... served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1970 to 1984. Farouk al-Sharaa (a Sunni), another close associate of Syria’s head of state, served as foreign minister from 1984 until 2006 when he became (and still is) the country’s Vice President.
Bashar al-Assad and the status quo
After Hafez al-Assad’s demise in June 2000 the Syrian state was faced with a number of urgent issues. Just a few hours after the death of the president, the parliament unanimously changed an article of the constitution,...
Interview with Aleksei Sarabyev
The Syrian presidential elections were held on June 3, 2014, with Bashar al-Assad emerging victorious.
Aleksei Sarabyev
, head of the Information and Publishing Department at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, talks to RIAC about how this will affect the internal political situation ...
... to occupy a central place in world politics, even as the events in Ukraine have become the primary focus. The presidential elections in Syria will essentially change nothing: their easily predictable results will confirm the legitimacy of the rule of Bashar al-Assad for those who recognize it, and serve as a bone of contention for those who consider his rule illegitimate. There is nothing contradictory in the fact that, as Russian officials have stated, while Moscow does not personally support Bashar ...
“Close your eyes and you’re not sure if it’s an Israeli or a Saudi speaking.”
That’s what Daniel Levy, Middle East director at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told The New York Times in an article dated March 31st. The ECFR, which has called for a greater role for Al Qaeda in Algeria to “promote democracy,” is funded mainly by George Soros.
The New York Times sourced Levy about the latest attempt by Israel and Saudi Arabia to cooperate...
Successful talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry provide an opening for broader discussions. But these measures do not include mediating and checking the ongoing efforts of feuding regional powers Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose big money and disruptive tactics have joined with western interests to advance a parallel government and army in Syria. Earlier this year, U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, who was part of the negotiations...
Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma and author of "Syria Comment"
Foreign opinion
Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma and author of "
Syria Comment
".
In this special interview for the Russian International Affairs Council Joshua Landis analyses the situation in Syria, and discusses Assad’s strength, the status...
