In the United States, as election-year mud-slinging begins to reach its traditional crescendo, neither President Obama nor his European counterparts are in a position to commit either moral or material capital to end the shedding of innocent blood in Syria and the surrounding region. Kofi Annan, the former United Nations Secretary General, who was sent by the international body on a peace mission to Syria, ended up describing his task as “mission impossible,” confirming a prevailing perception that he was set up to fail. 

The world continues to keep a wary eye on Iran’s nuclear program, in nearby Syria the pro-Iranian government of Bashir al-Assad is on the brink of collapse and Tel Aviv accuses Tehran of being behind the fatal suicide bombing of a bus in Bulgaria which carried Israeli tourists. Yet chicken, or lack thereof, makes daily front-page headlines and is the obsessive subject of scores of cartoons that appear in both state-owned and independent media in Iran.

The city of Daraa became the inferno of the ongoing Syrian uprising last March in one clean, bloody swipe, when 15 children who had scribbled anti-government phrases on the walls of their school were arrested, beaten, and tortured, many of their faces burned with acid. In response, hoards of peaceful protesters took to the streets, only to be riddled with indiscriminating bullets fired by Hezbollah snipers. Those detained by government security forces were never seen again. Nobody went into Daraa, and nobody got out.