1. Syria talks in Sochi, Russia. The meeting was the first between the leaders of Turkey, Russia and Iran since U.S. President Donald Trump announced in December that he'll pull troops out of Syria. The Sochi peace talks are part of the Astana process, which has gradually come to eclipse a UN-sponsored negotiations framework known as the Geneva process.

2. In Sochi, Russian president Vladimir Putin pushed back against Turkey's demand for a buffer zone inside northern Syria to counter U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in the region. Russia and Iran instead stressed the need for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to have control over the territory, Reuters reported.

3. Turkey remains a key trade partner with Syria. The value and flows of trade between Syria and Turkey remained unchanged last year, The Syria Report said, looking at Turkish official statistics. In 2011, Turkey announced wide-ranging economic and financial sanctions against Syria on in response to the Syrian government's continuing military crackdown on protests.

The Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation last Thursday that would impose economic and financial pressure on the regime of Syria's President Bashar Al Assad and send it to the House, where it stalled over the Combating BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) provision. The House last month passed Syria sanctions unanimously without a BDS provision.

Why it matters: "S.1, Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019" passed with strong bipartisan support, but senior House Democrats have raised the same First Amendment concerns on the BDS language as their Senate colleagues who voted against it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while not publicly stating her views on the bill, appears to share the position that the bill's anti-BDS provisions are a poison pill, Chad Brand, a government relations officer for the Syrian American Council, told Shout News. The legislation could remain stalled in the House.

What to watch: The Syria sanctions that the House initially approved (the "Caesar Bill") could take two alternative legislative routes in order to become law, Mr. Brand said.

• Appropriations process. Feasible, but depends on a divided Congress and the president once again negotiating an agreement on what traditionally ends bring an omnibus spending package. Typically a compromise is reached where It could become law by the end of year - avoiding a government shutdown. However, as the current standoff between President Trump and Congress has proven, we could see a redux and have another shutdown where disagreements are not resolved until some point in 2020.
• Defense authorization bill: Sanctions would be added to the defense authorization spending bill. Last year's authorization under a GOP-controlled Congress was passed and enacted in August 2018, a record time. In the absence of potential jurisdictional roadblocks, sanctions could become law by November or December of this year.

The defense authorization route is faster, Mr. Brand said, but expects that jurisdictional issues among key committee panels that oversee defense and foreign policy policy might not agree to include the Syria sanctions on the grounds that they are non-germane to the legislation. He noted that the conference report to FY 2019 defense authorization bill did not include targeted sanctions against Iranian-backed militias fighting in Syria and Iraq that were approved to the House-passed version of the bill.

Go deeper:

Interview: What's next on the latest U.S. sanctions against Syria?

France details plan to repatriate its citizens who travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State, Le Monde reported. The operation is to be international in nature, but not necessarily through the United Nations, and coordinated with the U.S. on logistics as to provide international law guarantees to the jihadists and their family.

U.S.'s Syria ally supplies oil to Assad's brokers. America's military ally in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supplies oil to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, reports the Wall Street Journal. Oil revenue could be a first indication of the economic viability of northern Syria under SDF control and a good governance test (Shout News analysis).

2020 Democrats align with Trump on Syria and Afghanistan, the New York Times reported, using as evidence Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's vote—along with most of the other 2020 Democratic contenders—not to denounce President Trump's plan to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan. Yet, Senator Amy Klobuchar, who entered the 2020 presidential race yesterday, voted for the bill.

A German academic who wished to remain anonymous and volunteered with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces fighting the Islamic State told Shout News in an interview that America does not have a functioning foreign policy and warned that it has national security consequences.

Highlights from the interview:

Foreign policy capacity. "The U.S. does not have the capacity for any sustainable foreign policy at the moment. It is trying to survive instead of doing politics. At least this is how it looks like from the outside."

Foreign policy continuity. "Certain things need to continue [from one administration to the other] and no one in the current administration has the understanding how to, there is no one able to respond to day to day politics."

What I hear is that U.S. diplomats, military personnel, those responsible for negotiations and communication between parties on the ground sit there and wait for orders and directions they don't receive.

National security consequences. "The next war is brewing right now, next conflicts are getting in motion, but no one is interested. It is an enormous scandal and not in the interest of the U.S."

"No one is stopping Russia. That we are worried about Europe's eastern border should tell you something. It used to be completely controlled by the U.S. There are similar developments all over Africa."

Taking America seriously. "You need a well functioning secure and stable U.S. administration in order to stand up to a NATO partner and regional bully like Turkey. Otherwise, look at what happened. The Turks don't take America seriously. How can a U.S. president let a foreign president insult him publicly and not respond [President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey threatened to "slap" President Trump in March 2018]. It is embarrassing."

"Commentators don't understand the implications of a weak administration and president, of not being sure if the president will still be in office in the next six months. It might be entertaining for American talk shows, but it signal that it is geopolitically weak, plowing through."

America's military ally in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supplies oil to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Why it matters: Oil revenue could be a first indication of the economic viability of northern Syria under SDF control and a good governance test: will the oil revenue benefit the territory and population groups under SDF control?

Details:

• The oil deal should come as no surprise. The agreement between Syrian Democratic Forces and the Assad government in Damascus on sharing oil revenues is more than a year old, Shout News learned.

• Prospect for the reconstruction and economic viability of the territory that the U.S. partner in Syria liberated from the Islamic State has been further at stake after the White House froze roughly $200 million earmarked to help fund recovery in Syria in Mars 2018.

What to watch:

• The oil revenue sharing agreement with the Assad government may also provide insight on how northern Syria will shape following the announced U.S. military withdrawal.