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In a landmark ruling marking the first major legal action against ousted former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad since his flight from power, a Damascus court issued death sentences on Tuesday to Assad, his younger brother Maher al-Assad, and former senior security official Atef Najib. The convictions center on charges of premeditated murder, systematic torture, and incitement to targeted killing that span more than a decade of conflict.

Court documents confirm Bashar al-Assad was found guilty on multiple counts, including the premeditated killing of civilians — among them children — alongside arbitrary detention, widespread torture, and crimes against humanity. Atef Najib, a cousin of the former president who was taken into custody by new authorities in January 2024, was convicted in person on identical charges, with specific convictions for the intentional killing of children under 15 years old and torture that resulted in death. Both Bashar and Maher al-Assad were tried in absentia, after the pair fled Syria for Moscow in December 2024 as armed opposition groups advanced on Damascus and toppled the decades-long Assad family regime.

The verdict is the first high-profile conviction of former Assad regime figures issued by Syria’s new transitional government, which launched a widespread prosecution campaign this year targeting former officials both in custody and at large. The case closes a 14-year chapter of authoritarian rule that began when Bashar al-Assad, born in 1965, took power in 2000 following the death of his father and long-time ruler Hafez al-Assad. For 24 years, the Assad family maintained tight authoritarian control, cementing the political dominance of the minority Alawite sect in Syria’s majority Sunni population, and aligning the country closely with Iran while maintaining persistent hostility toward Israel and the United States.

The eruption of mass pro-democracy protests during the 2011 Arab Spring marked the turning point for Assad’s rule. When government forces led by Assad launched a brutal violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators, the unrest escalated into a full-scale armed uprising that plunged the country into 14 years of catastrophic civil war. The conflict quickly drew in global and regional powers, with Russia and Iran providing consistent military and political backing to the Assad regime, while the United States, Turkey, and other nations supported various opposition factions at different stages of the war.

By the end of Assad’s rule, the United Nations estimates the conflict had killed hundreds of thousands of people, flattened critical civilian infrastructure across the country, and forced more than half of Syria’s pre-war population to flee their homes as internally displaced persons or refugees. The UN has confirmed the 14-year conflict left Syria grappling with an unprecedented, multi-layered political, economic, and humanitarian catastrophe that will require decades of recovery.

Throughout the conflict, international investigators and human rights groups documented widespread abuses tied directly to the Assad government. Credible reports confirm the regime carried out mass arbitrary detention, systematic torture, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and deliberate attacks on civilian populations. A United Nations-backed investigative mechanism found overwhelming evidence of a systematic pattern of abuse, including torture, sexual violence, and enforced disappearances, operating across more than 100 government-run detention facilities throughout Assad’s rule.

While the fall of the Assad regime opened a new political transition for Syria, UN experts have warned that human rights risks remain pervasive, with ongoing allegations of summary executions, forced displacement, and other abuses against civilian populations across different areas of the country as new governing structures take shape.

Against the backdrop of a stalemated Middle East conflict and growing frustration with U.S. foreign policy failures, three influential Muslim-majority nations have launched a landmark regional defense alliance that marks a dramatic shift in decades-long Gulf security dynamics.

Last Friday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement in Saudi Arabia, a pact structured around a NATO-style collective defense principle. The core text of the agreement states that any armed aggression against one signatory will be treated as an attack against all three, with the explicit goal of strengthening coordinated deterrence against external threats.

The naming of the agreement, tied directly to the Islamic holy city of Mecca, sends an unambiguous signal that this is not a Western-aligned bloc. For more than 30 years, dating back to the 1990 U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait following Saddam Hussein’s invasion, Persian Gulf security has been dominated by American leadership, with U.S. ground, naval, and air forces permanently hosted across Gulf states including Saudi Arabia. This new alliance breaks with that long-standing order.

Each member brings unique strategic capabilities to the new bloc: Saudi Arabia contributes substantial economic weight from its vast fossil fuel reserves, Turkey contributes NATO’s second-largest standing military, and nuclear-armed Pakistan offers critical deterrent capacity. Regional security analysts describe the pact as a clear breaking point in regional dependence on U.S. security guarantees.

“The political symbolism of this summit is enormous,” explained Abdulaziz Sager, director of the Saudi-based Gulf Research Center. “Three of the Muslim world’s most powerful states have come together at a time of extreme regional uncertainty, demonstrating that middle and regional powers are increasingly willing to coordinate their own security agendas independent of outside actors.”

Observers widely agree that eroding trust in U.S. security guarantees is the primary driver behind the new alliance. After U.S. policy led to a stalled war with Iran, Tehran has launched retaliatory strikes against U.S.-aligned Gulf states, disrupting global energy supplies and bringing parts of the world economy to the brink of standstill. Iran frames its attacks as a response to Saudi Arabia’s long-standing alignment with Washington. As Iranian strikes targeted Gulf territory, the U.S. withdrew hundreds of military personnel from regional bases, leaving Gulf leadership questioning whether decades of American security promises were ever tangible.

Harvard economist Ken Rogoff highlighted this disillusionment during a Wall Street Journal TV discussion on the war’s impact on U.S. global influence. “Many Gulf rulers went into this conflict believing U.S. bases on their soil guaranteed their protection,” Rogoff noted. “Instead, they’ve found that those bases turned their countries into targets, with no meaningful American defense to back up the promises.”

Not all analysts frame the pact as a full break from the U.S. Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, a Turkish foreign policy expert at the German Marshall Fund’s Ankara office, emphasized that the agreement is not yet a fully operational mutual defense pact. “This is best understood as a foundational framework for deeper strategic, military, and defense industry coordination between the three states,” he told Qatar-based Al Jazeera. All three signatories still rely heavily on U.S. military equipment, a dependence that cannot be eliminated quickly, making a complete split from Washington unlikely in the near term.

Iran’s official reaction to the alliance mixed dismissal with calls for Muslim unity. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi argued the new bloc’s search for security was misdirected, boasting that Iran’s military had already proven its “readiness and capability” against what he called “the world’s most expensive military.” Still, he added that “when Muslims stand together, we can face every challenge from malicious outsiders head-on. It is time to rely only on ourselves and embrace true brotherhood.” Hardline Iranian lawmakers took a more confrontational stance: “Saudis must know that a paper agreement with Turkey and Pakistan will not bring them security, just as decades of dependence on the Americans did not,” wrote Iranian MP Ebrahim Rezaei. “Reform your policies so that you do not need to beg for security from others.”

Beyond immediate security needs, each signatory pursues distinct long-term strategic goals through the alliance. For Saudi Arabia, the pact builds on years of efforts to diversify its diplomatic partnerships and expand global influence. In 2023, Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic ties with Iran, a deal brokered by China that signaled Riyadh’s growing willingness to look beyond Washington for partnerships. The kingdom has also collaborated with Russia for years to maintain stable, high oil prices, defying repeated U.S. pressure to lower prices. Riyadh has held deep distrust of U.S. commitment since Donald Trump’s first term, when the U.S. declined to retaliate against Iranian-linked attacks on Saudi oil tankers and a key domestic oil processing facility in 2019. Today, with the U.S. failing to defeat Iran and major powers China and Russia aligned with Tehran, Riyadh is testing whether new regional partners can deliver the security Washington has failed to provide.

For Pakistan, the alliance offers an opportunity to break free of long-standing geopolitical constraints rooted in its border dispute with India and history of intervention in Afghanistan, allowing it to play a larger role in global diplomacy. Like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has deepened its strategic ties with China, participating in the Belt and Road Initiative to build a major transport corridor and Chinese-managed deepwater port on the Arabian Sea, positioned near the entrance to the Persian Gulf. While Islamabad’s previous attempts to mediate a U.S.-Iran peace deal have failed, it has maintained its bilateral relationship with Washington. The new partnership with Turkey gives Pakistan access to advanced Turkish military production and technology, while securing Islamabad a greater voice in Middle East affairs, a region where it has historically had limited influence.

For Turkey, the alliance advances President Erdogan’s vision of restoring Turkey’s historical influence across the Middle East and Central Asia, a legacy of the Ottoman Empire that ended with World War I. The partnership places Ankara at the center of regional geopolitics, and the shared Islamic identity of the three-nation bloc adds a layer of historical legitimacy to Turkey’s regional ambitions. It also brings concrete economic benefits: Saudi Arabia already invests heavily in Turkish high-tech industry, Turkey is a core infrastructure and security partner for Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion NEOM mega-city project on the Red Sea coast, and the agreement is expected to lower trade barriers for Turkish consumer exports to the Saudi market.

Militarily, Turkey can offer Saudi Arabia advanced drone technology and naval modernization support, and Ankara has the regional military footprint to help resolve the Houthi blockade of Red Sea shipping. Turkey already operates a naval base in Somalia and is building a new missile base on the Indian Ocean with capacity for missiles with a 1,250-mile range, putting the entire Arabian Peninsula, Red Sea shipping lanes, and Strait of Hormuz within striking distance. Turkey’s expanding regional role also puts it in direct conflict with Israeli ambitions, as analysts note: following the Gaza war, Israel has pushed to establish full military dominance across the Middle East, a goal that clashes directly with Ankara’s interests. “As Turkey deepened its involvement in regional affairs, its interests increasingly collided with Israel’s,” notes a report from the Jazeera Center for Studies. “Israel’s efforts to control Palestinian territory, dominate Lebanon, and overthrow the Iranian government all have direct negative consequences for Turkish security and economic interests.”

Across the Middle East, the new agreement marks the most significant shift in regional security architecture in a generation, as regional powers move to take security into their own hands after decades of U.S. leadership.

Top American foreign policy scholars have delivered a blunt assessment of the outcome of the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran, concluding that the U.S. has suffered a catastrophic defeat after an unauthorized military campaign launched five months prior.

In an interview with Australian journalist Tom Switzer on Sunday, prominent University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer directly addressed what has become a defining vulnerability of the Trump administration’s position: the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy shipping chokepoints. The waterway, which carries roughly a fifth of global oil trade, has been largely closed to commercial traffic since late February, when the U.S. and Israel launched a joint bombing campaign against Iran. Today, Tehran now controls access to the strait, and is demanding shipping companies pay transit fees to reopen it – a development Mearsheimer says the White House has no leverage to reject.

When asked why President Donald Trump appears willing to accept Iran’s terms, Mearsheimer offered a straightforward explanation: the U.S. has no remaining options to reverse its defeat. “He has no choice. He lost the war. This is a devastating defeat for the United States. Can you tell me what the United States should do to regain leverage over Iran? I actually think you can’t tell me because we have no solution,” he said.

Mearsheimer went on to break down why Trump’s public threats to escalate military strikes against Iran carry no credibility, pointing to two critical constraints on U.S. action. First, the U.S. military has depleted its stockpiles of precision munitions after months of bombing. Second, key U.S. regional allies in the Persian Gulf have flatly rejected any further escalation, warning that Iran has publicly pledged to retaliate by destroying critical Gulf infrastructure including major oil production facilities and desalination plants that supply drinking water to Gulf populations.

Mearsheimer’s grim assessment was echoed by Vali Nasr, a leading international affairs professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who agreed that Tehran now holds the strategic upper hand in the conflict. Nasr argued that the era when the U.S. could force Iran into total submission via external pressure has permanently ended. He noted that Iran’s demand for concessions in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not overreach, as many in Washington’s foreign policy circle still claim; it is simply Tehran exercising the strategic advantage it gained after Trump launched the unprovoked war.

“Many in the Washington foreign policy establishment had yet to understand this fact,” Nasr added. “In reality, Iran is not overplaying its hand. It’s just playing its hand.”

Independent analysis from defense policy expert Daniel DePetris, a fellow at the think tank Defense Priorities, published Monday reinforced the scholars’ conclusions. DePetris confirmed that the U.S. has no viable alternative but to accept Iran’s current terms for transit through the strait. He traced the current crisis directly back to Trump’s decision to launch the military campaign without the required congressional authorization, a move that handed Iran an immediate strategic opportunity to leverage its geographic control of the Strait of Hormuz.

While DePetris acknowledged that the current status quo is far from ideal for U.S. interests, he added that it became inevitable the moment the war was launched. “Trump’s war handed Iran the perfect excuse to leverage its geography, and the Iranians didn’t hesitate to do so,” DePetris wrote. “Over time, the Strait of Hormuz, in addition to Iran’s more aggressive posture toward its neighbors writ-large, has become something far more valuable: a strategic card Iran can play whenever Trump threatens to accelerate military operations.”