POLITICO
I Got Syria So Wrong
by Frederic Hof
October 14, 2015

Fully complicit in the Assad regime’s impressive portfolio of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Iran relies on its client to secure its overland reach into Lebanon. And Russia works to sustain Assad as a rebuke to Washington. All the while, the eastern part of Syria is run by the self-styled Islamic State, or ISIL, itself a criminal enterprise. For the most part, the two titans of crime—the Assad regime and the Islamic State—have been able to live and let live, concentrating their hideous repertoires of violence on civilians and on armed rebels offering a nationalistic alternative to both.The result is widespread and profound hopelessness. READ MORE