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A reason frequently given by Western commentators for Russia’s support for President Assad is Russia’s supposed wish to protect its naval base in Tartus in Syria.  Some commentators have suggested conversely that one of the reasons for the whole Syrian war was to drive the Russians out of Syria.
In my opinion neither of these claims is true, but there is no doubt that one consequence of the war is that it has hugely increased the scale of Russia’s military presence in Syria beyond anything conceivable in 2011 when the Syrian conflict started.

As the Trump administration makes its first positive signal towards calming relations with China, it continues its relentless drumbeat of hostility towards Iran.
This begs the question of why an administration which appears otherwise committed to pulling back from international conflicts so that it can focus its energies on defeating Jihadi terrorism and ISIS is so fixed in its hostility to Iran?

The House of Commons, the lower house of the British Parliament, has now finally voted through the bill Theresa May’s government presented in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the British government needs parliamentary approval before it can invoke Article 50, which formally starts the process for Britain to leave the European Union.
The government’s margin of victory was a decisive 494 to 122, with all but 59 Labour MPs following the lead given by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by voting for the bill.

Following a tough confirmation battle, Jeff Sessions – Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General – has won confirmation from the Senate.
The vote was 52 in favour, 47 against, with the vote following party lines, with just one Democrat voting for Sessions.
Sessions has faced sustained opposition, with accusations that he has taken racist positions, which previously caused his failure to win confirmation as a federal judge in 1986.

Levan Dzhagaryan, Russia’s ambassador to Iran, has today suddenly floated what looks like the possibility of the Russian air force once again using Shahid Nojed airbase near Hamadan in Iran.

News that a recent opinion poll has put the SPD for the first time one point ahead of Angela’s Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc has inevitably triggered speculation about whether or not she is now in serious danger of losing the forthcoming German parliamentary elections.

The fact that a Russian court has for the second time convicted the Russian liberal opposition activist Alexey Navalny of embezzlement in a case involving the Kirovles timber company represents a head-on challenge by the Russians to the European Court of Human Rights.

The Kremlin has released a summary of a telephone conversation between Russian President Putin and German Chancellor Merkel, which took place yesterday Saturday 7th February 2017.
Note that the summary does not say who initiated the call.  The content of the summary however suggests strongly that it was Putin.
The summary, which is unusually detailed, reads as follows

With Donald Trump remaining consistent in his rhetoric about his desire to have better and more cooperative relations with Russia whilst continuing his verbal attacks on Iran, many have suspected that Russia, a strategic Iranian ally, might adopt the role of mediator in the dispute.

US President Trump’s recent interview on Fox with Bill O’Reilly has provoked anger in the US, with US politicians and commentators rounding on President Trump for appearing to put the US on the same level as Russia.
To an outsider what the episode reveals is the extent to which ‘exceptionalist’ thinking in the US has become mainstream so that even President Trump’s statement of the obvious – that the US “has killers too” – is now taken as an unpardonable act of lèse-majesté.