When a fortnight ago the Kremlin publicly ordered the Foreign Ministry to negotiate a deal for Russia’s air force to use Egyptian military bases, I conceded I did not know what this was about. I entertained the possibility it was a prelude to Russia’s military involvement in Libya, but then I said I don’t see…
At a time when President Putin is undertaking a tour of the Middle East it would have been politically speaking extremely unwise for him not to have made a stop-over to meet the Russian troops at the Khmeimim air base whom Putin himself sent to Syria. A failure to do so might have conveyed the…
Two weeks ago I wondered if heightened Pentagon rhetoric about “unsafe Russian flying practices” in Syria was to prepare the media for a possible shoot down of a Russian plane by the US. Now the US has moved on to openly threatening to do so. Recall, on November 24th CNN ran an article whereby according…
Iran has, predictably enough, taken a hard line on the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. There were public demonstrations in several Iranian cities following Friday prayers and statements by President Hassan Rouhani and other senior politicians. Notably, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, warned:…
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to withdraw his county’s forces from Syria makes sense militarily, politically, and strategically. The war has been won. Job done. Now it’s time to win the peace. Making a clear-cut end to military operations in Syria in this way only emphasizes what everyone knows, or should know. The Syrian state…
If the struggle to liberate Aleppo was Syria’s Stalingrad, the operation to liberate Idlib, just begun, is its Battle of Berlin. At stake in what promises to be the last major military operation undertaken by government forces and its allies is the complete extirpation of Salafi-jihadi groups and their allies from Syrian territory. As such, when it has been accomplished…
