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النسخة العربية
  • Politics
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  • Tag
  • The Caesar Act

Farid al-Madhan Reuters/ Al Majalla

Farid al-Madhan: Assad's fingerprints were on every picture

A former army forensics employee who later became known as Caesar tells Al Majalla how he risked his life to expose the torture and killing of countless Syrians in regime prisons

Ibrahim Hamidi 31 March 2026
A picture of Farid al-Madhan, known as "Caesar," wearing a blue robe in the US Congress.
 Reuters/ Al Majalla

Syria's new post-sanctions test

Damascus finally gets breathing room after the US repealed its draconian Caesar sanctions, but it can't exhale just yet. Al Majalla explains why.

Haid Haid 22 December 2025
Al Majalla

Washington tells Damascus what it needs to do to ease sanctions

Demands include a public ban on any Palestinian political activity, proscribing Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation, and allowing unilateral US military action in Syria

Ibrahim Hamidi 22 April 2025
Matthew Zweig, one of the architects of the Caesar Act

Caesar Act architect: Lifting Syria sanctions is "complicated"

The US levied swingeing sanctions on Bashar al-Assad's regime for torturing and killing thousands. Matt Zweig, who helped draft it, speaks to Al Majalla about its details and future.

Ibrahim Hamidi 02 March 2025

The Caesar Act: Syria Faces Financial Ruin 

In Syria, 1,000 pounds in the national currency can get you five walnuts. A state employee’s monthly salary barely buys 4 pounds of meat. Prices change every day — almost always upward — in what few…

Nabih Bulos 26 June 2020

The Caesar Act: Why Economic Sanctions Fail

Much has been said and written in recent weeks about The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, also known as the Caesar Act, which came into effect this week. The intention of the law is it to punish…

Elie Fawaz 19 June 2020
  • Popular
  • Editor's Pick
Nash
Business & Economy

The tiny waterway that put the global economy into a chokehold

18 April 2026

Disruption in the Hormuz can have major implications for global trade, but it also creates opportunities for smaller nations like Iran to become global political players

Steve Hewitt
Pete Reynolds
Politics

Glimpses of Bush's Iraq debacle appear in Trump's Iran war

15 April 2026

The Iraq war was viewed as disastrous in retrospect, while the Iran war was unpopular from the get-go. Al Majalla highlights the similarities and differences between the two.

Robert Ford
Al Majalla
Business & Economy

The US plan to turn Syria into an oil transit hub

16 April 2026

Pipelines have a chequered history in the Middle East, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has led US Tom Barrack to conclude that a new route through Syria could solve some problems.

Al Majalla - London
An Iranian woman flashes the V-sign as she takes part in a rally to pay tribute to women killed during war, in Tehran on 17 April 2026. AFP
Politics

Has Iran's ideology actually hardened?

16 April 2026

The change in tone and presentation of policy isn't a fundamental redirection, but rather the consolidation of a system under pressure

Alex Vatanka
Egyptian director Daoud Abdel Sayed holds two awards during the opening ceremony of the Alexandria Film Festival for Mediterranean Countries in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, late on 14 September 2010. AMR AHMAD / AFP
Culture & Social Affairs

Daoud Abdel Sayed and the cinema of quiet rebellion

16 April 2026

Throughout his career, the renowned Egyptian film director challenged authority, rejected easy answers, and remained rooted in lived experience

Hazem Massoud

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OPINIONS

Iran’s strategic depth in Latin America: benefits and limits

Stefanie Butendieck Hijerra
Stefanie Butendieck Hijerra

Assessing the options for bypassing the Hormuz Strait

Alice Gower
Alice Gower

Ana Paula Maia: we are all, in some way, displaced

Nesrein El-Bakhshawangy

Hormuz games: Trump's blockade on Iran's blockade

Fares Garabet
Fares Garabet
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