When Barack Obama surrenders diplomacy and military power in full retreat, others are invited to step in. The Pentagon is keen on the conditions and the attitude is, America is now a lil’ bitch of Putin. this blogger would add Iran and China to that conclusion.
Some argue this began with Barack Obama’s shallow red-line on Syrian use of chemical weapons and deferring action to Russia to solve, perhaps the real opening for Iran and Russia was the failed operation and fallout on Libya, coupled with abandoning the Kurds and Yazidis in Iraq.
From TheHill in part: The ferocity of Russia’s air campaign will all but certainly exacerbate the crisis, fuel additional support for ISIS and further cleanse Syria of Sunni Muslims, improving the demographic balance for the nominally Shiite Assad regime.
Whether the administration was, as The Washington Post reported, “blindsided” by Russian military operations, or whether it quietly welcomed the bombing as some kind of macabre burden-sharing, Moscow’s Syrian initiative makes matters worse. As Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast recently tweeted that she “overheard” at the Pentagon, “Right now, we are Putin’s prison bitch.”
Russia’s military deployment in Syria is a strategic boon for the Shiite “Axis of Resistance” and its new partner, Russia. This resurgent axis was in part made possible by the absence of a credible U.S. Syria policy, but it will only be bolstered should Washington embrace Russia and Iran as its regional security partners. Already in the Middle East, there is a widely held perception that the U.S. has made this decision. No doubt, the administration will continue to insist that the Iran nuclear deal doesn’t signal a broader regional realignment. Should the U.S. tilt toward Russia and Iran persist, President Obama might find himself alongside Assad, Khamenei, Nasrallah and Putin on the next run of posters. More here.
At real odds, Obama administration vs. Putin:
The Obama administration, by contrast, says its own airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria can succeed only with a political transition that ends with Mr. Assad’s removal.
The administration’s position was ridiculed Monday by Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, who said the American airstrikes, which began more than a year ago, had done little militarily. In comments carried by Russia’s official Tass news agency, Mr. Lavrov said that even the Americans had acknowledged their faltering efforts to create a force of so-called moderate insurgents in Syria.
While Barack Obama talks about gun control and pushes a Strong Cities initiative through the United Nations”
From Politico in part: In 2014, Vian Dakhil’s stirring plea for international intervention helped inspire President Barack Obama to order airstrikes and launch a humanitarian effort to rescue thousands of Yazidi Iraqis who were trapped on a mountainside under assault by Islamic State.
A year later, Dakhil, one of two Yazidi members of the Iraqi parliament, says her people have been abandoned by Washington and the international community.
In an emotional, at times tearful, on-stage interview at POLITICO’s “Women Rule” event Wednesday morning in Washington, Dakhil described a full-blown humanitarian crisis — 420,000 Yazidis living in refugee camps in tents with mud floors, women and girls continuing to be kidnapped, 2,200 girls in captivity as sexual slaves, and survivors returning from the horror of ISIL captivity with no resources for psychological support. Thousands of orphans have no homes.
Dakhil, who is credited with saving many Yazidi women and girls from ISIL captivity, said she was not contacted by U.S. officials after the initial announcement. A letter to Michelle Obama received no response, she said.
Could it be that Bashir al Assad is now terrified of his long relationship with Iran and Vladimir Putin’s ride into Syria on his white steed to save Syria will turn into a wider conflict later between the Shiites and Sunnis in the region?
In part from DerSpiegel: Fear of his enemies was the primary reason for Bashar Assad’s call for help to Moscow. “But right after that came the fear of his friends,” says a Russian official who long worked in his country’s embassy in Damascus. The friend he refers to is Iran, the Syrian regime’s most important protector. “Assad and those around him are afraid of the Iranians,” the Russian says. Anger over the arrogance of the Iranians, who treat Syria like a colony, is also part of it, the Russian continues. Most of all, though, the Syrians “mistrust Tehran’s goals, for which Assad’s position of power may no longer be decisive. That is why the Syrians absolutely want us in the country.”
What the Russian diplomat, who wants to remain anonymous, has to say is a bit jarring at first. Without the Shiite auxiliaries from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon — whose recruitment and transfer is organized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard — Assad’s rule would long since have come to an end. Yet his comments are complemented by a number of additional details that add up to an image of a behind-the-scenes power struggle — one which casts a new, scary light on the condition of the Syrian regime and on the country’s prospects as a whole.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has long planned and carried out the most important missions and operations of the Syrian regime. They were responsible, right down to the details, for the sporadically successful offensives in Aleppo in the north and Daraa in the south, which began in 2013. In Iran, the Revolutionary Guard is one of those groups intent on continuing the “Islamic Revolution” — the victory of Shiites over the Sunnis. They are a state within a state, one which owns several companies and is answerable only to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. President Hassan Rohani has no power over the Revolutionary Guard whatsoever.
Their goals go far beyond merely reestablishing the status quo in Syria. In early 2013, Hojatoleslam Mehdi Taeb, one of the planners behind Iran’s engagement in Syria, said: “Syria is the 35th province of Iran and it is a strategic province for us.” For several decades, the alliance between the Assads and Iran was a profitable one, particularly in opposition to the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, which long had the upper hand in the region. But today, Assad depends on Iran to remain in power, and Tehran is taking advantage of the situation. To read more from the Russian perspective, click here.
