All Policy Analysis by Andrew J. Tabler

The key to dealing with the Assad regime is to always keep your options open and be prepared to walk away with no obligations. Only by making clear when it will do so, and what will be the consequences, will Washington ever have a hope of getting a straight answer out of the Syrian president.

Washington must at minimum take a clear position with regard to Damascus and human rights -- which could prove a key point of consensus in the international response to the regime's brutal suppression of Syrian demands for democratic reform.

With anti-Asad regime protests in Syria raging for a seventh straight day, with reports of significant numbers killed, the United States should consider designating under Treasury Department sanctions Mahar al-Asad, Bashar's brother and head of the elite units of the Republican Guard.

March 24 marked the sixth straight day of protests against Syria's Bashar al-Asad regime in and around the southern city of Deraa, where the regime crackdown thus far has claimed at least sixteen lives, with unconfirmed reports putting that number much higher. As the death toll mounts, the issue of

The outbreak of anti-regime protests in Damascus offers the Obama administration an opportunity to reiterate America's call for universal freedoms and to push for change in a country that consistently aligns itself against Washington.

The United States has an ambassador in Syria for the first time in nearly six years. Now what?