nited States has done nothing except talk. Indeed, at first the talking appeared to be geared toward justifying an imminent military strike against Bashar Assad's assets, to degrade the Syrian president's ability to launch poison gas attacks and to deter him from resuming this form of warfare. EFTA00678418

ek by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to abandon its external headquarters in Damascus and support Syrians demonstrating for the removal of Bashar Assad's regime is noteworthy on several levels. All of them affirm the vulnerable and changing nature of strategic conditions across the Middle East. The

l planning; high-quality training, etc.); - Prevented Iran from using Iraqi land and airspace to drag Iraq into the Syrian civil war on the side of Bashar Assad's regime, with all its consequences for internal Iraqi cohesion; EFTA00706973 - Assured key regional actors that Iraq's new government would not be

s efforts to stop the violence and repression in its neighbor and onetime ally Syria. Although Turkish officials have harshly criticized President Bashar Assad's response to a yearlong uprising that is increasingly taking on the character of a civil war, they have not budged the Syrian leader. And they are a