“I am Yahweh. I do not change. I am why Jacob’s descendants are not destroyed.” (Malachi 3: 6)
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The National (UAE)—Russia Holds the Key to Nearly Half of Syria – and With It, the Power to Keep Iranian Dominance at Bay:
After Russia intervened directly in Syria in September 2015, it was able to achieve a sequence of military and political gains for the regime. The latest of such gains might be the most important.
Within a few months of the intervention, it became clear that the Russian presence had put an end to any serious attempt by backers of the rebels to topple the regime.
The second biggest achievement happened a year later, when Moscow began to profoundly transform the rebellion against the regime, rather than just securing its ally and winning more ground for it. The transformation started when Turkey abandoned its previous efforts to destabilise the regime and instead struck an alliance with Russia to pursue mutually beneficial policies in Syria.
The new policy ensured that Russia and its ally in Damascus could pick where to turn their attention on the battlefield.
Aleppo was retaken by the regime in December 2016, which, in retrospect, dealt a political and a military blow to the rebels, from which they were unable to recover.
With time and through local deals brokered by Russia and Turkey, the rebellion transformed into weaker forces tamed by their former foreign backers. In the early months of this year, the opposition came almost fully under the sway of foreign powers.
The latest development comes at the backdrop of these changes. Almost all the countries that once backed the opposition now depend on Russia to salvage the situation for them in Syria.
The idea that Russia would serve as a balancing act against Iran and even the regime is not new. The rebels, for example, engaged with Russia after its intervention precisely because they perceived it as a more reliable guarantor of ceasefires than Iran before it.
This perception caused many rebel factions to strike such deals and eventually to get involved in the peace talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana last year.
Israel, Jordan, the United States and the Gulf states had all viewed the role of Russia with hope at various times, either because it would make the regime in Damascus less dependent upon Iran or because of a perceived Iranian and Russia divergence in their approach and future vision for the country.
A policy proposal to further reduce pressure against the regime was seriously presented and discussed among such countries in Washington last year but the proposal gained little traction.
What seems to be new, however, is that such an understanding of the Russian role has increasingly become the guiding principle for those countries in Syria.
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SnyderTalk Comment:
Russia is in the driver’s seat in Syria. That’s true because Obama didn’t do his job.
Thanks to Obama, hundreds of thousands of Syrian lives have been lost, a mass exodus from Syria is still underway, and Europe is in chaos trying to deal with a deluge of Syrian refugees.
In Obama’s world, none of those outcomes for which he is responsible are causes for concern or embarrassment. A man with no shame and no morals feels no embarrassment.
Thankfully, President Trump is in charge now. It’s his job to make sure that foreign fighters, including Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, leave Syria.
Unlike Obama, President Trump is doing his job, and he’s doing it well.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
