Arash Azizi

For President Donald Trump, last month’s spat at the White House with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was “great television.” To the rest of us, it was a horrifying realization of our worst fears: a real-time crumbling of the Euro-American alliance, […]

Sadegh Zibakalam is in trouble again. The retired 76-year-old professor of political science was already serving an 18-month sentence for criticizing the Iranian regime. He came out on medical furlough—only for Tehran’s prosecutor to start investigating him again. Now Zibakalam,

The Iranian regime spent decades building the Axis of Resistance, a coalition of anti-Western militias that extended Tehran’s influence deep into the Arab world. But what takes years to build can collapse seemingly overnight. Iraq is the latest country in

Iran’s Axis of Resistance, an informal coalition of anti-Western and anti-Israeli militias, was already having a terrible year. But the loss of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad may have dealt the knockout blow. Syria was both the organizing ground and

A carnival of joy has erupted in Syria with the fall of the strongman Bashar al-Assad. Syrians have waited a long time and paid a heavy price for this jubilation. Thirteen years ago, the country’s revolution began with peaceful demonstrations;

Until last week, Syria’s civil war was a classic example of a “frozen conflict”: A cease-fire in 2020 had stanched the fighting, but the sides had reached no permanent political settlement. Little happened that rose to the level of active