More in ‘Bashar Assad’

Mickey Mouse must have felt a bit like this, midway through the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” episode of Fantasia. In the remake, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan plays the role of the runaway broom conjured up by President Barack Obama, who wanted a fresh set of allies to advance a 21st-century foreign policy that rejected U.S. ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, Tony Badran tries to discern just what Syria and its President, Bashar Assad, are up to. A history of the Jews causes books critic Adam Kirsch to wonder just what the Jews’ history is. The Scroll has more presssing concerns.

In the annals of “big policy ideas,” perhaps none has had as much staying power in the face of a dismal track record than the seemingly perpetual conviction that integrating Syria into the pro-American order in the Middle East is a real, achievable possibility. The ultimate authority invoked in support of the idea that Syria ...

• Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wants to move “as speedily as possible” from the current U.S.-mediated proximity talks to direct talks. [AP]
• Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with President Obama at the White House in early June, three days after Netanyahu does. [Laura Rozen]
• Israel has alternately condemned and mocked the “Freedom ...

• President Medvedev made the first-ever visit of a Russian head of state to Damascus, where he and President Assad discussed denuclearizing the Mideast (hint, hint). [Ynet]
• But the International Atomic Energy Agency does not plan to tie Iran’s nuclear weapons program to Israel’s. [Haaretz]
• One economist warns that Israel’s bottom-heavy welfare system—where large numbers ...

Foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead has joined Thomas Friedman and others in congratulating the Obama administration for condemning Israel over the announcement it was building 1600 apartment units in East Jerusalem.
“The Obama administration had no choice but to respond strongly,” Mead writes. “Otherwise the administration would have looked weak and irresolute and the ...

• Vice President Joe Biden hosted folks from most Jewish-American groups to consult on his upcoming trip to Israel. Conspicuously unrepresented: J Street. [Laura Rozen]
• A columnist argued that Syrian President Bashar Assad is cozying up to Iran not out of rational self-interest and power politics but because he’s an anti-Israel ideologue. [JPost]
• Iran announced ...

• Because six of the 11 suspects in the Dubai assassination of Hamas’s top weapons procurer carried forged British passports with real Israelis’ names, Israeli attention turned to the prospect that Mossad was indeed involved. (We’ll have more on this later today.) [WP]
• The assassination has become the top tabloid story in Israel, with many ...

Last Friday afternoon, we worried that high tensions between Israel and Syria—most immediately prompted by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s threats to Syrian leader Bashar Assad—could lead to violence. Well, fortunately, they haven’t so far, and hot tempers have appeared to cool over the weekend. Which can allow us now to focus on the broader question ...

You might want to head into this weekend hoping for peace in the Middle East. Not just peace in some not-too-distant future, but peace, like, this weekend. Possible enemy: Syria. The latest round of hostilities has been simmering for several days, but it was upped yesterday when Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced bellicosely, “I think ...