Below is the video of our panel from the “Arab Politics beyond the Uprisings” launch event, held on July 13, 2017 at Beirut’s Carnegie Middle East Center. The panel featured me, Asya El-Meehy, and Aron Lund, and was moderated by Michael Wahid Hanna…

I talk to Carnegie Middle East Center’s Diwan – two weeks ago, so before Hayat Tahrir al-Sham / Jabhat al-Nusrah’s outright takeover – about the situation in rebel Idlib…

مقابلتي مع “مركز كارنيغي للشرق الأوسط” (باللغة العربية) عن آفاق محافظة إدلب والشمال السوري المحرر…

New from me at The Century Foundation:

President Trump has shut down America’s covert program to arm and train Syrian rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad…

New from me for Foreign Affairs today:

In Syria, the United States may have won a victory over the Islamic State that only lasts so long as the U.S. sticks around indefinitely. Because of the specific local partner on which America has relied – the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) – we seemingly can’t withdraw without sparking a Turkish-Kurdish conflagration, a maelstrom that would allow ISIS to resurge…

In Declan Walsh’s 16 July New York Times article on Qatar’s tendency to host politically iffy guests, he illustrates the controversy surrounding Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradhawi with a particularly inflammatory quote…

New from me for The Century Foundation:

Ahead of the latest round of Syria’s Geneva talks, the most pressing question seems to be: Why?

That is, why is the Geneva process still ongoing? And why go? …

New from me on War on the Rocks:

Syria’s war isn’t about Syria’s hundreds or thousands of moving parts, it’s about how they fit together. Whether in terms of the real dynamics of power and control within the war’s opposing camps or the country’s more holistic strategic picture, it’s how the war’s elements relate to each other that tends to actually explain the conflict…

Below is a translated excerpt from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s Abu Mariya al-Qahtani’s (Myassar al-Jubouri) May 30 appearance on the latest season of Abdullah al-Muheisini’s Ramadan interview show, Daimeh, in which Qahtani touches again on something that’s been on my mind: The line between defeatism and realism…

New from me for The Century Foundation, on the latest challenge to humanitarian assistance for civilians in Syria’s rebel-held northwest.

Since the beginning of the year, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – the latest iteration of former Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusrah – has stepped up its attempts to intervene in assistance in ways that have already complicated aid efforts. Now the group’s declared intention to bring the northwest’s currency exchange and money transfer offices under its supervision has set off alarm bells among humanitarians, who depend on informal “hawalah” transfers to operate inside Syria…

New from me for The Century Foundation, on Turkish authorities’ rolling crackdown on international relief NGOs (INGOs):

Humanitarians venerate principles of neutrality and independence, but their ostensibly apolitical work now seems to have gotten caught up in an Turkey’s own intensely charged politics…

New paper from me for The Century Foundation, on the evolution of Turkey’s agenda in north Syria and its implications for the Syrian opposition.

More than ever before, the Syrian opposition depends on Turkey’s support – yet Turkey has never been more preoccupied with its own security ends, not fighting the Assad regime. The opposition’s future hinges on Turkey’s strategic success or failure, but Turkey, which has burned through most of its best options and damaged its key relationships, may itself be at an impasse…

New from colleague Michael Wahid Hanna and I for War on the Rocks about the balancing act of U.S. intervention in Syria:

Last week’s U.S. missile strike, as it was executed and messaged, seems to have been meant to discourage the regime from further chemical weapons use – not to commit America to an unlimited escalation, or to some vague and impracticable goal of regime change…

New from me for Foreign Affairs:

So America might intervene in Syria now?

I have mixed feelings about U.S. military action in Syria. But if it’s about to happen, then any U.S. action should have clear, narrowly defined deterrence objectives, and it should be deliberately delinked from the broader Syrian war. U.S. intervention shouldn’t be aimed at a negotiated transition in Syria or any variation on regime change – goals that weren’t viable on Monday and, days later, aren’t now…

New at The Century Foundation: TCF colleagues Aron Lund, Thanassis Cambanis, Michael Wahid Hanna and I return for another wide-ranging Syria roundtable…

New from me for The Century Foundation:

Syria’s former al-Qaeda affiliate and a set of hardline allies have taken over the country’s rebel-held northwest, the last bastion of determined opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. They’re apparently convinced they can reverse the rebellion’s downward trajectory and kneecap “defeatists” within the opposition who might settle for anything less than toppling the regime. And they think they can rebalance the opposition’s lopsided relationships with its foreign backers, forcing countries like Turkey and the United States to engage them on their terms…

ترجمة لمقاتلي بموقع “الجمهورية” عن ضرورة نقل الواقع من مناطق النظام السوري رغم القيود على عمل الصحفيين والمحللين…

In a new piece for al-Jumhuriya, I argue – contra some opponents of “normalization” – that we need more journalists and analysts reporting from inside Assad’s Syria. The reality inside Damascus and other areas under regime control is an increasingly relevant part of the Syrian story, and something about which we know disconcertingly little…

New from me for The Century Foundation:

When opposition-held east Aleppo fell, it fell hard. Now Syria’s rebels and their backers have to piece together what happened and decide how to move forward…

Below I’ve translated a set of tweets from Syrian revolutionary writer-analyst Ahmad Abazeid, newly out of besieged east Aleppo and now in the Idlib-centric rebel-held north.

Abazeid’s tweets provide another glimpse of how Idlib is, by all accounts, a rough place…