I heard LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the chair of the Democratic National Convention, speak last night in Burbank, and among a fairly mainstream liberal speech that focused heavily on the DREAM Act and the Administration’s granting deferred action status for DREAM-eligible undocumenteds, he accused the Romney-Ryan campaign of “saber-rattling on Syria.” This came one day [...]

Rumors about a possible Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities forced US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to comment on the reports, but not in the most reassuring way, saying that Israel has not yet made their decision on an attack. “I don’t believe they’ve made a decision as to whether or not they will go [...]

As fighting continues in Aleppo, with 20,000 Syrian regime troops preparing a final assault, a confusing set of reports indicates that the Prime Minister has defected to Jordan. A statement read on the al-Jazeera Arabic news channel that was attributed to Prime Minister Riyad al-Hijab said he had resigned to protest his government’s harsh tactics [...]

Kofi Annan has stepped down as the international crisis mediator for the UN on Syria, in an acknowledgement that without unity on the Security Council, nothing will be done at an international level. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is stepping down as the U.N.-Arab League mediator in the 17-month-old Syria conflict at the end of [...]

Observers are bracing for what many believe could be a massacre in the Syrian city of Aleppo, the biggest by population in the country. Regime war planes have already bombed the city where rebels have assembled in an attempt to take and hold ground. Now artillery shelling is taking place, according to the rebels, and [...]

Yesterday’s attack on the seat of power in Syria (which was not, as initially reported, a suicide attack but a remote-controlled bomb, which actually requires more pre-planning) has completely changed the dynamic in that country. Fighting continues in the neighborhoods surrounding Damascus, the capital, including in patches close to government buildings and the presidential palace. [...]

A suicide bomb killed the Syrian defense minister and President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law today, among other top officials, in the most direct and effective attack on the Syrian regime since the beginning of the uprising and civil war. Reports said the officials had been killed by a bodyguard in a suicide bombing in the capital [...]

Fighting in the Syrian capital of Damascus raged for a third straight day, the most sustained challenge to the seat of power of President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian government has escalated their response as a result: Activists in the northern Damascus suburb of Qaboun said the Syrian forces were backed by helicopter gunships, an apparent [...]

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s continued survival is predicated on their Russian patrons to a large extent. So this shift from Moscow is really a crushing blow: Russia will cease deliveries of arms and fighter planes to Syria until the situation in the country stabilises, an official said yesterday, a move that would ratchet up pressure [...]

Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, a commander of the Republican Guard in Syria and a close confidant of President Bashar al-Assad, has defected to Turkey, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius confirmed today. The number of high-ranking officers quitting Mr. Assad’s forces has increased markedly in recent days as violence has mounted. But the departure of General [...]

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has essentially declared a civil war in a meeting with his new cabinet, which was broadcast on state-run TV. He did this as fighting raged just outside of the capital of Damascus, and as gunmen stormed a pro-government TV channel, killing seven. It’s hard not to agree with Assad that we [...]