. After four years holed up in Damascus, Assad was summoned to Russia to bend a knee to Putin, show the world that today Middle East questions get settled not …

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s high-profile meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on November 23 has triggered speculationthat the two sides are weighing some serious policy choices about Syria. The key question, as always, is the fate of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. There is no …

Trita Parsi A senior German official told me in 2010, quite proudly, that under the leadership of Angela Merkel, Germany’s Iran policy had become a function of its relations with Israel. Whether Germany would sanction Iran or engage in diplomacy very much depended on Israel’s reaction. In its …

President Vladimir Putin is actively misinforming his domestic audience and the international community about Russia’s first military intervention outside the former Soviet Union since its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Putin has created a false narrative about the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to disguise the true objectives …

Moscow isn’t likely to bomb Turkish military facilities, but it has other ways of undermining Ankara’s presence in Syria: Russia is now aiding Kurdish rebels — a group that has been labeled as “terrorists” by Turkey. The Syrian Kurdish forces (YPG) are considered extremely valuable in the fight against ISIS. …

Entering the Syrian conflict, Moscow has faced the challenge posed both by Daesh and its covert backers, Canadian Professor Michael Jabara Carley notes; he questions whether French President Hollande has the guts to escape Washington’s “spider web” and join Russia’s coalition in Syria. Professor Michael Jabara Carley of the …