Author Topic: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR  (Read 420008 times)

Crafty_Dog

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Stratfor: Another Long War unfolds in Syria
« Reply #1050 on: January 20, 2018, 10:45:49 AM »
Though many interesting points are made and valid questions raised, I find this piece rather empty when it comes to what I see as a central geopolitical issue-- the Iranian drive for a land bridge to the Mediterranean.  The merits of keeping the Kurds strong also seems to go unconsidered.   The cautions at the end of the piece may well prove prescient however.

==================================

Another Long War Unfolds in Syria
By Charles Glass
Board of Contributors
Charles Glass
Charles Glass
Board of Contributors
Children survey the damage to a building just outside Damascus that sustained a missile attack from forces loyal to the Syrian government Jan. 18.
(ABDULMONAM EASSA/AFP/Getty Images)
Contributor Perspectives offer insight, analysis and commentary from Stratfor’s Board of Contributors and guest contributors who are distinguished leaders in their fields of expertise.
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The war in Syria should be ending. The Islamic State has lost all the territory it seized in 2014. The Syrian army, backed by Russia and Iran, has confined other anti-government rebels to besieged pockets in the south, on the eastern outskirts of Damascus and in the northwest. Opposition hopes of removing Syrian President Bashar al Assad have vanished. But the war refuses to die. It just takes new forms.

The latest phase has little to do with Syria, apart from the fact that it's taking place there. The antagonists are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the United States, which has declared a post-Islamic State mission that will keep American advisers and their local surrogates in Syria for years to come. The mission calls for the United States to train, arm and advise a 30,000-strong, mostly Kurdish border security force. Following the announcement of the project Jan. 14, Erdogan pledged "to strangle it before it's even born." He has moved Turkish military units to the border and launched artillery shells at Kurdish positions in their western enclave of Afrin.

Aware that his opposition to the U.S.-backed Kurdish force pits him against his largest NATO ally, Erdogan told members of parliament from his Justice and Development Party, "Hey, NATO! You are obliged to take a stance against those who harass and violate the borders of your members." The mission threatens to tear the military bloc apart and to commit the United States to a long-term presence in a country where it has no strategic interest.  (Marc:  What about stopping Iran's drive for land bridge, positioning itself to go after Israel?)

Irreconcilable Differences

Erdogan sees the backbone of the proposed border security force — a Kurdish militia known as the Yekineyen Parastina Gel (YPG), or People's Protection Units — as an arm of the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane (PKK), or ‎Kurdistan Workers' Party. Turkish security forces have been fighting the PKK off and on since 1984. In fact, Turkey regards the group as a terrorist organization and long ago persuaded the United States and European Union to do the same. No one doubts the PKK's influence over the YPG or the role its fighters played, alongside other Kurdish groups, in defeating the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. To pull off its plan, the United States must either take the PKK off the register of terrorist groups or sell its NATO allies on the idea that the group is a terrorist organization in Turkey but not in Syria.

Erdogan's resistance to a prolonged U.S. presence in Syria under the guise of the new force has received support even from Turkey's adversaries in the Syrian civil war — namely al Assad's government, Russia and Iran. These three entities undoubtedly see the U.S. scheme as a pretext to keep a military presence in Syria, deprive Syrian authorities control over large swaths of the country and gain leverage over the war's putative victors.

A Precedent for Peril

In his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Jan. 11, David Satterfield, the State Department's senior bureau official for near eastern affairs, explained the new border force. Satterfield described it as an effort "to not only diminish Iranian foreign influence in Syria generally, but to protect our allies from the very real threat Hezbollah poses in southwest Syria to our allies." But that raises the question: How often have Hezbollah or other militias backed by the Syrian government attacked Israel across the cease-fire lines Henry Kissinger negotiated in 1974?

The answer is never. Israel is capable of protecting its border with Syria, where a U.N. disengagement force has been in place for 40 years. A U.S. presence in the form of a Kurdish-dominated militia, particularly one that is overextended in areas with Arab majorities, is unlikely to increase border security. It will, however, present a tempting target for attacks by groups loyal to the Syrian government, which will do everything in its power to remove the United States and its clients from Syrian territory. Tensions have already surfaced in the Kurdish-occupied town of Manbij, where members of the Arab al-Bouna tribe protested the death by torture of two young Arabs held by the Kurds.

One of the leading American experts on Syria, Joshua Landis at the University of Oklahoma's Center for Middle East Studies, wrote:

    "By controlling half of Syria's energy resources, the Euphrates dam at Tabqa, as well as much of Syria's best agricultural land, the US will be able to keep Syria poor and under-resourced... The US should be helping the PYD [Partiya Yetikia Demokrat, or Democratic Union Party, the civilian wing of the YPG,] to negotiate a deal with Assad that promotes both their interests: Kurdish autonomy and Syrian sovereignty. Both have shared interests, which make a deal possible. Both see Turkey as their main danger. Both need to cooperate in order to exploit the riches of the region. Both distrust radical Islamists and fear their return. Neither can rebuild alone."

In the absence of U.S.-Russian-Syrian cooperation to end the war in Syria, U.S. troops on the ground will be hostages to guerrilla warfare against them. There is a precedent for successful Syrian covert action against the United States and Israel. It was set in Lebanon after Israel's 1982 invasion when assassination, suicide bombings and direct attacks drove the United States out in 1984 and forced a total Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon 16 years later. The current U.S. administration may be unaware of this history, but Damascus isn't. And this time, its agents will be operating in their own country with the full support of Iran and Russia, and with Turkey's acquiescence. Syria would thus join Iraq and Afghanistan as the locale of a long, unwinnable American war.

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: Turkey strikes Syrian Kurds
« Reply #1052 on: January 21, 2018, 05:59:56 AM »
Updated Jan. 20, 2018 8:44 p.m. ET

Turkish jets began airstrikes on a Syrian Kurdish force allied with the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State, opening a new front in the seven-year Syrian war.


The assault on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria follows weeklong threats from the Turkish government to crack down on the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG. The militia has proven to be the most effective partner on the ground in Syria to the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State. But Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, is troubled that the Kurds have gained strength, land and a greater degree of autonomy in a region along the Turkish border through their role in battles against Islamic State.

Turkey has fought the separatist Kurdish movement PKK at home for decades and views the YPG as an extension of the PKK, branding both terrorist organizations.

While the YPG has been a strong American ally, the U.S. says it doesn’t directly support the Kurds in Afrin. Nevertheless, U.S. officials warned over the past week that a Turkish incursion into the area risked escalating tensions in northern Syria.  The top U.S. military commander in the region said Saturday he feared that the Turkish action could distract from efforts to counter Islamic State and urged a quick resolution and end to the hostilities.

“The fight against ISIS continues in Syria,” said Army Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command. “We’re still involved in day-to-day fighting with our partners against ISIS, trying to liberate the remaining parts of the terrain that they control.”

Gen. Votel said he spoke earlier Saturday with Turkey’s deputy defense chief, though he offered no details. “We would urge the parties to try to resolve this quickly and avoid escalation on it and try to get back to our common threat, which is ISIS,” he said.

Earlier Saturday, before the strikes began, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a military operation had “de facto” begun. He pledged to expand it to Manbij, another semiautonomous Kurdish area in northern Syria.

“Later we will, step by step, clear our country up to the Iraqi border from this terror filth that is trying to besiege our country,” Mr. Erdogan said.

Turkey has been an erstwhile support of the Syrian rebels throughout the conflict that began nearly seven years ago as an uprising against the dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey stepped up its military foray into northern Syria in 2016, occupying parts of northern Syria with their allies in the Syrian rebel group Free Syrian Army.

A main objective of the Turkish mission, dubbed “Euphrates Shield,” was to capture the Kurdish enclave of Manbij, which Mr. Erdogan still swears he will do. While the Turkish mission was aimed both at defeating Islamic State and blocking the expansion of the Syrian Kurds, Turkey has recently turned its attention more narrowly to containing the Kurds.


This weekend’s strikes are the latest example of how the defeat of Islamic State in most of Syria and Iraq has rekindled old rivalries that were set aside temporarily to defeat a common enemy.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, whose troops control the area around Afrin as part of a de-escalation agreement with Turkey and regime ally Iran, said it had moved its forces from Afrin to the Tel-Adjar area “to prevent possible provocations, to exclude any threat to the lives and health of Russian service members.”

The withdrawal came after Turkish top military and intelligence officials on Thursday visited Moscow, which backs the Syrian regime in the country’s multisided war, to seek support for the operation.

The Russian Defense Ministry, In a separate statement, blamed “provocative steps” by the U.S., including “uncontrolled deliveries of modern weapons by the Pentagon to pro-American formations in the north of Syria,” that it said were aimed at segregating off territories with a predominantly Kurdish population. The ministry said that U.S. actions harmed peace negotiations “in which the Kurds should play a full part.”

The Turkish military said it had launched the offensive, called “Operation Olive Branch,” against Kurdish fighters in Afrin. Members of the Turkish-backed Syrian rebel group Free Syrian Army entered areas around Afrin in northern Syria close to the Turkish border, according to Syrian Kurdish fighters.

“Nearly all targets have been destroyed. As of tomorrow, in accordance with developments, our ground forces will also conduct necessary operations,” Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Saturday. Turkish officials claimed their forces were also attacking Islamic State militants in the Afrin area.

However Sam Heller, a research fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said earlier this week that the U.S. doesn’t support the YPG in Afrin because Islamic State fighters aren’t present in the area. “There is no ISIS there,” he said.

Urging the Turks not to attack Afrin, the State Department drew a distinction between the Kurdish territories and Islamic State.




“We don’t want them to engage in violence, but we want them to keep focused on ISIS,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday of Turkey.

The Turkish government intensified its rhetoric against the Syrian Kurds after the U.S. proposed about a week ago the creation a border force of 30,000 troops in northern Syria, a majority of whom would be Kurds.

Turkey views American backing for the Syrian Kurds as support for a Kurdish drive for independence and a threat to Turkish sovereignty. After Turkish protests, the Pentagon backtracked on its announcement about the proposed border force.

The Turkish military said the operation was being conducted within the framework of Turkey’s rights under international law and United Nations Security Council’s resolutions on fighting terrorism, the U.N. charter’s right to self-defense and in respect of Syria’s territorial integrity.

“In the planning and execution of the operation, only terrorists and shelters, control areas, weapons and equipment are being targeted,” the military said.

According to the opposition monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 10 Turkish aircraft carried out simultaneous strikes on Afrin and its outskirts at the start of the operation. More than hundred targets were hit according to state-run Anadolu Agency.

The Observatory also said the attacks caused civilian casualties, but didn’t provide any numbers.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed on Turkish NTV channel that those who were injured were “PKK/YPG terrorists.”

Mr. Cavusoglu said the Syrian regime in Damascus was provided with written information regarding the Afrin operation.

According to Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency, the chief of missions of the U.S., Iran and Russia in Turkey have been summoned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry in relation to the latest developments on the operation.

On Saturday before the strikes, the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces warned that a Turkish attack on the Kurdish fighters could hamper the fight against Islamic State.

“The sudden and unjustified threats of offensive operations from Turkey into Afrin, Syria, threatens to breathe new life into Daesh,” the group’s spokesman Mustafa Bali said.

In a separate development in the war on Saturday, Syrian government forces captured the Abu al-Duhur air base in northern Idlib province—an advance in the regime’s offensive to retake the last rebel-held province in Syria. Turkey, which faces the possibility of a new influx of Syrian refugees if fighting in Idlib escalates, urged Iran and Russia to calm the Syrian government campaign there.

DougMacG

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Re: WSJ: Turkey strikes Syrian Kurds
« Reply #1053 on: January 22, 2018, 07:18:23 AM »
More on this here: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/01/turkey-upend-us-syria-strategy-attack-ypg-aleppo.html

Who is our allly here, turkey or the Kurds?

Who is Turkey's ally, the US or Russia?

Why is turkey still in NATO? They aren't an ally of the US.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1054 on: January 22, 2018, 10:18:25 AM »
At the more fundamental end of the spectrum, I am struck with just how much of an error it was for Obama to invite the Russians back into the Middle East , , , and before that to withdraw from Iraq.  Now it just looks like we are in the eternal wars of the Middle East.  If we leave, Iran (and the Russian-Iranian axis) gets the land bridge to Lebanon and the Mediterranean, thus setting up a possibly nuclear war with Israel and if we stay, well we are drained by strategies based upon the shifting sands of the region.

 :-P :-P :-P :x :x :x

DougMacG

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Re: The Middle East: War, Turkey, Russia, Kurds, YPG
« Reply #1055 on: January 23, 2018, 12:19:58 PM »
"I am struck with just how much of an error it was for Obama to invite the Russians back into the Middle East , , , and before that to withdraw from Iraq.  Now it just looks like we are in the eternal wars of the Middle East.  If we leave, Iran (and the Russian-Iranian axis) gets the land bridge to Lebanon and the Mediterranean, thus setting up a possibly nuclear war with Israel and if we stay, well we are drained by strategies based upon the shifting sands of the region.
 :-P :-P :-P :x :x :x
-----------------
That's right.  (   We don't want to be the world's policeman, but Russia will act in our best interests??!  This former President is highly regarded?  It reminds me of the basic argument Romney couldn't make to Obama's voters, do you support him for his failed economic policies or for his awful foreign policies?  What a disaster!
----------------
More on the Turkey versus Kurd conflict, this from the YFG Kurd leader:
https://anfenglish.com/rojava/sipan-hemo-russia-betrayed-the-kurds-but-victory-will-be-ours-24350

"Russia betrayed the Kurds, but victory will be ours"


DougMacG

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Re: The Middle East: War, Turkey as a US ally
« Reply #1056 on: January 24, 2018, 08:46:20 AM »
I heard Sen Dan SUllivan, R-Alaska, Marine combat veteran, this morning tout what a great US ally Turkey has been, especially pre-Erdogan. 
http://www.hughhewitt.com/wp-content/uploads/01-24hhs-sullivan.mp3
My recollection was how they refused accessand made us fly around Turkey to launch the 2003 Iraq action, but they have been helpful in other ways.

Note USAF use of Incirlik Air Base:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incirlik_Air_Base  A very strategic location, map at link.

Something like this is part of the leave-behind we should have insisted on in Iraq and would likely have prevented the genocidal ISIS occupation.

The relationship reminds me of the Glick piece on Jordan.  Our interests with some of these allies(?) only partly overlap.

Crafty_Dog

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GPF: NATO benefits from Turkey's invasion of Afrin
« Reply #1057 on: January 25, 2018, 06:49:29 AM »


Turkey Invades, NATO Benefits
Jan 25, 2018
By Xander Snyder

Less than a week after Turkey began its invasion of Afrin – the northwestern pocket of Syria that borders Turkey and is controlled by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG – NATO has voiced its consent of the operation. On a visit to Istanbul, NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller told a Turkish newspaper that NATO recognizes the threat terrorism poses to Turkey. While the language Gottemoeller used wasn’t highly specific, she was referring to the threat posed to Turkey by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, an internationally recognized terrorist group. Over the past three decades, the PKK has led an insurgency that has caused the deaths of roughly 40,000 people.

Turkey sees Afrin as a security threat due to the presence of the YPG, considered by Turkey to be a branch of the PKK. The YPG having control over an area that sits on the border with Turkey means it could potentially launch more destructive attacks on Turkish soil. For Turkey, any concession to a Kurdish group – militant or otherwise – is a slippery slope that could lead to greater Kurdish demands for independence.

NATO’s announcement sheds some light on an underlying reality: that NATO benefits from Turkey’s intervention. While the NATO deputy secretary general said the threat
posed to Turkey was from terrorism, NATO’s true fear is Russia. If President Bashar Assad, a Russian ally, were to reassert control over Syria, it would place Russia in a stronger position in the Middle East. A Syria fully controlled by Assad – no longer in need of Russian military support – would also let Russia withdraw its forces from Syria. While Russian President Vladimir Putin would desperately like his declared victory to be real, to secure his public relations boon and get out, a war that continues to threaten Russia’s ally continues to threaten the purported success of Russia’s intervention. Meanwhile, Europe is quite content to keep Russia tied down in the Middle East, drawing at least part of Russia’s focus and military hardware away from its European borders.
 
(click to enlarge)

Of course, NATO would like to keep Russia tied down with minimal or preferably no involvement of its own. But the elephant in the room whenever a NATO ally is threatened is Article 5, the lynchpin of the NATO alliance, which stipulates that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all, and therefore warrants a collective military response. Article 5 has been invoked only once – when the U.S. was attacked in 2001 by al-Qaida. Many will question whether the PKK attacks on Turkey are a substantial threat and, therefore, are asking: Could Turkey make the argument to invoke Article 5 and involve the rest of the alliance in Afrin?
 
(click to enlarge)

The answer is simpler than it may seem at first: It doesn’t matter. Neither Turkey nor the rest of Europe wants NATO to get involved in Turkey’s Afrin operation. As Turkey’s power grows and enables greater projection of power into the Middle East, it will try to take advantage of opportunities to act on its own. The key for Turkey is independence of action; it does not want its options dictated to it by others, whether the U.S. or NATO. If NATO were to get involved in the Afrin operation, even if it were supporting Turkey, it would nevertheless introduce a myriad conflicting command structures and interests. It would complicate Turkey’s freedom to maneuver and ability to unilaterally pursue its own military objectives, which include not just eliminating the threat of terrorism on its border, but also checking Iranian and Russian ambitions in Syria.

NATO also benefits from Turkey’s intervention in Afrin. Much like the U.S., NATO fears Russian expansion. It also fears Iranian expansion but to a lesser degree than the U.S. does (in part due to the business opportunities presented by an open Iranian economy). If Turkey takes Afrin – which currently seems like the most likely outcome given the balance of forces between Turkey and the Afrin defenders – that would put in Turkish control (including its proxies) a contiguous swath of territory that surrounds Aleppo on three sides. Even if Turkey did not immediately move to capitalize on this tactical situation following the acquisition of Afrin, the fact that this land would be in Turkish possession still poses a risk to Assad, Russia’s regional proxy. NATO is more than happy to let Turkey do this on its own and not have to risk its soldiers in the process.

Notably, NATO’s interests in Turkey’s intervention align closely with those of the United States. For the U.S., despite its public rhetoric urging Turkey to take caution in its intervention, ultimately it is content to let Turkey check the powerful position that Iran has acquired in the course of the Syrian civil war. The European contingent of NATO is predominantly concerned with Russia, and Turkey capturing Afrin would place Russia in a difficult situation. Russia has no desire to confront Turkey directly, at least not right now (and, for that matter, neither does Turkey want to confront Russia directly). But Russia wouldn’t mind a situation in which Turkey and Iran challenge one another in Syria, as long as Turkey remains tied down in the struggle and doesn’t emerge victorious.

Turkey’s operations in Syria, however, depend heavily on a number of proxy groups in the west of the country – such as the Free Syrian Army – that Russia has continually identified as one of the core security threats to the Assad regime. The FSA has therefore been one of Russia’s primary targets. If Aleppo were to become surrounded, Russia would be compelled to continue supporting Assad by attacking Turkish proxies, but would be careful to avoid attacking Turkish soldiers. Most important for Russia, such a scenario would further ruin the image of a victory that Putin was hoping to walk away with, and would risk tying Russia down in the Middle East for an indefinite amount of time.

Russia’s prolonged involvement in the Middle East with no easy out would be a clear win for NATO, especially if it doesn’t need to commit any of its own forces to bring this about. Clearly, this wouldn’t eliminate the security threat that Russia poses to Europe’s eastern flank, but it would be an ongoing financial strain on Russia, which is already struggling with economic challenges. NATO’s inaction will amount to tacit support of Turkey’s intervention in Afrin. But it’s happy to sit this one out.


Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1058 on: January 25, 2018, 07:17:01 AM »
Second post:

Here the WSJ has a wildly different take on things from GPF.   Is it being simplistic here in not distinguishing the YPG from the rest of the Kurds?  Or?


By The WSJ Editorial Board
Jan. 24, 2018 6:57 p.m. ET




The U.S. and its allies have all but defeated Islamic State in Syria, but the Trump Administration is in danger of squandering the strategic gains. Witness the unfolding fiasco there, with invading Turkish forces battering America’s Kurdish allies and threatening an area close to U.S. troops. This is what comes of muscular talk without the will or strategy to enforce it.

President Trump spoke by phone to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, and it must have been tense. Mr. Erdogan’s troops are pounding Kurdish positions in northern Syria, and on Wednesday he threatened to attack the city of Manbij, where U.S. forces are based. Mr. Erdogan is vowing to clear the Kurds out of those enclaves, and the danger is that U.S. and Turkish soldiers, two NATO allies, could soon clash.


Mr. Erdogan claims to be furious at U.S. media reports that the Pentagon plans to train a 30,000-troop Kurdish-led force in northeast Syria that he claims is aligned with the terrorist Kurdish PKK. The U.S. has tried to soothe Mr. Erdogan that the Kurdish border force would pose no threat.


But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed in a speech last week that the U.S. does plan to keep some military force in Syria for the foreseeable future. The goal is to support the Kurds and Sunni Arabs who fought with us against ISIS, block Iran from dominating post-ISIS Syria, and retain some leverage in talks to end the Syrian civil war. U.S. forces would turn the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including Kurds and Arabs, into a “stabilizing” force.

The idea has merit. The U.S.-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units in Syria, known as the YPG, fought valiantly to defeat the Islamic State and deserve training and protection until they can protect themselves. So do local Arab groups who fought alongside the SDF.

Turkey would also benefit from a stable border zone supervised by U.S.-backed forces. Ankara has accepted millions of refugees during the Syrian civil war and doesn’t need more. A Kurdish safe zone, rich with energy resources, could also create goodwill between Ankara and the Kurds.

The question is whether the Trump Administration is prepared to do what it takes to execute such a policy. That would mean explaining to Mr. Erdogan, at the highest military and diplomatic level, how this can serve Turkey’s interests in a more stable Syria. This seems to have been a diplomatic afterthought for team Trump.

It would also mean dropping illusions about Russia’s malign influence. Messrs. Trump and Tillerson seem to believe that Russia wants to broker an end to the war—and it does, but only on its terms. If America’s Kurdish and Sunni allies control no territory in Syria, the U.S. might as well be Guatemala in the peace talks.

Speaking of malign, Russia continues to provide political cover for chemical-weapons use in Syria, almost certainly by Bashar Assad’s forces. Another chlorine gas attack occurred Monday in the rebel stronghold of East Ghouta. Russia dismissed the reports, which is convenient because late last year it blocked an extension for the U.N. group investigating such claims. Russia is also supporting Mr. Erdogan’s military campaign against the Kurds, the better to embarrass the U.S. for not being able to defend its allies.




All of this is setting up Mr. Trump for an Obama-sized strategic embarrassment. The President showed resolve in punishing Assad for his chemical attack last year and by stepping up the military campaign against Islamic State. That signaled to the region’s bad actors that the days of American retreat might be over.

But now that the U.S. and Kurds have done the dirty work, Russia, Syria, Turkey and al Qaeda want to push the U.S. out. If they succeed, Mr. Trump will pay a price in lost credibility on par with Mr. Obama’s failure to enforce his famous red line on chemical weapons. The White House has to show the diplomatic and military will to sustain a safe zone in Syria, or tell our allies they’re on their own so they can make their our accommodations with the bullies of Ankara, Tehran and Moscow.

Crafty_Dog

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Kurds fuct
« Reply #1060 on: January 26, 2018, 04:13:59 PM »
Iraqi Kurdistan's Post-Referendum Isolation Boosts Iran
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
January 20, 2018
http://www.meforum.org/7183/iraqi-kurdistan-4-months-after-the-referendum


Crafty_Dog

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Welcome to Syria 2.0
« Reply #1062 on: January 30, 2018, 06:51:18 AM »
Welcome to Syria 2.0
by Jonathan Spyer
Foreign Policy
January 25, 2018
http://www.meforum.org/7188/welcome-to-syria-20
 


Crafty_Dog

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Glick: Syria, the war everyone must fight but no one can win
« Reply #1063 on: February 11, 2018, 09:16:34 PM »

Caroline Glick: Syria – The War Everyone Must Fight and No One Can Win
Caroline Glick 10 Feb 2018
 
Saturday morning’s violent clashes along the Israeli-Syria border between Israel on the one hand and Iran and Syrian regime forces on the other occurred against the backdrop of multiplying acts of war and violence among a seemingly endless roster of combatants.
To understand the significance and implications of the clashes – which saw Israel destroy an Iranian drone that penetrated its airspace and destroy the drone base in Syria from which the drone was deployed, and the downing of an Israeli F-16 by a massive barrage of Syrian anti-aircraft missiles – it is necessary to understand the basic logic of violence in Syria.



There are a dozen or so actors fighting in Syria. The US is fighting in coalition with the Kurdish dominated Syrian Democratic Forces. The Kurdish YPG militia is part of the SDF. Political representatives tied to the YPG have denied it, but the YPG is widely considered to be allied with the Turkish PKK group, which is listed as a terrorist group by the State Department and the Turkish government.

Russia is fighting with Iran, the Syrian-regime forces, Hezbollah and Iranian-organized Shiite militias that include fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Russia also sometimes acts indirectly with Israel against its coalition partners. On the basis of understandings that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reached with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian forces in Syria do not interfere with Israeli air strikes against Iranian, Hezbollah and Syrian-regime targets which directly threaten Israel’s strategic interests.

The Turks are fighting largely independently. Sometimes they are supported by the U.S., sometimes they are supported by the Russians.



Turkey belatedly joined the anti-ISIS coalition led by the U.S. But the Turks’ main target in Syria is the Kurdish forces. Three weeks ago, the Turks launched yet another campaign against the Kurds in Syria. Their current operation is focused on the Afrin province controlled by YPG. But Turkey is also threatening Manbij, where US special forces are deployed in support of the SDF.

Non-ISIS rebel forces are being destroyed systematically by regime forces in Idlib province and in the Damascus suburban area known as Eastern Ghouta. According to a New York Times‘ summary of recent violence in Syria, regime forces have reportedly killed four hundred people, including a hundred children in Eastern Ghouta since December. Since the start of 2018, the Syrian regime reportedly carried out three chlorine gas attack against civilians in Ghouta.

As the New York Times noted, Ghouta was the site of the regime’s 2013 sarin gas attack which killed 1,400 people including 400 children. Then-president Barack Obama had said a year earlier that such an attack would be a red line that would provoke US action against the regime. Obama’s refusal to attack regime forces after the sarin gas attack empowered Russia, which deployed forces to Syria for the first time since the end of the Cold War in 2015.

Finally, there are ISIS forces. ISIS continues to control territory along the Syrian border with Iraq and pockets of territory in the vicinity of Deir Ezzor and Palmyra. Perhaps more importantly, ISIS forces from areas seized by coalition forces have melted away and are viewed as responsible for a spate of bombings in Damascus and elsewhere in recent months and weeks.



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Over the past several weeks, numerous articles have appeared analyzing the recent rise in violence in Syria. The main question is: why is the violence continuing? The prevailing sense in the West had been that, following ISIS’s loss of most of the territory it had held, the war had wound down. The U.S. and its allies had made their peace with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s survival and with Russia’s newfound role as powerbroker on the one hand. And, on the other hand, the Russians and their Iranian, Syrian, and Hezbollah allies had made their peace with Kurdish control over large swathes of former Syrian territory and their alliance with the U.S.




Israel, the U.S., and Turkey were seen as actors with specific issues which could be remedied with intermittent tactical strikes that wouldn’t challenge the overall post-civil war order.

This assessment was false because there is nothing tactical or limited about any of the parties’ interests and concerns relating to Syria.

Consider the Turks and the U.S. The Turks oppose Syrian Kurdish control over territory along the border with Turkey because they view it as a strategic threat to Turkey. Turkey’s Afrin offensive – which Ankara envisions as the first stage of a broader offensive which will include Manbij – also has implications that far exceed the borders of Syria or the wider Middle East.

Russia is supporting the Turkish anti-Kurdish offensive for reasons that have nothing to do with Syria and everything to do with Russia’s strategic rivalry for great power status with the US.

By supporting Turkey’s anti-Kurdish offensive, Russia is placing NATO member Turkey in direct confrontation with the US. If the US stands with the Kurds and Turkey fails to back down, then the likelihood that American and Turkish forces will fight one another in battle grows to near certainty. If this happens, Turkish membership in NATO will effectively end.



On the other hand, if the US doesn’t stand with the Syrian Kurds, the U.S. will lose its residual credibility as an ally in the region. The stakes in Syria are critical in light of the U.S.’s failure to defend its Iraqi Kurdish allies last October, when the US-trained Iraqi military wrested control over the oil-rich Kirkuk province from the Kurdish regional government in Erbil.

For the US then, Syria is a moment of truth. It can stand with its allies on the ground and so assure its long-term ability to work with allies in the Middle East and beyond. Or it can betray its allies on the ground and preserve the idea of its strategic alliance with Turkey, even though, on the ground, that alliance no longer exists.

This then brings us to Israel, and Saturday morning’s violent clashes with Iran.

Although Bashar Assad still holds the title President of Syria, to all intents and purposes, he is an Iranian puppet. His forces take their orders from Iran and Hezbollah. He has no independent power to make decisions about anything in Syria.

Israel has eyed this development with great and growing concern over the years. Iran’s assertion of control over Syria has massive implications for Israel’s national security. And, over the years, Israel has set and enforced specific red lines in Syria designed to prevent Iran’s effective control over Assad’s regime from passing specific limits. Israel’s red lines include blocking Iran from transferring precision-guided missiles, other advanced weapons systems and non-conventional weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria territory including the Damascus airport. Israel’s red lines also include blocking Iran from setting up permanent bases in Syria. To enforce these and other red lines, over the years Israel has conducted repeated air attacks against targets in Syria.



Immediately after Putin first deployed his forces to Syria in 2015, Netanyahu flew to Russia to coordinate Israel’s air operations with him and prevent direct confrontations between Israeli and Russian forces. Since their first meeting, Netanyahu has flown to Russia on ten subsequent occasions to develop a working relationship with Putin with the aim of weakening his strategic commitment to Iranian power in the region and cultivating his perception of shared strategic interests with Israel in Syria and beyond.

Netanyahu’s last meeting with Putin was on January 29. In media briefings before and after their meeting, Netanyahu said that he spoke to Putin about three issues. First, due to Israel’s success in blocking Iran from transferring precision-guided missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria, Iran is now building missile factories for Hezbollah inside of Lebanon. Netanyahu pledged to destroy those factories.

In his words, “Lebanon is becoming a factory for precision-guided missiles that threaten Israel. These missiles pose a grave threat to Israel, and we cannot accept this threat.”

Second, Netanyahu warned Putin that Israel will not accept Iranian military entrenchment in Syria through the construction of permanent bases, among other things. Netanyahu explained, “The question is: Does Iran entrench itself in Syria, or will this process be stopped. If it doesn’t stop by itself, we will stop it.”

Third, Netanyahu spoke to Putin about improving Obama’s nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.

Russia is both a resource and a threat to Israel. It is a resource because Russia is capable of constraining Iran and Hezbollah. Israel treated Russia as a resource Saturday, when in the wake of its violent confrontations with Iran, which included Israel’s Air Force’s first combat loss of an F-16 since the 1980s, Israel turned to the Russians with an urgent request for them to restrain the Iranians.

Russia is a threat to Israel because it is Iran’s coalition partner. Until Russia deployed its forces to Syria, it appeared that the regime and its Iranian overlords were losing the war, or at least unable to win it. After Russia began providing air support for their ground operations, the tide of the war reversed in their favor.





At any rate, Israel is in no position to persuade Russia to abandon Syria. Russia’s presence in the region limits Israel’s actions but also guarantees that Israel will continue to act, because its vital interests will continue to come under threat and intermittent attack.

In all, the situation in Syria is and will remain unstable and exceedingly violent for the foreseeable future. Syria is not only a local battlefield where various Syrian factions vie for control over separate areas of the country – although it remains such a local battlefield.

And it isn’t only a regional battlefield where Iran and its proxies seek to expand and entrench the Shiite crescent while preparing the ground for wars against Israel, and Israel is engaged around the clock in efforts to block their progress and curb their entrenchment. But it is a critical regional battlefield.

Syria is also a fight between superpowers. Russia owes its reemergence as a superpower in the Middle East to its entrenchment in Syria. And the U.S.’s ability to continue to assert its superpower status in the region is largely dependent on its willingness to stand its ground in Syria by among other things, blocking the Turks from defeating the Kurds.

None of the sides to the conflict can depend on their deterrent posture to prevent attacks or escalation because for deterrence to work, the warring sides need to acknowledge one another’s spheres of authority. This cannot happen because all of these battlefields represent wars that no side can lose – and as a result, no side can win. So the war will go on, indefinitely.

In Israel’s case, the best outcome at this point is that its responses to Iranian aggression, including its response Saturday, are powerful enough to convince the Iranians that they have no interest in a full-blown war. Ultimately, if Iran is defeated, it will likely be the result of developments on battlefields outside of Syria.

And it isn’t only a regional battlefield where Iran and its proxies seek to expand and entrench the Shiite crescent while preparing the ground for wars against Israel, and Israel is engaged around the clock in efforts to block their progress and curb their entrenchment. But it is a critical regional battlefield.

Syria is also a fight between superpowers. Russia owes its re-emergence as a superpower in the Middle East to its entrenchment in Syria. And America’s ability to continue to assert its superpower status in the region is largely dependent on its willingness to stand its ground in Syria by among other things, blocking the Turks from defeating the Kurds.

None of the sides to the conflict can depend on their deterrent posture to prevent attacks or escalation because for deterrence to work, the warring sides need to acknowledge one another’s spheres of authority. This cannot happen because all of these battlefields represent wars that no side can lose — and as a result, no side can win. So the war will go on, indefinitely.

In Israel’s case, the best outcome at this point is that its responses to Iranian aggression, including its response Saturday, will be powerful enough to convince the Iranians that they have no interest in a full-blown war. Ultimately, if Iran is defeated, it will likely be the result of developments on battlefields outside of Syria.

Crafty_Dog

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GPF: Israel, Iran, and the War for Syria
« Reply #1064 on: February 12, 2018, 12:26:30 PM »


Israel, Iran and the War for Syria
Feb 12, 2018

 
By Jacob L. Shapiro
For years, Israel and Iran have attacked each other with words and through their proxies. In Iran, calls for Israel’s destruction are routine, and support for militant groups in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip intentionally challenges Israel’s security. For Israel, meanwhile, “the year is 1938 and Iran is Germany.” Those are the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the second-longest serving leader in the country’s history. He has held his position for so long in part because of his ability to convince Israelis that he is best suited to lead Israel in this existential battle with Iran.

It is not surprising, then, that this past weekend’s events seem like a watershed moment. On Feb. 10, an Iranian drone crossed into Israeli territory and was shot down. Israel responded to the Iranian incursion by dispatching fighter jets to attack targets in Syria, including the Tiyas air base, near Palmyra, where the Iranian drone reportedly took off from. Syrian anti-air systems retaliated, striking an Israeli F-16, which crashed after making it back to Israeli territory. This prompted Israel to hit eight Syrian targets and four Iranian positions, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The war of words and proxies seems to be turning into a war between nations.
 
(click to enlarge)

Lost in this sequence of events is the broader context. Israel is not the only country to have military aircraft shot down by enemy fire in Syria recently. Last week, Russia intensified airstrikes in Idlib province after al-Qaida-linked militants brought down a Russian fighter jet. On the same day the Israeli F-16 went down, Syrian Kurdish fighters reportedly brought down a Turkish military helicopter that was part of Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria. Israel, Russia and Turkey all lost military aircraft during operations in Syria in the past week, and all three are currently working at cross purposes. The Israel-Iran showdown is about far more than just Israel and Iran. It is one aspect of a much larger war for regional power that is being waged more openly with each passing day.

Hazy Alliances

Last week’s crucial developments were not confined to downed military aircraft. On Feb. 6, pro-Assad forces attacked Turkish military forces attempting to set up an outpost close to the city of Aleppo. Some sources reported that an Iranian-backed militia was also involved in the attack. Just two months ago, Turkey and Iran were coordinating a cease-fire in Syria. Now, they are at each other’s throats.

Then on Feb. 7, pro-Assad forces attacked the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in eastern Syria, resulting in U.S. airstrikes. Just two months ago, pro-Assad forces and the SDF were coordinating an offensive against the Islamic State. Now, they too are at each other’s throats. The war in Syria has become more than simply a civil war; it is now a regional war featuring Israel, Iran, Russia, Turkey and the United States.

If this seems confusing, that’s because it is. Allegiances are in a constant state of flux, dependent more on what various sides can do for each other in the short term than on long-standing arrangements or promises of trust. Consider that the U.S.-backed SDF, made up primarily of Syrian Kurdish fighters, is cooperating with the Assad regime so it can send reinforcements into Afrin to combat Turkish troops. In effect, the SDF is cooperating with Assad in one part of Syria and coming under attack from Assad in another part of Syria. Consider too that Turkey, officially part of a tripartite agreement with Russia and Iran to bring an end to the Syrian war, has invaded Syria to protect its interests from Russia and Iran, and yet it is equally hostile to Russia and Iran’s main enemy, the United States, because the U.S. is providing support for Syrian Kurds. The only thing that is certain in this conflict is that no alliance is certain.

Hazy as these strategic arrangements are, they all boil down to one thing: Iran’s attempt to take over Syria. Turkey talked about its invasion of northern Syria for over a year, and its troops entered Afrin with great media fanfare. But while Turkey was talking, Iran was actually doing. Since the Syrian civil war started in 2011, Iran has been dispatching soldiers, militias, money and weapons to support the Assad regime. The result has been the transformation of Syria from an authoritarian military dictatorship friendly to Iran to an Iranian proxy in desperate need of Iranian support just to stay alive. For Iran, that is a massive strategic opportunity: It can make its continued support of Bashar Assad contingent on Assad’s allowing Iran to do whatever it wants in Syria. And what Iran wants in Syria is a forward base into the Levant.
 
(click to enlarge)

That is what has Israel so nervous. Despite all the rhetoric, Israel and Iran haven’t fought a war against each other because there is no way for Israel and Iran to fight a war. They are too far apart. That would no longer be the case if Iran can make Syria a staging ground for Iranian attacks against Israel. It is one thing for an Iranian proxy like Hezbollah, with its limited number of fighters, to fire rockets at Israel from Lebanon. It is quite another thing for Iran to start building missiles, massing ground forces and stationing aircraft in Syria, just across the Israeli border. To make matters worse for Israel, it has no comparable position on the Iranian border. Even if it did, Israel cannot expend soldiers the way Iran can in a protracted conflict. For Israel, Iran’s nuclear program is concerning, but Syria as a base of Iranian operations is a mortal threat.

Israel’s Advantages

Israel has a few things going for it, though. The Assad regime is not dependent on just Iran but Russia too, and Moscow has no interest in Syria becoming an Iranian protectorate. Russia wants to preserve Syria as an independent actor and a Russian ally, not as a part of Iran’s plan to project power throughout the region. The Tiyas air base, which was the target of the Israeli strike over the weekend, has also been a base for Russian aircraft in Syria. Russia and Israel have close relations – Netanyahu was in Russia just last month to express Israeli concerns to Moscow – and Russia is not looking to pick a fight with Israel. Israel may not be able to fight a conventional war against Iran, but the Israeli air force is without peer in the Middle East – and that includes Russia’s aerial presence. Furthermore, the U.S. has Israel’s back on this one. It doesn’t want Iran in Syria any more than Israel does. The Russian-Iranian marriage of convenience will fracture the more ambitious Iran gets.

Iran’s moves in Syria also directly threaten Turkey, which also has no desire to see Iranian bases on its border. The more Iran engages in Syria, the closer it pushes Israel and Turkey together. Ties between the two have been strained since the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in 2010, but the real reason Israeli-Turkish relations are tense is that Turkey’s position in the Middle East has changed. It went from being a dependable U.S. and NATO ally to a powerful nation-state concerned primarily with securing its own interests, which Israel must view with inherent suspicion. That said, both will see eye to eye on limiting Iran in Syria. If Israel comes to believe Russia is not doing enough to rein Iran in, it will also not hesitate to deepen coordination with Turkey, which would be disastrous from Moscow’s perspective. It would also align with our 2018 forecast.

Last but not least is that the majority of the region’s powers are hostile to Iran. Notably absent from the recent developments in Syria is Iran’s most vociferous enemy, Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, who as recently as November were threatening war against Iran, have fallen eerily silent. But make no mistake: Saudi Arabia remains extremely antagonistic to Iran and will support Israeli moves against it (and Saudi Arabia, unlike Israel, is within range of Iran). In addition, Egypt and Jordan remain aligned with Israel. Egypt invited Hamas leaders to Cairo for a meeting this past weekend, perhaps to let them know that their recent willingness to mend relations with Iran is a nonstarter.
Iran is attempting to take control of Syria. Israel does not want that to happen. Israel has been bombing targets in Syria for years to prevent it from happening. It will continue to do so. But Israel’s future depends not on its bombs but on its ability to position itself within a regional coalition that opposes Iran’s ambitions for power. The outline of that coalition is beginning to take shape: The interests of Israel, Turkey and the Arab states are converging. In a sense, Iran is now in the position the Islamic State was mere months ago. The Islamic State’s emergence created strange bedfellows, all of whom cooperated to ensure its demise. Now Iran is seeking to fill the power vacuum left behind by the Islamic State’s defeat. The responses, of which Israel’s attacks over the weekend are just one example, show why in the long term Iran’s gains are likely to be ephemeral. In the short term, however, Iran will press its advantage. The war in Syria has only just begun.

The post Israel, Iran and the War for Syria appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.


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Re: Dozens of Russian killed
« Reply #1066 on: February 14, 2018, 11:43:38 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1067 on: February 14, 2018, 12:51:40 PM »
Sarcasm function on:

Like the payback when the Turks shot down one of his jets?

Sarcasm function off  :-D

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WSJ: Iran prepares in Syria for war with Israel
« Reply #1071 on: February 22, 2018, 05:38:53 AM »
Iran’s Syrian Front
Assad’s atrocities grow as Tehran builds a new anti-Israel satellite.
Smoke rises from the rebel held besieged town of Hamouriyeh, eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, Feb. 21.
Smoke rises from the rebel held besieged town of Hamouriyeh, eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, Feb. 21. Photo: bassam khabieh/Reuters
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 21, 2018 7:24 p.m. ET
96 COMMENTS

Bashar Assad’s Syrian military committed more atrocities this week, bombing the opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta and killing at least 200. Rescue workers had to haul dead civilians from the rubble, including a family of five. As everyone deplores the killings, the point to keep in mind is that the driving political power here is Iran and its attempt to make Syria part of its growing Shiite-Persian empire.

Iran has propped up Assad since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, and along with Russia is largely responsible for the regime’s survival. After its 2016 victory in Aleppo and the ouster of Islamic State from Raqqa, this axis is now trying to roll up the last opposition strongholds. The trio will then use Russia-sponsored peace talks to re-establish Assad’s control over Syria. Russia will keep its military bases, and Iran wants to establish a new imperial outpost on the border with Israel.

Toward that end, Iran is building a robust military presence of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) troops, Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, foreign fighters from Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, and local Syrian militias in Assad-controlled areas. Iran’s ultimate goal is “the eradication of Israel,” as the leader of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, said recently.

Military analysts estimate Hezbollah could have more than 100,000 rockets pointed at Israel from its home base in Lebanon and possibly from Syria too. An Iranian redoubt in Syria would open another front in a war with Israel from which to launch more rocket and other attacks. U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster worried publicly in December about “the prospect of Iran having a proxy army on the borders of Israel.”

Tehran’s confidence abroad is growing despite its recent protests at home. Earlier this month Iran-backed forces launched a drone from Syria’s Homs area into Israeli air space. The Israeli military shot down the drone and sent F-16s to bomb the base from where the drone operated, as well as other military targets. The mission was a success, but the Israelis lost a fighter jet, the first such loss since the early 1980s.

The provocation is a sign that Iran is turning its attention from propping up Assad and toward establishing a more permanent presence in Syria, including the construction of military bases and weapons factories. Iranians are investing in Syria’s local economy to help Assad “rebuild,” and working to convert local Alawites to Shiite Islam.

Iran is also exploiting a “cease-fire” in southwestern Syria that the U.S. negotiated with Russia last year. Russia is supposed to stop Iran from building up its forces there, but the U.S. has been left to protest feebly as Russia lets Iran continue.

That leaves the policing to Israel, which has bombed Iranian and Hezbollah sites in Syria many times in the last year, including an Iranian base southwest of Damascus in December. On Sunday at the Munich security conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves” and “not just against Iran’s proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself.”

Israel’s military is formidable, and the country is protected by a robust antimissile system. But even Israel’s defenses would be strained by 1,500 to 2,000 incoming missiles a day from Syria and Lebanon, especially if Iran succeeds in upgrading Hezbollah’s arsenal to precision-guided weapons. Hezbollah attacks from civilian centers, which means an Israel-Lebanon conflict would be an extensive and bloody undertaking, as Israeli forces would have to attack fighters near homes and hospitals.

If the Trump Administration is worried about this gathering storm, you can’t tell from its actions. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson toured the region last week and called for a “whole, independent, democratic Syria with no special demarcations dividing Syria and with the Syrian people selecting their leadership through free and fair elections.” That’s something John Kerry might have said, with a similar lack of credibility with Iran or Russia.

Mr. Trump promised in October to work with allies to counter Iran’s “destabilizing activity and support for terrorist proxies in the region,” but in Syria the U.S. has shown no strategy for doing so. Meanwhile, an Iran-Israel conflict grows more likely by the day.

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Russian attack on US troops in Syria (!!!!!!!!!!!)
« Reply #1072 on: February 22, 2018, 12:47:20 PM »
Russian Attack on US Troops in Syria Elicits Deafening Silence from Politicians and Press
by Michael J. Totten
World Affairs
February 22, 2018
http://www.meforum.org/7215/russian-attack-on-us-troops-in-syria-elicits
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Originally published under the title "The Russian Attack Against America You Didn't Hear About."
 
 
Russia committed an act of war against the United States a little more than a week ago.


You probably didn't hear this because few media organizations have even mentioned it, but Russia committed an act of war against the United States a little more than a week ago. No, this is not about more social media and election shenanigans. Russia mounted an armed assault against American soldiers and our allies in Syria, including Kurdish security forces affiliated with the People's Protection Units, or YPG, at a military base in the city of Deir Ezzor, the largest in eastern Syria. Russian combatants fought alongside Assad regime fighters and Shia militias armed, funded and directed by Iran.

Both the Pentagon and the Kremlin are going out of their way to keep this as quiet as possible. If you only read the New York Times story about the incident on February 13, you'd have to squint and zero in on the subtext. After the United States used air and drone strikes to obliterate incoming assailants, including dozens of Russians, American military spokespeople assured the press in calm tones that there was never any chance that Russian and American forces would clash directly in Deir Ezzor or anywhere else. The Kremlin, for its part, said any Russians who might have participated in the assault were mercenaries unaffiliated with the Russian armed forces.
The problem with the Kremlin statement is that Russian mercenaries in Syria are employed by the Wagner Group, which works for the Russian government, and, specifically, for Russia's Ministry of Defense, not for the Syrian or Iranian governments. And the problem with the American statement is that the Pentagon is asking us to assume that dozens of Russians were killed not by the bombs it had just dropped but by somebody else...or perhaps by spontaneous heart attacks or a catastrophic series of vehicle accidents.

Some fine reporters at Bloomberg News dug a bit deeper. First, on February 14, Henry Meyer and Stepan Kravchenko reported that wounded Russians were flown from the battlefield to hospitals administered by the Ministry of Defense in Moscow and St. Petersburg, belying the claim that they were freelancing for somebody else.
Second, Eli Lake reported on February 16 that several US officials confirmed that the Russian government understood perfectly well what was going on in Deir Ezzor—thanks to the so-called "deconflicting" agreements in place to prevent American and Russian soldiers from accidentally shooting each other. He also helpfully pointed out that one of the leaders of the Wagner Group, Dmitry Utkin, is closely linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin (aka "Putin's chef"), one of the 13 Russian nationals whom FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller just indicted for information warfare during the 2016 presidential election.

Whatever the reason or reasons, Americans have missed an opportunity to take stock of a terrible fact—that Russia is an outright enemy of the United States.

Take a look at how carefully Secretary of Defense James Mattis describes what happened in Deir Ezzor: "I have no idea why [the Russians] would attack there," he told reporters after the incident. "The forces were known to be there, obviously the Russians knew. We have always known that there are elements in this very complex battle space that the Russians did not have, I would call it, control of." He's going along with the story that the Russian government has "no control" over the Wagner Group, which clearly isn't the case.

And why would he do that? Lake thinks Mattis is committing a "noble lie" for the common good of both countries. "If Mattis acknowledges the obvious," he writes, "that the Kremlin authorized a direct assault on a U.S.-sponsored base by non-uniformed personnel -- he risks an escalation spiral in Syria. Better to express bewilderment and give Russian President Vladimir Putin a chance to back down and deny culpability, which he ended up doing despite the heavy casualties suffered by his mercenaries."

Aside from the stories I've cited above, this incident has received almost no media coverage in the United States. Perhaps it's because Americans suffered no casualties while, according to numerous Russian media accounts, as many as 200 Russians were killed, and three separate sources told Reuters that Russia suffered as many as 300 killed and injured. Maybe it's also because during what would have been this story's news cycle, Americans were transfixed by yet another bloody massacre at a high school, this time in Parkland, Florida. Another possibility is that, in this inward-looking and tribal partisan time in American history, a botched Russian attack doesn't neatly fit into one of our pre-existing media narratives, where the Democratic Party is focused on Russian election meddling and the Republican Party would rather talk about almost anything except the Kremlin's malfeasance.

Whatever the reason or reasons, Americans have missed an opportunity to take stock of a terrible fact—that Russia is an outright enemy of the United States that just committed an act of war against us in the Middle East. Unless Vladimir Putin has suddenly and silently been deterred—fat chance of that being the case—something else will have to happen to get our attention. Something bigger, something worse, something more dangerous.

Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor at The Tower, a Middle East Forum writing fellow, and the author of seven books, including Where the West Ends and Tower of the Sun.

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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1073 on: February 22, 2018, 03:10:25 PM »
What would you call this ?  An act of love?  This too not in news much:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html


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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1075 on: February 24, 2018, 07:14:39 AM »
Some very important thoughts from the WSJ.  And very much worth noting is that at yesterday's joint press conference with Australian PM is that President Trump said we had no goals there beyond defeating ISIS.

We love President Trump and Sec Def Mattis, but it is time to decide whether to shit or get off the pot.  It IS a terrible problem.  If we leave, the Iranians will have land bridge to the Mediterranean (including direct connection with Hezbollah and all that implies)  backed by Russia's anti-aircraft systems i.e. Israel will no longer have dominance in the skies.  All out war (including nukes?) seems likely.

If we stay, we are permanently in the morass of the Middle East, and thus overloaded China takes the South China Sea and the Norks finish their ability to deliver nukes.

Is this why yesterday President Trump said is ONLY issue with China was trade even while the Australian PM spoke of holding China to the rule of law (i.e. respecting rights in the South China Sea?

======================================================

Russia’s Attack on U.S. Troops
Putin’s mercenaries are bloodied in Syria, as he tries to drive Trump out.
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, shows Russian President Vladimir Putin around his factory which produces school means, outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 20, 2010.
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, shows Russian President Vladimir Putin around his factory which produces school means, outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 20, 2010. Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/Associated Press
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 23, 2018 6:50 p.m. ET
354 COMMENTS

The truth is starting to emerge about a recent Russian attack on U.S. forces in eastern Syria, and it deserves more public attention. The assault looks increasingly like a botched attempt to bloody the U.S. and intimidate President Trump into withdrawing from Syria once Islamic State is defeated. The U.S. military won this round, but Vladimir Putin’s forces will surely look for a chance at revenge.

Here’s what we know. Several hundred men and materiel advanced on a U.S. Special Forces base near Deir al-Zour on the night of Feb. 7-8. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed soon afterward that the “battalion-sized unit formation” was “supported by artillery, tanks, multiple-launch rocket systems and mortars.” U.S. forces responded in self-defense “with a combination of air and artillery strikes.”

Ms. White wouldn’t confirm how many attackers were killed or who was fighting, though the U.S. had “observed” the military buildup for a week. Defense Secretary James Mattis called the confrontation “perplexing,” adding that “I have no idea why they would attack there, the forces were known to be there, obviously the Russians knew.” He’s referring to the U.S.-Russia “deconfliction” agreement in which the Russians agreed to stay west of the Euphrates River.

Now we’re learning that Russian fighters were killed in the attack, and Lebanese Hezbollah was also involved. The Kremlin has tried to cover up the deaths, but that’s getting harder as the body bags come home and Russian social media spread the word. The Foreign Ministry finally admitted Tuesday that “several dozen” Russians were killed or wounded but claimed that “Russian service members did not take part in any capacity and Russian military equipment was not used.”

That depends on how you define “Russian military.” Evidence is growing that the attack was orchestrated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch who does much of Mr. Putin’s dirty work. His businesses include the Internet Research Agency, a media operation indicted by a federal grand jury last week for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

Mr. Putin has a history of using mercenaries in Crimea and southern Ukraine, the better to preserve deniability if something goes wrong. The Obama Administration blacklisted Mr. Prigozhin in 2016 for supporting Russia’s Ukraine invasion, and in June the Trump Administration sanctioned Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian intelligence officer associated with Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner Group of mercenaries.

Wagner has been fighting in Syria since 2015, according to the Institute for the Study of War’s Bradley Hanlon, including campaigns to retake oil-rich areas. Mr. Putin has been doling out contracts tied to oil and mining to mercenaries in Syria, including to Mr. Prigozhin.

The Washington Post reported Thursday, citing intelligence sources, that Mr. Prigozhin had “secured permission from an unspecified Russian minister” for the attack and had also “discussed” it with Syrian officials. Mr. Prigozhin would never undertake such an operation unless he felt he had clearance from the highest levels of the Kremlin.

Why risk such an attack, especially given how badly it went for Russia? Mr. Putin is constantly probing for weaknesses in adversaries, and perhaps he wanted to embarrass Mr. Trump by capturing some Americans. Perhaps he hoped to push the U.S. troops back and seize the nearby oil fields. With Mr. Trump sending no clear signals about U.S. intentions after Islamic State, and given his 2016 campaign claims that Syria is someone else’s problem, Mr. Putin might have thought that some American casualties, prisoners or a retreat would increase calls inside the U.S. to leave Syria.

The U.S. military response was impressive and laudable, but American silence about the Russian attack is puzzling. The attack shows again that Mr. Putin is looking to damage U.S. interests wherever he sees an opportunity, even at the risk of a U.S.-Russia military engagement. Maybe Mr. Trump doesn’t want to humiliate Mr. Putin, but the Russian won’t forget this defeat merely because the U.S. is quiet about it.

The danger is that he’ll interpret U.S. silence to mean that he can risk an attempt at revenge. Mr. Putin is running for re-election this spring, and while he has rigged the vote to guarantee victory, the Russian public needs to know his mercenaries suffered a humiliating defeat. If the U.S. won’t tell the truth, Mr. Putin has an easier time telling lies.

The Russian engagement also shows that the U.S. is operating a de facto safe zone for allies in eastern Syria. The Pentagon is still pursuing dispersed Islamic State fighters, but another goal is to influence the shape of post-ISIS Syria. Mr. Putin wants to push the U.S. and its allies out so its axis with Iran can dominate Syria. Look for more such confrontations to come.


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Damn I'm glad we have Sec Def Mattis handling this
« Reply #1077 on: February 26, 2018, 08:22:54 PM »
'cause I sure as hell ain't up to keeping track!

================================================
George Friedman:

Turkey’s invasion of Afrin in northern Syria has redrawn the established lines of battle. Turkey proposed cooperation with the United States in Afrin and Manbij, both of which are held by Syrian Kurds—whom the US has been supporting and the Turks consider hostile. Though no formal agreement has been reached, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the US would work with Turkey to coordinate their actions in Syria. Then, the Syrian Kurds apparently invited pro-regime forces into Afrin to help fight back against the Turkish assault.

Joining the Fray

With Turkey joining the fray in Afrin and inching closer to Aleppo, a critical city over which Syrian forces have already fought a bloody battle, Bashar al-Assad has a choice: either escalate his military conflict with Turkey and its proxies or come to a settlement. To win a military victory in the region, Assad would need to move his forces along the southern edge of Afrin until they reach the Turkish border in the west and then turn farther south until pro-Turkish forces in Idlib—a region largely controlled by another Turkish proxy, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham—are surrounded. Assad will try to encircle Turkish proxies in Idlib and cut off their supply routes to Turkey.
 
Source: Geopolitical Futures (Click to enlarge)

From the regime’s perspective, therefore, working with the Kurds makes sense. It can use the 8,000–10,000 Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin to repel the Turkish invasion and avoid expending its own resources. It also makes sense for the Kurds, who are facing a Turkish assault with few allies, since the US has said it will not support the YPG in Afrin.

But Turkey has its own plans to surround the YPG and cut off access to its allies. On Feb. 20, Erdogan announced that the Turkish military would attempt to envelop Afrin in the next several days, blocking the YPG from receiving support from pro-Assad forces. Turkey and Assad are therefore applying the same strategy to different regions, while trying to avoid a confrontation that could draw in more outside powers and escalate the conflict.

This situation could give rise to a tactical settlement in Afrin. Faced with the risk of a far bloodier battle than it anticipated, Turkey may be willing to halt its advance if the Syrian regime—and by extension, Iran and Russia—agrees to move the Kurds out of Afrin and Manbij to an area east of the Euphrates, and if it could also guarantee to control the Kurds’ actions thereafter. The Syrian government could then take control of areas that have been held by semi-autonomous Kurdish entities for several years. The Syrian Kurds might also agree to this arrangement—it would allow them to avoid even more bloodshed, and they could negotiate a role for themselves in the Syrian government. Iran, an Assad ally, might also accept an agreement because it would reverse Turkey’s advance east. Such a settlement wouldn’t end the Syrian war, but it would help temper the conflict in Afrin.

It remains unclear whether the pro-regime forces that were deployed to Afrin have made much progress. Turkey said it halted their advance by shelling them as they entered the province, promising to engage directly if the fighters helped defend the YPG.

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« Last Edit: February 27, 2018, 11:26:46 PM by Crafty_Dog »


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Where's the jobs? Where are the qualified workers?
« Reply #1080 on: March 04, 2018, 03:30:51 PM »
Earlier this month, Dubai hosted the World Government Summit, welcoming dignitaries from around the world for talks on global happiness. But amid all the discussions of more contented societies lurked a more pressing issue right on the Emiratis' doorstep: the prospect that 5 million workers are set to enter the Middle East's job market each year, even as gainful employment is in short supply. That, at least, was on the mind of Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who once more exhorted Arab governments to address youth unemployment — and fast. No one was about to disagree. From Morocco to Iran, states and leaders of all sects, political systems and governing systems understand the threat posed by the region's high youth unemployment.

Although regional leaders agree on the need to increase employment, there is a good reason why youth unemployment remains stubbornly above the global average in the Middle East and North Africa. From building vibrant private sectors to finding the right jobs for youth to chasing technological silver bullets, many states have encountered hurdles in searching for a solution. Even if these countries do foster their private sectors and a technological boom, they will open themselves to market forces that they can scarcely control — a development that would challenge their already-strained social contracts with their people. Countries in the region are not blessed with decades to solve the issue of youth employment, but if they fail to find a resolution soon, the survival of these states will come into question.


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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1082 on: March 06, 2018, 12:13:00 PM »
Syria: Pentagon officials said on March 5 that the U.S.-backed offensive against the Islamic State in eastern Syria was on hold after the Syrian Democratic Forces withdrew from the fight to support the Syrian Kurds under attack in Afrin and other Syrian Kurdish positions on the Turkish border. IS has not gone away and still maintains control over areas in eastern Syria. Will IS seek to take advantage of this lull? More important, is there any way for us to determine how many SDF fighters have left the fight against IS to join the battle in Afrin or other parts of northern Syria? The Syrian Kurds may believe that the U.S. will give up on them and are therefore quitting the coalition against IS.


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GPF: George Friedman: Landbridge Ho?!?
« Reply #1084 on: March 12, 2018, 02:26:02 PM »
March 12, 2018

The Role of Militias in Iraq’s Strategy for Iran

By George Friedman and Xander Snyder

I am back from the 2018 Strategic Investment Conference, and as usual, it was an outstanding three days. I was particularly impressed by the panel discussion between Niall Ferguson and David McWilliams, who managed to disagree with wit and insight. McWilliams tied the future of the global economy to the poetry of W.B. Yeats—not an easy feat by any means. I also was surprised to hear China bull Louis Gave point out the grave issues facing China as Xi Jinping solidifies his dictatorship over the country—something my team and I have been pointing out for a long time. I am looking forward to revisiting these and other talks from SIC, and if you are interested in watching a recap, you can purchase a SIC Virtual Pass at a steep discount until March 18. Now, on to This Week in Geopolitics.

Iran’s activities in Syria get a lot of press, but less attention is paid to what Iran has done in Iraq to make those activities manageable. Iran operates a Shiite foreign legion that over the years has trained 200,000 fighters in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. And one part of that foreign legion is the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. The militias of the PMF all but control northern Iraq, which Iran has transformed into a land bridge to supply its other proxy groups in Syria and Lebanon.

Shaping Battle Plans

The term “Popular Mobilization Forces” was first used in 2013 by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to refer to the Shiite militias in Iraq, but it wasn’t until the fall of Mosul in 2014 that the PMF really came into existence. As IS flooded into the city, Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling on all able-bodied men—regardless of sect—to mobilize and oppose the invasion. Around the same time, al-Maliki signed a decree mandating the formation of the PMF Commission, which administers Iraqi state funds for PMF groups. Iran also discreetly funds some of these groups, and many pro-Iran militia leaders today occupy important positions within the Iraqi government, giving them substantial control over funding decisions… and even battle plans.

According to a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, an American think tank, there are 67 unique PMF militias, approximately 40 of which are pro-Iran in some form or another. Estimates of the total size of all PMF groups vary from 100,000 to 140,000 fighters. Most of these are Shiite fighters, but not all—approximately 25,000 to 30,000 are Sunnis. Minorities like Yazidis, Kurds, and Turkmen also fight in PMF militias.

In 2014, when IS started to advance on Mosul, the Iraqi security forces fled. American support was practically nonexistent, and the Iraqi government was defenseless. The Popular Mobilization Forces came to Mosul’s aid. During the PMF’s siege to retake Mosul, Hadi al-Amiri, Badr’s current leader and an Iraqi member of parliament, ordered a significant adjustment at the last minute.
 
Source: Geopolitical Futures (Click to enlarge)

The original plan was to enclose the city on three sides, leaving open an escape corridor to the west for civilians to flee. Of course, this would also allow IS fighters to escape in the direction of Syria, whose borders are only some 110 miles (180 kilometers) from Mosul along the road through Tal Afar. But Iran did not want IS fighters flooding into the Syrian theater and making the fight harder for Bashar Assad just as he was beginning to turn the tide of the civil war. Under al-Amiri’s revised plan, PMF forces completely enveloped Mosul, forcing IS to fight to the death. The late move also gave pro-Iran PMF groups control of more territory in northern Iraq, which solidified Iran’s supply lines through Iraq into northern Syria. The intervention of an Iraqi politician was therefore instrumental in securing Iran’s control of a northern land bridge through Iraq and into Syria.

PMF Factions

Broadly speaking, there are three main factions within the PMF: those loyal to Iran and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, those loyal to Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, and those loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, another Iraqi Shiite cleric known for his populism. Notably, all three of these factions are majority Shiite, meaning the Sunni-Shiite fault line that often defines Middle Eastern conflicts hardly applies in this case. The more relevant division is between Iraqi nationalists and Iran loyalists. Groups that side with al-Sistani and al-Sadr are in the Iraqi nationalist camp.

The pro-Iran groups advocate and fight to further Iran’s interests regardless of whether they conflict with the interests of Iraq. In addition to the funding they get from the PMF Commission, they are usually funded by Iran and report either directly or indirectly to the Quds Force, the foreign expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Further, they support Iran’s vision of a pan-Islamic state that is governed by Iran’s Islamic institutions and, importantly, report to Iran’s supreme leader (a religious-political theory known as wilayat al-faqih, or Rule of the Jurisprudent).

Other Shiite groups, such as those loyal to al-Sadr, advocate a system similar to that in Iran but with a strictly Iraqi nationalist flavor and its own leader. (Al-Sadr would be his own choice as Iraq’s version of supreme leader.) Al-Sistani’s focus, meanwhile, was on defeating the Islamic State, and in the past, he has called for the forces loyal to him to demobilize after beating IS. He has since seemed to backtrack, recognizing that PMF factions are perhaps the best way to resist Iranian influence, not to mention the risk of an IS resurgence.

Iran’s Strategy

Iran’s strategy in Iraq, like its strategy with Hezbollah in Lebanon, is to gradually exercise greater control over Iraqi state institutions. It has already succeeded to a degree, although Iran’s influence is not yet as pervasive in Iraq as it is in Lebanon, in part because of the sheer number of competing factions.

Iran wants a weak, but stable, Iraq. The first part is easy to pursue, but not without endangering the second part. Iran does not want Iraq to be strong enough and nationalistic enough to challenge it outright, which would put its supply routes to Syria and Lebanon at risk and could threaten it with another general war. But if Iran pushes too far, Iraqi state institutions could be imperiled, potentially providing the opportunity for a re-emergence of an IS-like group. Iran also risks triggering a concerted pushback by the Sunnis—either in the form of, again, an IS-like group, or simply staunch electoral opposition. And Iran doesn’t want Iraq to become so divided that secession of any group becomes a possibility. Secession would set a worrying precedent for Iran, which is facing its own domestic political challenges and difficulty in spurring more equitable economic growth.

An ideal situation for Iran is one in which, even if the Iraqi government is not fully under its control, it is weak enough to allow for the ongoing presence of pro-Iran militias. Even if Iran’s militia groups do not become as fully incorporated into the Iraqi government as Hezbollah is in Lebanon, Iran could use its groups to launch attacks in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.


Crafty_Dog

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GPF: Iran building bases near Russian bases
« Reply #1085 on: March 27, 2018, 09:40:20 PM »
Iran: Iran is building new military bases close to Russian bases to prevent Israel from being able to attack them, according to London-based Asharq al-Awsat, citing security sources in Tel Aviv. Russia is reportedly unhappy with the development, and it is causing friction between Russia and Iran. Let’s check the validity of the report. Have there been any recent Israel-Russia meetings, and have we seen any evidence of discord between Moscow and Tehran?

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Re: Ummm , , , was this helpful? thought out?
« Reply #1087 on: March 31, 2018, 05:22:08 PM »
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/trump-withdraw-syria-pentagon/index.html


The official pointed to several challenges, including figuring out what to do with the some 400 foreign ISIS fighters currently being held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as one example of the obstacles to a US withdrawal.

*I have a solution for that. It involves a shovel and 400 rounds of ammunition.

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Stratfor: Cognitive Dissonance re Syria- Iran
« Reply #1090 on: April 07, 2018, 09:31:29 PM »
The Syria Debate. How will Trump's desire for a quicker withdrawal from Syria end up squaring with plans by incoming national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to build out a comprehensive containment strategy against Iran? Iran, Russia, the Syrian government and Turkey would all benefit in their own ways from the United States' early exit from this proxy battleground. And while the Islamic State has been defeated as a conventional force, the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria is still a manageable military commitment to deal with the potent insurgent threat Islamic State poses today. Suffice to say, this White House debate is far from over.

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Stratfor: Syria's largest airbase hit
« Reply #1092 on: April 08, 2018, 10:16:46 PM »
second post

Syria: Country's Largest Airbase Attacked, Israel Likely Responsible
A breaking report from Stratfor on the latest strikes against a Syrian airbase -- the image shows the Middle East and North Africa highlighted in red.



As we said in our 2018 Second Quarter Forecast; "troops loyal to al Assad, along with their Iranian allies, will also risk coming face to face with Israel as they conduct operations against rebel positions in southern Syria. Israel has a narrow window in which it can strike at its longtime adversary, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and at Iranian targets across its northeastern border with Syria. Israel will probably take it, with the aim of preventing the entrenchment of Iranian-backed fighters along the edge of the Golan Heights."


Reports are emerging of an attack on the Tiyas (T4) Military Airbase in Syria. The facility, 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of Damascus, is operated in part by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and was reportedly struck April 8 — the early hours of April 9, local time. It is likely that the base was hit by cruise missiles as opposed to air-dropped munitions. Observers on the ground in Homs, immediately to the west of the airbase, recorded video showing missiles in the skies around the time of the attack, most likely Syria air defense responding to the attack. The strike follows the deployment of chemical weapons against the rebel enclave in Douma on April 7, which resulted in at least 48 fatalities. In a joint statement, U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to "coordinate a strong, joint response." The United Nations Security Council is meeting tomorrow to discuss the chemical attack. The Pentagon issued a statement denying U.S. or coalition involvement in the attack on the T4 airbase. A Syrian military source said that 8 'missiles' had been shot down over Syrian airspace, Al Ekhbariya reported. Almost a year ago to the day — April 6, 2017 — the United States launched a major cruise missile attack against Shayrat air base in Homs province.

Israel has a narrow window of opportunity to target Hezbollah and other strategic targets while the group is still exposed in the Syrian civil war and while Israel has strong backing from a White House that is particularly hawkish on Iran.

Though unconfirmed, there is a strong possibility that the Israel Defense Forces were behind the April 8 strike on the Tiyas airbase. This is the same airbase from which an Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace in February. An Israeli F-16 was shot down when it retaliated against the drone incursion by striking the base Feb 10. Israel claimed at the time that T4 was operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force and was the site of weapons transfers to allied militant groups, including Hezbollah. The strong and widespread condemnation of the April 7 chemical attack in Douma has provided Israel with a window to carry out the strike. And with the United States and France vowing a strong joint response to the chemical attack, more strikes in Syria may be in store. The rise in military frictions in Syria sets the scene for U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton's first day on the job, April 9. Bolton is a strong advocate for a comprehensive containment strategy against Iran, including proxy battlegrounds such as Syria — a policy preference that is at odds with Trump's expressed interest in an early withdrawal from the country. As we wrote in our 2018 Annual and Second Quarter Forecasts, Israel has a narrow window of opportunity to target Hezbollah and other strategic targets while the group is still exposed in the Syrian civil war and while Israel has strong backing from a White House that is particularly hawkish on Iran.

Crafty_Dog

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NRO: Does Assad have a death wish?
« Reply #1093 on: April 09, 2018, 07:44:45 AM »
How do you define a death wish? How about, “using chemical weapons in an area where their effects are likely to be recorded on camera, right before John Bolton becomes national security adviser”? You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with The ‘Stache.

A month ago, then-private citizen John Bolton wrote:

    Security Council weapons inspectors monitoring North Korea’s compliance with United Nations sanctions have reportedly concluded that, for several years, the North has been selling Syria materials for the production of chemical weapons. Additional sanctions violations also are reported, but none compare to the gravity of this evidence that Pyongyang is trafficking in weapons of mass destruction (WMD) technology.

    Pyongyang’s dangerous behavior today dramatically foreshadows exactly what it will do with nuclear and ballistic-missile technology as soon as it thinks it is safe to do so.

    The U.N. report and other sources also indicate considerable involvement by Iran, China and Russia in financing and transporting North Korea’s chemical and other weapons-related materials to Syria. The complex web of business dealings shows serious, perhaps insoluble, problems in the enforcement of international sanctions applicable to both Pyongyang and Damascus.

That certainly sounds like a man fed up with the status quo approach to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And certainly President Trump’s Sunday morning tweets — the first to criticize Vladimir Putin directly by name(!) — suggest the commander-in-chief is appalled and outraged at the use of chemical weapons.

Meanwhile, someone — everyone suspects the Israelis — bombed Syrian airbase T4 early Monday morning, a base used by Syrian and Iranian-backed militias.

Former secretary of State John Kerry, in his farewell memo to America’s diplomats, touted the alleged success of destroying 1,000 tons of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles and then added, “unfortunately, other undeclared chemical weapons continue to be used ruthlessly on the Syrian people.” It’s been said that the easiest way to persuade President Trump to do something is to tell him Obama refused to take a particular course of action. Is someone like Bolton going to tell Trump that Obama refused to enact a lengthy campaign of punitive airstrikes, aiming to destroy any suspected Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles?


Crafty_Dog

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Stratfor: To hit or not to hit Syria
« Reply #1095 on: April 10, 2018, 07:12:51 PM »
The Signs, Options and Risks of a U.S. Strike on Syria

Highlights
•   The United States is building a military coalition to deter Syria's use of chemical weapons.
•   This coalition may conduct a broader operation with a bigger target list than the U.S. strikes conducted in April 2017, but it would not be intended to change the civil war's frontlines.
•   Like 2017's strikes, any potential operation will try to avoid Russian casualties and mitigate risk of further political escalation for the coalition.
________________________________________
The United States is building a coalition against Syria to respond to an alleged chemical weapons attack on April 7 against civilians and rebel forces in Douma, near Damascus. The primary objective of an operation against Syria will be to deter the further use of chemical weapons, something that a punitive missile strike launched last April by the United States did only temporarily.

This time around, however, a U.S.-led strike against Syria likely would be wider in scope, aiming not only to deter Damascus, but also to impair the Syrian government's ability to carry out chemical weapons attacks. But even with the support of a coalition, and even with a bigger operational scope, the same factors that constrained the United States in April 2017 would also constrain a military operation this time.

In our 2018 Second-Quarter Forecast, we wrote that, "Having failed to translate peace talks into an exit from the protracted civil war,  Moscow will settle for a conflict frozen in place instead. De-escalation zones will offer a means to that end. But Syrian President Bashar al Assad and foreign patron Iran won't be willing to recognize these areas, throwing a wrench into Russia's plans." It is clear that even though Russia and other powers have sought to slow down the civil conflict in Syria through implementing de-escalation zones, the Syrian government is intent on fighting rebels in areas like Douma, in eastern Ghouta. The apparent use of chemical weapons as part of those anti-rebel operations is driving a U.S. desire to strike Syrian government assets to deter future chemical weapons attacks.
________________________________________
Middle East and North AfricaThe Syrian Civil War

There are, however, some important differences between last year and now. Last April, the United States acted alone when it launched cruise missiles at Syria's Shayrat air base, which was alleged to be the starting point for a sarin gas attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun. This time, a wider operation could involve multiple strikes across several days and would necessitate significantly more forces, including likely coalition members France and the United Kingdom. It is possible Saudi Arabia, Qatar and/or the United Arab Emirates could be involved in a hosting and facilitation capacity. More remotely, one or any of these states might involve themselves militarily. The Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani visited the White House on April 10. The inclusion within a coalition of Qatar and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council has a chance of creating limited military cooperation between the council's feuding states.

The operation could expand relative to the Shayrat airstrike to focus on degrading the Syrian government's capability to deliver chemical weapons. French President Emmanuel Macron gave greater weight to the possibility of a wider operation when he said on April 10 that France would target Syria's chemical facilities in a strike. The new round of strikes might include Dumeir, Marj Ruhayyil and Mezzeh air bases around Damascus, which have been instrumental to the government's offensive in eastern Ghouta. They also may include a wider range of other locations associated with Syria's chemical weapons program.

Because a coalition strike would include a widened target set, Stratfor is looking closely for the additional deployment of U.S. and allied forces to the Middle East. Regionally, the largest bases for potential use in an operation against Syria are the U.S. base at al-Udeid in Qatar and British military bases in Cyprus; increased military activity at these locations may indicate the scope of an impending attack.

A wider target set could necessitate basing and securing access for attack routes from Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, which would require negotiations to acquire their consent. While the United States is already in conversation with Iraq on the issue of a potential strike, Baghdad's close ties with Iran might force it to deny the United States and its partners a flight path through Iraq. Iraq's need to balance its interests between its ties to Iran and to the United States was clear after the 2017 Khan Shaykhun attack, when Iraq's government condemned the use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians but questioned whether Damascus was culpable.
 
A wider strike also would likely require the involvement of more assets, such as aircraft carriers from the United States. The USS Harry S. Truman and its support ships are scheduled to leave Norfolk, Virginia, for the Mediterranean and Middle East on April 11, while the USS Theodore Roosevelt and its fleet may redeploy from the Pacific. It will take the USS Truman a week to arrive in the Mediterranean.

The broader the campaign against Syria the greater the risk to Russian forces in the country. The political fallout of Russian deaths from U.S.-led strikes will depend on if the Russians killed are military members or private military contractors. Private military contractors already have been killed by direct U.S. action in Syria with minimal fallout, leaving open the question of how Russia would react if regulars were to be killed in a U.S.-led campaign. The United States may attempt to mitigate this risk, as it did in April 2017, by warning Russia of impending strikes. The Russian presence in Syria — which is mostly concentrated in Tartous, Latakia and Damascus — also limits U.S. options to a defined set of targets. A more holistic campaign would increase the risk of collision with Russian forces. In contrast, striking Iranian forces in Syria has fewer implications for the United States. This was most recently evinced when Israel struck the T4 air base in Syria on April 8, killing several Iranians, without immediate retaliation from Iran.
Meanwhile, in the diplomatic realm, the United States has called for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate this weekend's attack. The organization has already said it will send investigators to Douma (Russia and Syria are cooperating), but as was clear in 2017, the launch of an investigation will not necessarily delay military action. The longer any potential operation goes on, as well, the more likely that political constraints, such as the U.S. War Powers Act, come into play.

Here is what Stratfor wrote in April 2017 ahead of the U.S. cruise missile strike on the Shayrat air base. It remains applicable today:

Limited Punitive Strikes

A limited punitive strike on government targets is the least risky option and the one requiring the fewest resources. This option would be meant to demonstrate U.S. credibility and to deter further loyalist use of chemical weapons by striking a select number of Syrian government targets, including command and control facilities and other high-value and symbolic targets. Punitive strikes can come in varying levels of intensity, duration, and scope, but they are essentially designed to send a message rather than to remove the Syrian government's ability to use chemical weapons.

Target Set

In this scenario, there are more possible targets than the United States would be interested in attacking. Command and control facilities would likely be the priority, driving home the message that the Syrian government leadership, particularly the military leadership, would pay for the decision to use chemical weapons. However, Syrian President Bashar al Assad himself would probably not be targeted because a strike on the upper leadership levels could quickly draw the United States into a full conflict, which it would want to avoid under this scenario. Specific facilities that may be targeted are the airport from where the Syrian aircraft carried out the chemical weapons attack and the specific headquarters of the commander who launched the operation.

Degrade the Government's Chemical Weapons Delivery Capability

Should the United States decide to take the mission a step further, it could also attempt to degrade Damascus' ability to use chemical weapons — not just discourage their use. The command, control and communication facilities could still be targeted, but the operation would also need to strike at a much wider network of targets and potentially even their associated defenses.

Target Set

The mission would focus on the three main ways Damascus can deliver its chemical weapons: the air force, the ballistic missile force and the artillery force.

Although several government airfields have been neutralized or captured by the rebels, several others are still operational. There are at last six major Syrian airfields that are linked to the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal. To neutralize an airfield, the United States can crater the airfield, strike parked aircraft, destroy fuel and ammunition stores and disable ground control, radar and maintenance facilities.

Beyond the Syrian Air Force, other loyalist forces also possess large numbers of artillery and ballistic missiles that can be used to launch chemical weapons attacks. The United States however is highly unlikely to comprehensively go beyond air force targets since that would effectively commit the United States to a direct and full-scale war against the al Assad government, an option that is in all likelihood completely of the table at this point.

The Risk Factor

While the ranges of options available to the United States for a military response in Syria vary in risk, none of them are risk-free. The dangers are many and long-term, ranging from loss of material and personnel to the triggering of an active conflict with Russia. Even assuming that a strike was carried out in a seamless fashion with little to no collateral damage, there would undoubtedly be consequences for U.S. operations in Syria. For one thing, the likelihood that the Syrian loyalists would seek to interfere with U.S. flight operations, or even ground activity in the country, would greatly increase, and even the deconfliction process with Russia will not survive unscathed. The bottom line is: There are no easy military options in Syria, and even the best run operation will inevitably lead to escalation and a multiplication of the miscalculation factors already present in such a convoluted conflict.

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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1096 on: April 11, 2018, 05:40:47 PM »
some good points
except for Isis I don't know what we are doing here .

Haven't we seen this movie before.  Another sequel of a disaster of a movie?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/trump-is-poised-to-make-a-series-of-terrible-mistakes-in-syria/

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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1097 on: April 12, 2018, 09:36:36 AM »
What are we doing there?

Keeping Iran from getting a land bridge to Hezbollah and to the Mediterranean, thus lessening the chance of war, possibly nuclear, with Israel.  Also, this is good for Kurds.

Do we have a coherent, long term strategy?

Not that I can tell, though I suppose that it can be argued we are simply doing enough to turn it into a long term quagmire for Russia and Iran.

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Re: The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR
« Reply #1098 on: April 12, 2018, 12:05:05 PM »
Crafty:  "I suppose that it can be argued we are simply doing enough to turn it into a long term quagmire for Russia and Iran."
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Yes, maybe we learned a strategy from our enemies.  We cannot win in Syria because we don't have a side to help that can win and govern.  A quagmire for our enemies is preferable to allowing them to tie up the loose ends and rule the entire region.

The same strategy could have been applied in Iraq.  Topple Saddam for the threat he posed and then topple the next regime when a new threat develops until they get it right.  We tried to do something better than that in a humanitarian sense and it was expensive for us in lives and money, and not very effective.

Russia cannot afford a permanent intervention in the Middle East any more than we can and Iran needs to be countered on every front until they change their ways.  America needs to use its scarce resources wisely.  There aren't good options in Syria, just varying levels of bad ones.  Doing nothing is one of the worst options.  Crippling a murderous regime with good justification and support from allies, and retreating, looks like our best option. 

If this is a war starting, he needs to go to Congress and it would likely die there.

Crafty_Dog

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GPF: George Friedman: The Syrian Tangle
« Reply #1099 on: April 13, 2018, 06:52:17 AM »
The Syrian Tangle
Apr 13, 2018
By George Friedman

About a year ago, the Trump administration carried out a cruise missile strike on a Syrian airfield within 48 hours of a major chemical weapons attack on civilians, allegedly carried out by the Assad regime. The strike did some damage but nothing of such significance as to force the regime to change its strategy, either in general or on chemical weapons. Indeed, there was no expectation of change. The response was the military equivalent of a strong diplomatic note and was treated as such by the Syrians.

It’s almost been a week since the latest major chemical attack, this time targeting the Damascus suburb of Douma. Assad’s regime is again generally assumed to have been responsible. U.S. President Donald Trump vowed a short time later that there would be a “big price to pay” and, outside of an ambiguous tweet on April 12, has continued to threaten military action, yet this time he has held off on launching it. The more time goes by and the more the threat is repeated, the greater the anticipation and anxiety. By implying that the response will be more substantial than the previous one, Trump has allowed imaginations to run wild over what the U.S. might do.
Everyone is preparing. The Russians moved their ships in Syrian ports out to sea. A ship in a port is a relatively easy target, and the Russians seem unsure whether their ships might be targeted. This suggests the Russians are considering their ability to counterstrike against enemy assets in the eastern Mediterranean. There have also been widespread rumors in Arabic media that Bashar Assad and his family have left Damascus. A Russian lawmaker denied the rumors, but the mere existence of such rumors gives a sense of the regional tension over the American response. Turkey has renewed its call for Assad’s removal but asked the Americans and Russians to talk. British submarines set course for the region, something that the Russians chose to ridicule. The Saudi crown prince said Saudi Arabia would join any allied strike against Syria. The expectation seems to be that an attack could come at any time.

A Disturbing Threat

What’s odd about this is that earlier this month, before the chemical weapons attack, endless leaks claimed that the U.S. Department of Defense wanted the U.S. to take a more active role in Syria but that the president resisted. Trump publicly said he wanted a reduction of force in Syria. During his campaign and through much of his presidency, he has said he wanted to reduce U.S. responsibility for and exposure to global instability. In the wake of the chemical attack, however, Trump has reversed course. Through his repeated threats and delay, Trump has placed the United States back at the center of the Syria equation.

As tragic as it is, the chemical attack was not a critical moment. Assad’s regime has killed many of its people, including with chemical weapons. That part is not new. What may be moving things in this direction, though, is Iran’s role in Syria. Iran has long been active in the region, but since the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it has gotten more involved, placing substantial forces in Syria and Iraq, in addition to its usual support of proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Shortly after the Douma attack, Israel launched a substantial airstrike on an Iranian base near Palmyra. This was not retaliation for the chemical attack; Israel has stayed away from that sort of action. Israel’s concern is rather with the transfer of advanced weaponry (including potentially the very chemical weapons the Assad regime is accused of using in Douma) to the Iranian proxy Hezbollah, as well as Iran’s construction of a permanent presence in Syria. Israel has always been able to count on distance to protect itself from Iran, but as Iran builds up its forces in Syria, it becomes more of a direct threat to Israel. Israel does not want to retaliate to such attacks but to stop them before they occur.

Russia in the Crossfire

Israel notified the U.S. of the airstrike in advance, and the U.S. had no objection because it sent the message that Washington wanted to send: Anyone using chemical weapons in Syria will be hit hard. At this point, the Russians and Syrians have insisted that they did not use chemical weapons. This is more than pro forma. The Russians know that if Iran in particular, but also Syria, use chemical weapons, then the Israelis and Americans will strike.

Russia is not in Syria to engage the Americans or the Israelis. The Russians do not have the forces in Syria to match the force the Israelis or Americans could bring to bear. Their purpose in the country was to gain political leverage with the U.S. by preserving Assad. An alliance with Iran strengthened Russia’s position, but this chemical attack threatens to draw the Russians into a conventional battle in the region that they are not prepared to fight. Russian supply ships would have to come through the Bosporus, and Turkey couldn’t be trusted to stand aside. Turkey does not want Assad in power, and his use of chemical weapons gives Turkey even more reason to pursue that objective.

This means the Russians need to defuse the situation. They have made it clear to the Israelis and Americans that they had nothing to do with the chemical attacks. But even if a low-level Syrian officer ordered the chemical attack on Douma, that would make Russia complicit in the use of chemical weapons, which would provide a legitimate reason for the Israelis or even an international coalition to strike sensitive targets in Syria. This leaves the Russians in a difficult position, and trying to distance themselves from the chemical attack does them no good. All it does is signal that Russia has no control over the Syrian regime, which also means it probably can’t control Iran. Therefore, Russia is now caught in a potential crossfire.

Looked at in this way, the more pressure exerted on the Russians, the more likely they are to feel the threat and modify their position. A threat of massive American action is even better than actual massive American action. A major U.S. attack could fail – or fail to impress. Instead, Trump has created serious uncertainty among all players in the region, save probably the Israelis. Syria, Iran and Russia do not know what, if anything, is coming, and of the three, Russia is in the weakest position. The Syrians have nowhere to go. The Iranians didn’t fight their way to this point to simply leave. But the Russians weren’t in Syria to fight a major conflict. They were there to show the flag. And that makes the threat of being drawn into a larger conflict unappetizing for Moscow.

Direct intervention is not an appealing option for Trump, but the creation of uncertainty is. Of course, uncertainty has a limited shelf life. A serious U.S. attack on Syria – one whose aim would be to degrade the Assad regime’s fighting ability, not just to slap Assad on the wrist – is unlikely, if still possible. The U.S. is happy to rely on Israel to keep attacking Iranian facilities from time to time. Trump can threaten, but the Israelis have no choice but to act.
Whatever happens next, the risk is relatively low for the United States. The same can’t be said for everyone else.