The Future of Syria

Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow following the rapid advance by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and other groups, which brought an end to over fifty years of brutal authoritarian rule by the Assad family. Major Syrian cities such as Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and then the capital Damascus fell within days as the Syrian army collapsed, weakened by both internal factors and the lack of support from Bashar’s Russian and Iranian allies. in Russia, Iran, and Lebanon. Join the Middle East Policy Forum for a panel discussion on Syria’s future featuring experts Charles Lister (Middle East Institute), Qutaiba Idlbi (Atlantic Council), and Caroline Rose (New Lines Institute), moderated by Sina Azodi (GWU).
Speakers
Qutaiba Idlbi is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs where he leads the Council’s work on Syria. His experience includes researching the framework of political imprisonment in Syria as the Syria expert at the International Center for Transitional Justice, analyzing economic sanctions and forced displacement as a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute, profiling refugee entrepreneurship in Turkey and Jordan with Building Markets, analyzing security policy in Turkey and Syria at the Global Policy Institute, and developing governance and security atmospheric reports for the US Joint Special Operations Command with Pechter Polls and the USAID Office of Transitional Initiatives with Caerus Associates.
Caroline Rose is the Director of the Strategic Blind Spots Portfolio at the New Lines Institute, where she leads and produces research on the intersection of defense, security, illicit trades, and geopolitical landscapes from Europe to the Middle East and North Africa. Her portfolio at the institute includes two projects: the Project on the Captagon Trade and the Project on Post-Withdrawal Security Landscapes. Previously at the institute, Rose served as the head of the Power Vacuums Program. As of fall 2023, she is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service teaching a graduate course on the nexus of illicit economies, armed conflict, and insecurity. 
Sina Azodi previously worked as a research assistant at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Sina is also visiting scholar and a professorial lecturer of international affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, where he teaches a graduate course on Iran’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Dr. Azodi is a frequent commentator on both English- and Persian-speaking media, including BBC, Sky News, Al-Jazeera, TRT World, and i24. His analysis has appeared in Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Arms Control Association, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Middle East Institute, and has been quoted by the New York Times, Newsweek, Spiegel, and Forbes. Dr. Azodi has published the chapter “The Fusion of Politics and Religion in Iran” in the edited book Political Islam in the Gulf Region. He earned his BA and MA in international affairs from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, and PhD from University of South Florida.