Iran’s top ranking general in Syria has contradicted the official line taken by Iran’s leaders on the sudden downfall of their ally Bashar al-Assad, saying in a remarkably candid speech last week that Iran had suffered a major defeat but would still try to operate in the country. An audio recording of the speech, given […]

In easier times for Egypt’s refugees, Azza Mostafa, a pro-government TV anchor, had nothing but generous words for the many thousands of Syrians who had built new lives in Egypt after their own country imploded into civil war in 2011. “I’d like to say to our Syrian families and our brothers in Egypt,” she said […]

Syria’s main airport handled its first international flights on Tuesday since the fall of the government of former President Bashar al-Assad last month, as the new leaders press to reassert a semblance of normalcy in the war-weary country. One Qatar Airways plane landed following a direct flight from Doha to the Syrian capital, Damascus. Jordan’s […]

References to the ousted President Bashar al-Assad and his father, who ruled Syria before him, have been removed, as have images of pre-Islamic gods. The definition of a martyr has been changed, and it now means someone who has died for God, not one’s country. A Roman-era queen has been taken out of some textbooks. […]

The business owners arrived one by one, but all were united in their mission on a chilly December morning: Salvage anything from the pulverized market in this hillside city in southern Lebanon. A photo studio operator and his son trudged through debris and twisted metal to recover dust-coated negatives and camera lenses. A clothes shop […]

The Israeli military said on Sunday that it has been conducting “operational raids” in recent weeks on Mount Hermon in Syria, continuing a military campaign on Syrian soil that is drawing increasing international condemnation. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based Syrian war monitor, on Sunday also reported airstrikes around the Syrian capital, Damascus, […]

For much of her life, Sumaya Ainaya spent weekend and summer nights on Mount Qasioun, which overlooks the city of Damascus, joined by other Syrians drinking coffee, smoking hookah and eating corn on the cob roasted on grills nearby. But soon after the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, the military under President Bashar al-Assad […]

Syria’s main international airport in Damascus will reopen next week, the new government said on Saturday, as it tries to re-establish a sense of normalcy after the uprising that toppled President Bashar al-Assad. The announcement came amid tensions along the border between Syria and Lebanon, where four Lebanese solders were wounded in clashes on Friday […]

The Islamic State has lost thousands of fighters to death or prison and suffered the demise of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. But the global reach of the group, also known as ISIS, is still vast, in part because of its sophisticated media output and the people around the world who consume it. […]

Syria’s new leaders are set to meet the French and German foreign ministers in the capital, Damascus, on Friday in one of the highest-level Western diplomatic visits since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad last month. Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s top diplomat, and Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, arrived in Damascus for the first such […]