Bashar al-Assad was never expected to rule Syria. That job was meant for his older brother, Basil, who trained as a military commander while Bashar studied to be an ophthalmologist. He wasn’t ...

Donald Trump’s pick to oversee 18 intelligence agencies with a $100 billion spy budget is facing renewed scrutiny over an ...

The leader of the former rebel group that toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad has been named the country’s interim ...

A few days after the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad fled into exile, in December, an elderly woman sat on the sidewalk ...

Amr Salem mingles cheerfully with foreign investors and members of Syria’s interim government in a five-star hotel in ...

Bashar al-Assad was never meant to become president ... Bashar quit his studies in ophthalmology and left London, where he had met his wife, Asma, a British-Syrian and Sunni Muslim who worked ...

Director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard shed further light on her 2017 meeting with then-Syrian dictator ...

How did Bashar al-Assad come to power? Bashar was Hafez's second son. Gawky and cerebral, he trained in London as an ophthalmologist in the 1990s, and married a British Syrian woman, Asma.

Hafez Assad, had been cultivating Bashar’s oldest brother Basil as his successor. In 1994, Basil was killed in a car crash in Damascus. Bashar was then brought home from his ophthalmology ...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) BASHAR AL-ASSAD: (Speaking Arabic). NORTHAM: Assad was never meant to succeed his father. His early adult life was spent in London studying ophthalmology ...

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad fled the country on Sunday ... At age 34, the Western-educated ophthalmologist appeared as a geeky tech-savvy fan of computers with a gentle demeanor.