Despite growing tension over the June 24 elections, Turkey’s agenda in recent days has been taken over by its military operation against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq’s Sidekan region. At the moment, about 1,500 Turkish troops of a commando brigade and a light infantry brigade responsible for border security at Semdinli, along with gendarmerie and …
Continue reading Turkey Takes On Kurds in Evolving Qandil Operation
Syria’s President Bashar Assad has paid a visit to Vladimir Putin in Sochi, with Ministers Lavrov and Shoygu also participating in the meetings. The parties expressed hope foreign forces would be withdrawn from Syria. It’s clear that the US will not leave Syria for as long as Assad or another pro-Russian politician is in power. …
Iran has opted not to wait for further unfriendly steps by Washington in response to its nuclear deal and the Iranian presence in Syria, fully comprehending that the USA is preparing for military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran and are simply buying time by creating an international coalition to initiate this action and …
The so-called “Manbij Model” that the US and Turkey agreed to in jointly administering the strategic city following the YPG’s withdrawal is promising but nevertheless imperfect because it fails to address the Kurdish-led “deep state” that controls the SDF’s political and military activities in northeastern Syria. The US and Turkey finally reached a deal to …
Continue reading The “Manbij Model” Is Promising, But It’s Still Far from Perfect
In a recent article for Foreign Policy magazine, Jonathan Spyer, a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin was content with what Spyer perceives to be the current situation in Syria: A “frozen conflict” in which Putin is prepared to accept a continuous low level conflict and …
Continue reading Putin’s Endgame in Syria: Victory or Stalemate?
A military delegation of high-ranking officers from Saudi Arabia and the UAE recently visited a Kurdish SDF base in Aïn al-Arab (Kobani) on the Syrian border with Turkey. They discussed practical questions connected with replacing the US military presence there with troops from several Arab nations, who would represent the League of Arab States. There …
Continue reading Saudi Arabia and the UAE are Scaling Up Their Activities Against Iran
From “De-Ba’athification” in Iraq to “De-Shi’afication” in Syria Of the dozens if not scores of tactical, strategic and fundamental mistakes the US made in Iraq after illegally invading and occupying the country in 2003, was a strategy which sought to inflict a punitive socio-political and economic disenfranchisement of the Sunni Arab population of the Arab …
Syria recently announced that it has handed over to its Russian and Iranian Astana partners a list of experts to participate in the upcoming UN-supervised “constitutional commission”. This is an important milestone in the peace process because it proves that President Assad was sincere when he told his Russian counterpart in Sochi last month about …
Continue reading Syria’s Upcoming Constitutional Commission will be about “Decentralization”
The fact a couple Russian military advisors together with dozens of Syrian soldiers have recently perished in the Deir ez-Zor area indicates the United States together with its allies carries on with preparations to cast a decisive blow in southwest Syria, aimed at cutting off Iranian forces from their allies. Damascus has this far been …
Continue reading Iran is Fighting Tooth and Nail for Its Positions in Iraq and Syria
