Despite the widespread reports on a growing competition between Russia and Iran in Syria, in general, current developments in the southern Daraa province seem not only to undermine the hopeful idea of a conflict, but also support the opposite argument that the alliance between Moscow and Tehran is intact.

Since the August 4 blast, Beirut’s streets are a stage for the daily choreography of grassroots solidarity: volunteers clean up rubble, doctors dress wounds and engineers repair shattered homes. But there are discordant notes. One morning, in the Mar Mikhail neighborhood, a man in a tent offering food baskets started …

On August 20, the World Food Program (WFP) revealed that 9.3 million people in Syria are currently food insecure, with an additional 2.2 million at risk of facing the same fate.