The same campaign that’s reportedly weakening Iran is also indirectly strengthening China’s economic and strategic position in the Middle East. Israel and the United States’ efforts to eliminate the late Ayatollah’s counterparts have widened a lane for China to exert more influence and regional leadership on the diplomatic and economic front.  The Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan pact, for example, reflects China’s vocal support for allied Middle East countries to take the lead on their own regional security. The possibility for shared training and industrial cooperation with China is not impossible,...

As Syria begins to collapse into another civil war, western nations brace for the inevitable surge of Syrian refugees to their borders. Amid a national immigration crisis, America should consider how its own foreign policy perpetuates this problem. Over 1,500 people have been killed since the clashes earlier in March, including 1,000 civilians. Many call it the worst violence we’ve seen since Bashar al-Assad’s fall in December, yet it’s nothing new for those monitoring the situation since the Arab Spring. In America, immigration discussions among both political camps overlook how U.S....

The short-lived Assad dynasty has a complex history that ironically came to power by participating in a series of coups that ultimately established the family’s leadership in 1971. Bashar’s father, Hafez, was a key player in the 1963 Syrian Coup d’Etat that brought the Ba’ath party into power; and eventually declared himself president after initiating a third coup from his role as defense minister in 1970. Since then, Hafez and his son’s reign entrenched corruption over all public and private sectors across the country. As an Assyrian-American, I visited family often in northeast Syria...