The UN has been trying to draft a resolution on the situation in Syria, calling for Bashar al-Assad to relinquish control of the government to his deputy, who would then form a unity government. Russia has so far objected to the terms of the resolution, particularly Assad’s ouster. But the situation has changed in Syria [...]

Prior to all the rising tensions around Iran, the US and Israel had scheduled a large set of joint military exercises in the spring. Maybe this wasn’t necessarily a provocative act, but with everything happening around Iran, it gained a new resonance. So today, when the two sides postponed the exercises, some saw it as [...]

A provocative article in Foreign Policy magazine suggests that Israeli Mossad officers recruited members of the Pakistani terrorist organization Jundallah to aid in the covert operations against Iranian targets, including bombings in the Baluchistan region and potentially the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. The Mossad officers, according to Mark Perry, posed as American intelligence agents [...]

Arab League officials planned to send more observers to Syria to monitor protests there, but they abruptly delayed that today. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that one observer left the mission after calling it a “farce.” A former Arab League observer in Syria has decried the organisation’s monitoring mission to the [...]

Taliban negotiators approaching discussions on a peace deal with the United States claim that the talks will not be derailed by the emergence of a new video showing Marines urinating on dead Taliban soldiers. The video, released near the 10th anniversary of the opening of the terrorist prison at Guantanamo, was released anonymously on YouTube. [...]

The Internet censorship bills, SOPA and PIPA, bouncing around Congress don’t really work unless you apply them globally. If other countries do not vigorously protect their entertainment and high-tech industry’s copyrights in the same way as the United States, those industries will lose market share domestically. So the US has taken to pressuring other countries [...]

The Taliban has agreed to open an office in Qatar, seen as a precursor to peace talks in Afghanistan. In a statement, Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said that along with agreeing to set up the office in Qatar, the group was asking that Taliban detainees held at the American prison in Guantánamo [...]

The death of Kim Jong-il comes just as the United States was about to re-engage with North Korea, a plan now thrown into doubt because of the succession to Kim Jong-un. Hours before Kim’s death, news leaked about an imminent large grain shipment to North Korea, seen as an olive branch to restart talks on [...]

We knew that Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Turkey and Greece this week, but while he was in the region, he swung over to Iraq. Vice President Biden made an unannounced trip to Baghdad on Tuesday to meet with Iraqi leaders and American troops as the deadline for a draw down of U.S. forces [...]

Pepperpot 1: Burma! Pepperpot 2: Why’d you say Burma? Pepperpot 1: I panicked. -Monty Python’s Flying Circus Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Burma, the first visit from a top-level diplomat in 50 years. The move reflects the increased liberalization of the country, which has been under a military junta for decades. Mr Obama [...]

The Syrian government announced on state television that they would accept a deal from the Arab League to end the crackdown on protesters that has killed as many as 3,000 Syrians. In its place, the government would enter into dialogue with the protest movement. Details about the agreement were scant, but Syrian state television reported [...]