US continues to ignore Russian success in Syria

The uncomfortable truth about the Syrian Civil War is that Russia is helping to end it.

When the Arab Spring first began in 2011 in Syria, protests were quickly absorbed into an armed conflict between Syrian Sunnis from the countryside, backed by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and the rest of Syria, backing Bashar Al-Assad. The reason why Bashar Al-Assad never fell in the 6 years of conflict is because he is too popular with Syrians.

Since 2011, Assad's Syrian Arab Army have maintained a presence in all major cities in Syria except Raqqa in 2014 and Idlib in 2015. Even the inhabitants of Deir Ez-Zor city, populated by Syrian Bedouins, who are normally more receptive to ISIS, have remained allied to Bashar Al-Assad for the entirety of the war.

When rebels started making larger gains against the Syrian government in western Syria, Bashar Al-Assad called on Russia to assist his government in regaining control of Syria. Russia's accomplishments in almost 2 years have been more profound than US gains in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last 15 years.

The Russians learned from the US' mistake in Iraq: regime change leads to terrorism. The Russians, therefore, decided that the antidote to terrorism would be to do an "Iraq War in reverse": strengthen an existing regime, rather than change it. And it has worked.

Since the Russians have entered the Syrian Civil War, the city of Aleppo has been stabilized. Many of the rebels previously holed up in other Syrian areas have been moved into the rebel-held province of Idlib. And, more recently, deconfliction zones were established to enable the Syrian Arab Army to focus more heavily on ISIS than the other rebels. This has resulted in the Syrian Government regaining vast swathes of countryside in Aleppo, Homs and Damascus provinces.

The US has been silent on this. The chemical attacks earlier this year - neither proven nor unproven to be initiated by the Syrian Government - led President Donald Trump to order an airstrike on a Syrian airbase - the first time the US intentionally launched a military attack on the Syrian Government in the war. And Rex Tillerson, who previously said the Syrians should decide who their President should be, began to call for the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad.

Of course, the US is highly unlikely to engage militarily to remove the Assad regime in Syria. But it does show an attempt to undermine Russian efforts in Syria and focus the west's attention on its own war on ISIS rather than on Russian success in Syria.

However, should the US not learn from Russian success in Syria, they would be unable to end either the Iraq or Afghan conflicts. And with 20 trillion dollars of debt, the US cannot sustain their current foreign policy.

Tillerson: U.S. ready to let Russia decide on Assad in Syria

https://www.axios.com/u-s-ready-to-let-russia-decide-syria-2452572593.html

This is the best news I've heard all year.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has announced that the US is ready to let Russia decide on Assad in Syria. This means that previous statements of regime change by members of the Trump Administration, such as H.R. McMaster, have fallen on deaf ears.

Odds are that relations between the US and Russia will depend on whether or not Bashar Al-Assad is removed. But Russia understands that Bashar Al-Assad is a symbol to the Syrian people: a symbol of stability, protection of minority groups, "sticking it" to America by supporting Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, and a symbol of secular Arabism. Russia stands to benefit more from Assad staying in power, as other countries will trust Russia to defend them, such as Haftar Al-Khalifa in Libya, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran.

So Assad is very likely to remain in Syria for the foreseeable future. This will mean one less country from which Salafi terrorism will come, and will force the US to score significant victories in the war on terror in other areas, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, this is the worst possible news for the Arabian Gulf. Much of the Arabian Gulf was set to benefit from Bashar Al-Assad being ousted from Syria, and with Assad set to remain in power, the Gulf is set for detonation. ISIS will come to the Arabian Gulf. Shi'ites from the Gulf will be exterminated and driven out. Houthis will win the Yemen war. But, scarily, ISIS may just capture Mecca and Medina.

But today, we can celebrate that terrorism is being meaningfully defeated in Syria. It is worth celebrations for the rest of the year.

Will Trump contain Iran in Syria?

This year has seen enormous advances by the Syrian Arab Army. Firstly, in January, Syria seized the key city of Aleppo. Since then, rebels have been either accepting the open invitation of the government to lay down their arms and rejoin Syrian life, or they have relocated to the province of Idlib, or they have remained, waiting for the Syrian Arab Army to mop them up.

Iran has been using Assad's Syria as part of a Shi'ite crescent from Tehran, Iran's capital, to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. This crescent is a formidable challenge for the Trump Administration. How does Trump protect Israel if the anti-Israeli Assad government regains control of Syria?

Trump will not protect Israel by overthrowing Assad. Neither will Trump set up a military base in eastern Syria to stop supplies flowing from Iran to Hezbollah. It would take too many men, weapons, allies and money that the US does not currently have in Syria.

More likely is that the US will let the Assad government stay in power, but consolidate air bases in western and north-western Iraq, in the largely Sunni Arab areas. This will do several things. First, it will prevent Iranian weapons from reaching Syria through Iraq, because the US would destroy them on sight. Second, it will prevent Iranian-backed militias from attacking Sunni Arab Iraqis. Third, it will prevent ISIS from returning to Iraq in force, as the US will target them as soon as they are spotted.

Trump will likely contain Iran, but not by battling Iran in Syria, but by working together with the Iraqi government, to curtail Iranian influence there. Like Obama before him, Trump does not want to see the United States get in another quagmire after the two Bush-era quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, and unlike in Syria, in Iraq there is support for a continued, minimal US presence.

Afghanistan is the other area which, in the immediate future, will be used to help contain Iran. Afghanistan has an enormous amount of potential resources. Rather than fighting Iran in Syria, Trump is more likely exert pressure to stabilize Afghanistan to make it strong, independent and anti-Iranian. An anti-Iran Afghanistan would go some way to curtailing Iran's dominance in the region.

Trump will also continue to support Saudi Arabia. The US will support the Saudi war on the Houthis - though this is unlikely to benefit anyone in the region, especially Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has additionally shown signs of supporting the Kurds in independence in Syria and Iraq, which would also go a way to containing Iranian influence. However, Trump's hands are tied. If he supports the Kurds too loudly in either Syria or Iraq, he would lose the Iraqi government as an ally. And that would be more disastrous for the US than maintaining the status quo.

All in all, these strategies of containing Iran do not include overthrowing the Assad government in Damascus. This strategy, which is trumpeted so loudly by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, is likely to fall on deaf ears, as neither James Mattis nor Trump nor Steve Bannon have any desire to be sucked into the unwinnable quagmire of Syria.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Kurdish areas are more likely to be utilized by Trump than overthrowing Assad in Syria.

When will Trump leave Syria?

Syria is a complex crisis.

In the campaign, Trump stated he would 'bomb the s*** out of ISIS,' that he was a fan of the Kurds, that he would 'let Russia fight ISIS' in Syria, and largely Trump has lived up to his campaign rhetoric - with added bombings of the Syrian Government.

Trump has accelerated Obama's bombing campaign against ISIS and has largely used the Kurds to achieve his objectives in Syria. He has welcomed Russia's 'de-confliction zones' initiative, which has freed the Syrian Arab Army to overwhelmingly fight ISIS rather than the rebels in Idlib. While the Syrian Arab Army is stronger than ever as a result of this, ISIS' presence in Syria is weaker than ever.

Why, then, has Trump bombed the Syrian government in the past? Well, one reason would be that the Washington Swamp has been mercilessly targeting Trump no matter what he does, and bombing the Syrian air base near Khan Sheikhoun and changing rhetoric to 'Assad must go' has meant that the Swamp has backed off, albeit only a little.

The other reason Trump has bombed the Syrian government has been to direct the Syrian Arab Army and allies towards ISIS rather than towards US-backed rebels. Obama did the reverse of this during his Presidency: bombed ISIS to target the Syrian Arab Army rather than the Iraqi Army or the Kurdish militias. So far, Trump's strategy has been working - the Syrian Arab Army has been overwhelmingly fighting ISIS and not the Kurds or the Free Syrian Army - but it has risked further confrontation between the US and Russia.

The question that many US citizens are wondering is this: when will Trump leave Syria? The answer is that Trump is likely to leave Syria after a political settlement has been reached through the Astana and Geneva talks. This will mean that Trump will likely leave Syria after either Assad has left office, new Syrian elections are run or the Kurds break away from Syria.

Now, should Assad be forced to leave office, Syrians would overwhelmingly protest for him to return to power, leaving the US and its partners humiliated. Should new Syrian elections take place, most Syrians would write Bashar Al-Assad on their ballots, which would equally humiliate the US and its partners. The third possibility, therefore, is more likely: Assad will remain in control of the majority of Syria, but the Kurds vote for independence from Syria.

This raises concerns of further conflict in Syria, a complete deterioration of Turkish-US relations, or outright defeat of the Kurds by the Syrian Arab Army. Any one of these scenarios would further humiliate the US and their partners.

Ideally, Trump should withdraw his forces from Syria after Raqqa has been seized by the Kurds. With ISIS destroyed from Syria, there is no benefit for the US in remaining there.

Syrian Arab Army reaches At-Tanf border crossing

The Syrian Arab Army has reached the At-Tanf border crossing with Iraq.

This has effectively cut the US-backed Free Syrian Army off from its objective of securing the Syrian-Iraqi border from its bases in northern Jordan. This means that the US will be unable to partition eastern Syria from west, and the Syrian Arab Army will be able to achieve its objective of securing Deir Ez-Zor city.

The Russian planned de-escalation zones have stopped most of the fighting in the west of Syria. Together with securing Aleppo from Opposition forces and letting the last of the rebels in Homs city leave for Idlib, an enormous number of Syrian Arab Army soldiers have been freed for Operation Great Dawn, a campaign to join up besieged Deir Ez-Zor city to the rest of Syria. The results of this campaign have been staggering.

Over the course of the past month, hundreds of square kilometres have been liberated by the Syrian Arab Army. Palmyra is completely secured from ISIS; the Palmyra-Damascus highway has been cleared; border crossings with Iraq have begun to be secured; and, best of all, thousands more troops are arriving at Palmyra as this article is being written.

Though US forces have been allowing ISIS to move its forces from Raqqa and Iraq into Deir Ez-Zor and Homs provinces, the Syrian Arab Army has proven more than a match for ISIS. With thousands more Syrian troops and allies now stationed at Palmyra, we are likely to see the big push for Deir Ez-Zor come to a head. In the next couple of months, it is safe to say Deir Ez-Zor city will be secured by the Syrian Arab Army pushing to reach it.

As Syria stabilizes, the Gulf is destabilizing

As Syria stabilizes, the Gulf is destabilizing.

Much of the investment from the Gulf countries was bent on the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad, to benefit Qatar in forming a pipeline through the region, bankrupt Russia and usher in a golden age of fossil fuel production for the Arabian Gulf. The overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad would have enabled the Gulf to become more wealthy than ever before after isolating Russia economically through the Qatari gas pipeline.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Russia would willingly risk its economy to stabilize Syria. The US certainly was not prepared to overthrow Assad and, without US support, neither were her allies.

Russia has launched an historic campaign which is reversing the tide of extremism in much of the Middle-East. Their Syrian campaign has caused the most enormous and permanent defeats for Al-Qaeda and ISIS since the beginning of the war on terror in 2001. Once again, as in world war 2, Russia has saved the world from a deadly enemy.

As a result, the Gulf is starting to show signs of destabilization. First was the Gulf's ambitious campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. Next has been the crackdown on Shi'ite protesters in the Gulf, such as the Saudi government's siege on the hometown of Sheikh Nimr An-Nimr and the arrests made against Shi'ite Arabs in Bahrain.

But things reached a new level of destabilization when days ago Qatar was politically isolated by its closest allies in the GCC. This has been as a result of Qatar funding of terrorism and spreading terrorist ideologies in its Al-Jazeera media coverage of the Arab Spring. Wherever there is a terror organisation, you can be sure that Qatar's money is behind them, such as with the Taliban, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and even Shi'ite groups like Hezbollah.

Qatar has greatly annoyed the rest of the Arabian Gulf.

It is commendable that Saudi Arabia has led the isolation efforts towards Qatar. However, most of the benefits to be found in isolating Qatar are wasted by Saudi Arabia engaging in the Yemeni conflict: Saudi has created an Al-Qaeda safe haven right on their doorstep, and that will continue even if Qatar stops funding terrorism.


The main reason that instability is coming to the Gulf is their unstable neighbour Iraq. Iraq is the volcano from which gushes out instability. This is the most significant reason for the barbarism seen in the Syrian Civil War: the chaos from Iraq arrived in Syria, and this is provable by just how rapid Syrian rebel groups fell to ISIS, which is the terrorist organisation that came out of Iraq.

With Syria stabilized and its people unwilling to continue the fighting; with Jordanian king Abdullah too clever to be tricked by instability into doing anything rash; with Iran too strong for instability to reach its borders, the only place left for the Iraqi volcano to gush instability towards is south: to the Arabian Gulf.

What comes next with the Qatar-Gulf crisis is difficult to guess, but it could easily escalate. Most experts believe that sanctions will not go on Qatar, nor will there be an invasion. While it is difficult to see an implementation of sanctions, it is possible that Qatar will experience a regime change, or an annexation by Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis made one foolish error in Yemen, they may do another in Qatar.

Such a move - which, as it is, might be the only way to shut down Qatar's trouble making and meddling in the region - has the potential to flare up tensions in the Gulf, start protests and even trigger an ISIS uprising. Should Qataris protest Saudi occupation or regime change, ordinary Sunni Gulf Arabs may come to their aid, plunging the whole region into a war unlike anything we have seen until now.

This would mean that, as ISIS is being driven out of the Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Deir Ez-Zor, it would find a new place to spread its instability and chaos in the Arabian Gulf.

Perhaps Syria has a year left before its war is over. After that, expect things to change radically in the Arabian Gulf.

Operation "Great Dawn" - the end of ISIS in Homs and Deir Ez-Zor

The Syrian Arab Army has just launched an enormous offensive against ISIS around Palmyra called Operation "Great Dawn," and it will signal the end of ISIS in Homs and Deir Ez-Zor provinces.

Operation "Great Dawn" is the largest offensive by the Syrian Arab Army against ISIS for the entirety of the Syrian Civil War. It has been made possible by the inter-Syrian talks in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in which de-escalation zones were agreed upon, freeing up Syrian Arab Army from fighting Al-Qaeda and their affiliates to focus on fighting ISIS.

The impact of this operation is comparable to the Battle of Aleppo in importance: it will solidify Bashar Al-Assad's control of the majority of Syrian territory and will rescue the besieged city of Deir Ez-Zor from ISIS' hands.

Already ISIS have lost 3000 square kilometers in the space of 48 hours. This goes to show that the Syrian Arab Army, when not besieged by Al-Qaeda, are more than a match for ISIS in Syria.

In the next few weeks of bitter fighting, expect the Syrian Arab Army to regain control of the entirety of the Homs and Deir Ez-Zor countryside, shrinking ISIS' so called Caliphate by 50%. Also expect that the US-backed Syrian rebels fighting ISIS will be cut off from reaching their objective on the Iraqi border.

ISIS will likely be forced into the Raqqa countryside, where they will fight to the bitter end of their Caliphate. This will create more problems for the Syrian Democratic Forces, who have so far had an easy fight against ISIS by letting their fighters out of Raqqa to fight the Syrian Arab Army in Homs and Deir Ez-Zor. But with the Syrian Arab Army out in full-force against ISIS in Homs and Deir Ez-Zor, ISIS will likely retreat to the Raqqa countryside, as battling the Kurds will be easier than battling the Syrian Arab Army.

The conclusion of the operation will likely cut ISIS' Caliphate in half, separating the Syrian and Iraqi halves from each other. This blow will be detrimental to the legitimacy of ISIS, and likely force Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi from Syria back into Iraq.