Assad

With Assad's Arab League return, Syrian officials tell Newsweek Biden must end "illegal military presence of U.S. forces" and "unilateral coercive measures."

The Middle East is moving on from the United States.

Resolving the conflict between Washington's most important ally in Syria and NATO "ally" Turkey is a must.

Iran's U.N. Mission tells Newsweek the Islamic Republic's policies have "been effective at defeating the destructive policy of the West and ISIS."

Syrian officials tell Newsweek U.S. policy "contradicts the responsibility entrusted to the United States...to strengthening international peace and security."

Arab-majority countries, including America's partners, aren't waiting for the U.S. to resume normal diplomatic relations with Syria. And they don't seem to care much about Washington's disapproval.

Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have both vowed to send aid and dispatch search-and-rescue teams to the stricken country.

The White House is suffering from tunnel vision on Ukraine (only made worse by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Washington, DC) and has forgotten another crucial theater of war and threat to U.S. interests: Syria.

The S-300 artillery reportedly traveled through the Bosporus in Turkey on its way to Novorossiysk, a Russian port along the Black Sea near Crimea.

For Erdogan to achieve his security goals, a former Turkish official told Newsweek that "it's unavoidable, indispensable to have a dialogue with Assad himself."

The Syrian government has long considered the presence of U.S. troops illegal.

The leaders of Iran, Russia and Turkey reportedly agreed U.S. sanctions and military presence in Syria must end.

The only way forward for the Emiratis and the Americans is to return to their strong bilateral cooperation in order to resolve real and painful differences.

Listen to the stories of Syrians, learn from history and don't stay silent.

Ribal al-Assad told Newsweek his exiled father Rifaat was chased back to Syria as a favor to Damascus—an allegation denied by France.

The Russian military has dispatched two of its most advanced aircrafts for military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea.

Chinese ambassador to Syria, Feng Biao, said the deal would "strengthen Chinese participation in the economic reconstruction" of the war-torn country.

President Xi said China "supports the struggle of the Syrians in defending the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of their country."

Inconvenient as the stories of refugees who returned and found themselves detained and tortured in Syria might be to governments eager to move on, they should not be ignored.

"Assad does not merely profit from the crisis he has created. He has created a system that rewards him more the worse things get," the report said.

The Syrian leader, once a political pariah, is now being welcomed back by many of the countries that cut him off 10 years ago, despite ongoing U.S. opposition.

Right now, the Biden administration's Syria policy is in a holding-pattern.

"This clearly violates international law and doesn't allow you to make maximum efforts to consolidate the country," Putin told Assad, according to the Kremlin.

Jens Spahn said that he was not pleased that Syria was confirmed for a spot on the World Health Organization executive board, amid decades-long war the Syrian government waged against dissenters.

The rigged election in Syria caps off the dictator's victory in a bloody decade-long battle to retain power.

Syrian Parliament Speaker Hammouda al-Sabbagh announced Thursday that the incumbent Assad had won 95.1% of the vote, or 13,540,860 ballots, figures likely to be met with skepticism from opposition figures and Western powers that have derided the race as a sham.

"The Assad regime's so-called presidential election is neither free nor fair," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

"If they want to vote, they can go home and vote there," one Lebanese protester said. "Since they love Bashar Assad, why don't they go home?"

Russia said the U.S. convoy had taken a route "without prior notice" as friction over deconfliction efforts grows between Washington, D.C., and Moscow.

Russia's embassy in Washington tweeted that the U.S. presence in Syria was "primarily illegal."