Posted on 09/30/2016 5:41:20 AM PDT by SJackson
Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.
A new Syria is emerging. And with it, a new Middle East and world are presenting themselves. Our new world is not a peaceful or stable one. It is a harsh place.
The new Syria is being born in the rubble of Aleppo.
The eastern side of the city, which has been under the control of US-supported rebel groups since 2012, is being bombed into the Stone Age by Russian and Syrian aircraft.
All avenues of escape have been blocked. A UN aid convoy was bombed in violation of a fantasy cease-fire.
Medical facilities and personnel are being targeted by Russia and Syrian missiles and barrel bombs to make survival impossible.
It is hard to assess how long the siege of eastern Aleppo by Russia, its Iranian and Hezbollah partners and its Syrian regime puppet will last. But what is an all but foregone conclusion now is that eastern Aleppo will fall. And with its fall, the Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah-Assad axis will consolidate its control over all of western Syria.
For four years, the Iranians, Hezbollah and Bashar Assad played a cat and mouse game with the rebel militias.
Fighting a guerrilla war with the help of the Sunni population, the anti-regime militias were able to fight from and hide from within the civilian population. Consequently, they were all but impossible to defeat.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to join the fight, he and his generals soon recognized that this manner of fighting ensured perpetual war. So they changed tactics. The new strategy involves speeding up the depopulation and ethnic cleansing of rebel-held areas. The massive refugee flows from Syria over the past year are a testament to the success of the barbaric war plan. The idea is to defeat the rebel forces by to destroying the sheltering civilian populations.
Since the Syrian war began some five years ago, half of the pre-war population of 23 million has been displaced.
Sunnis, who before the war comprised 75% of the population, are being targeted for death and exile. More than 4 million predominantly Sunni Syrians are living in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. More than a million have entered Europe. Millions more have been internally displaced. Assad has made clear that they will never be coming home.
At the same time, the regime and its Iranian and Hezbollah masters have been importing Shi’ites from Iran, Iraq and beyond. The process actually began before the war started. In the lead-up to the war some half million Shi’ites reportedly relocated to Syria from surrounding countries.
This means that at least as far as western Syria is concerned, once Aleppo is destroyed, and the 250,000 civilians trapped in the eastern part of what was once Syria’s commercial capital are forced from their homes and property, the Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah and their Syrian fig leaf Assad will enjoy relative peace in their areas of control.
By adopting a strategy of total war, Putin has ensured that far from becoming the quagmire that President Barack Obama warned him Syria would become, the war in Syria has instead become a means to transform Russia into the dominant superpower in the Mediterranean, at the US’s expense.
In exchange for saving Assad’s neck and enabling Iran and Hezbollah to control Syria, Russia has received the capacity to successfully challenge US power. Last month Putin brought an agreement with Assad before the Duma for ratification. The agreement permits – indeed invites – Russia to set up a permanent air base in Khmeimim, outside the civilian airport in Latakia.
Russian politicians, media and security experts have boasted that the base will be able to check the power of the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet and challenge NATO’s southern flank in the Mediterranean basin for the first time. The Russians have also decided to turn their naval station at Tartus into something approaching a fullscale naval base.
With Russia’s recent rapprochement with Turkish President Recip Erdogan, NATO’s future ability to check Russian power through the Incirlik air base is in question.
Even Israel’s ability to permit the US access to its air bases is no longer assured. Russia has deployed air assets to Syria that have canceled Israel’s regional air superiority.
Under these circumstances, in a hypothetical Russian-US confrontation, Israel may be unwilling to risk Russian retaliation for a decision to permit the US to use its air bases against Russia.
America’s loss of control over the eastern Mediterranean is a self-induced disaster.
For four years, as Putin stood on the sidelines and hedged his bets, Obama did nothing. As Iran and Hezbollah devoted massive financial and military assets to maintaining their puppet Assad in power, the Obama administration squandered chance after chance to bring down the regime and stem Iran’s regional imperial advance.
For his refusal to take action when such action could have easily been taken, Obama shares the responsibility for what Syria has become. This state of affairs is all the more infuriating because the hard truth is that it wouldn’t have been hard for the US to defeat the Iranian- Hezbollah axis. The fact that even without US help the anti-regime forces managed to hold on for four years shows how weak the challenge posed by Iran and Hezbollah actually was.
Russia only went into Syria when Putin was absolutely convinced that Obama would do nothing to stop him from dislodging America as the premier global power in the region.
As Michael Ledeen recalled earlier this week, Obama chose to stand on the sidelines in Syria because he wanted to make friends with Iran. Obama began his secret courtship of the mullahs even before he officially took office eight years ago.
After the war broke out in Syria, midway through his first term and in the following years, the Russians and the Iranians told the obsessed American president that if he took action against Assad, as strategic rationality dictated, he would get no nuclear deal, and no rapprochement with Tehran.
So Obama let Syria burn. He let Iran and Hezbollah transform the country into their colony. And he let Putin transform the Mediterranean into a Russian lake. Obama enabled the ethnic cleansing of Syria’s Sunni majority, and in turn facilitated the refugee crisis that is changing the face not only of the Middle East but of Europe as well.
And as it turns out, the deal with Iran that Obama willingly sacrificed US control of the Mediterranean to achieve has not ushered in a new era of regional moderation and stability through appeasement as Obama foresaw. It has weakened US credibility with its spurned Sunni allies. It has undermined the strategic position of Israel, the US’s only stable and reliable regional ally. It has financially and strategically fueled Iran’s hegemonic rise throughout the region. And it has facilitated Iran’s development of a nuclear arsenal.
Far from causing the Iranian to become more moderate, the nuclear deal has radicalized the regime still further.
On Wednesday Ray Takeyh wrote in The Washington Post that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is now grooming Ibrahim Raisi, a fanatic who makes Khamenei look moderate, to succeed him in power.
On Monday night, for the first time, Israel Air Force jets flying over Syria were shot at by Syrian anti-aircraft ordnance.
Air force sources told the media that the aircraft were never in danger and the munitions were only shot off after the aircraft had returned to Israel and were in the process off landing.
The fact that no one was hurt is of course reassuring.
But the fact that Russia targeted the planes makes clear that Putin has decided to send Israel a very clear and menacing message.
He is now the protector of the Iranian-Hezbollah colony on our northern border. If Israel decides to preemptively attack targets belong to that colony, Russia will not stand by and watch. And with the US no longer well-positioned to challenge Russian power in the region, Israel will have to deal with Russia on its own.
To face this challenge, Israel needs to look beyond its traditional reliance on air power.
There are two parts of the challenge. The first part is Iran.
As far as Israel is concerned, the problem with the Russian- Iranian takeover of Syria is not Putin.
Putin is not inherently hostile to Israel, as his Soviet predecessors were. He is an opportunist. Obama gave him the opportunity to partner with Iran in asserting Russian dominance in the Middle East and he took it. Israel is threatened by the alliance because it is threatened by Iran, not by Putin. To neutralize the alliance’s threat to its own security, Israel then needs to degrade Iran’s power, and it needs to emphasize its own.
To accomplish these goals, Israel needs to operate in two completely separate arenas. To weaken Iran, Israel should take its cue from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and from its own past successful military ties to the Kurds of Iraq in the 1960s and 1970s.
Israel needs to deploy military trainers beyond its borders to work with other anti-Iranian forces. The goal of that cooperation must be to destabilize the regime, with the goal of overthrowing it. This may take time. But it must be done. The only way to neutralize the threat emanating from the new Syria is to change the nature of the Iranian regime that controls it.
As for Russia, Israel needs to demonstrate that it is a power that Putin can respect in its own right, and not a downgraded Washington’s sock puppet.
To this end, Israel should embark on a rapid expansion of its civilian presence along its eastern border with Syria and with Jordan. As Russia’s air base in Syria undermines Israel’s air superiority and reliance on air power, Israel needs to show that it will not be dislodged or allow its own territory to be threatened in any way. By doubling the Israeli population on the Golan Heights within five years, and vastly expanding its population in the Jordan Valley, Israel will accomplish two goals at once. It will demonstrate its independence from the US without harming US strategic interests. And it will reinforce its eastern border against expanded strategic threats from both the Golan Heights and the new Jordan with its bursting population of Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
It is ironic that the new Middle East is coming into focus as Shimon Peres, the failed visionary of a fantasy- based new Middle East, is being laid to rest. But to survive in the real new Middle East, Israel must bury Peres’s belief that peace is built by appeasing enemies along with him. The world in which we live has a place for dreamers.
But dreams, unhinged from reality, lead to Aleppo, not to peace.
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Whenever you hear the media use the term “Arab Spring”, go ahead and spit on the ground. That moniker is a deliberate propaganda attempt to equate the evil rise of Islamic tyranny to the Prague Spring. Nothing could be further from the truth.
One of many Obama disasters we will have to live with for generations.
We’re still dealing with Carter’s Iranian adventure now made much worse by Captain Midnight.
Assad was the next strong man to be overthrown by Obama and his bed buddy jihadists, after Qaddaffi and Mubarak and the govt of Yemen. Oops, he didn’t fall and Putin stepped in to help. So now the rebel be headers we have been supporting are surrounded in Aleppo and the outcome of war is upon them. So, as libs do, we’re whining.
Look this is not rocket science
Obama has ceded the entire middle east to russia
he started with pulling troops out of iraq allowing a power vacuum in an area we had fought for and won..
russia has filled the vacuum and obama in addition gave 156 billion to iran to further their nuke program and terror program..
a third grader can see this and the question is ....
IS OBAMA STUPID OR A TRAITOR..
looka t his other actions
*OPEN BORDERS RESULTINGIN 8000 TERRORIST CONFRONTATIONS ACCORDING TO A SECRET FBI REPORT
*IMPORTING TERROR BY RAMPING UP THENUMBER OF UNVETTED MUSLIM “REFUGEES” WHCIH HE HELPED CREATE IN THEFIRST PLACE.
*TURNING OVER THE INTERNET TO HOSTILE UNDEMOCRATIC POWERS IN AN EFFORT TO STIFLE FREE SPEECH HERE IN THE USA
*PURGING FBI / CIA / DOD / DOJ RECORDS OF ALL REFERENCES TO ISLAMIC TERROR WEBS AND ORGANIZATIONS... YOU HAVE TO IDENTIFY YOUR ENEMY AND SUPPORT GROUPS BEFORE YOU CAN FIGHT THEM AND HE HAS DONE JUST THE OPPOSITE
*COZYING UP TO AND CONSPIRING WITH THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD FOR THREE YEARS TO OVERTHROW MUBARAK AND LYBIA AND SYRIA
*UNDERFUNDING AND DEMORALIZING THE MILITARY WITH RIDICULOUS DIVERSITY AND GENDER ISSUES WHCH NOW PUTS THE USA IN A POSITION OF NOT BEING ABLE TO WAGE A TWO FRONT WASR MUCH LESS A SINGLE FRON T ONE..
sure looks like TREASON TO ME....
sure looks like Obama acted inthe best intersts of our enemies and foreign powers just like the BENEDICT ARNOLD HE IS.... Hillary cooperated for the MONEY...
BREANNAN cooperated for the position, COMEY is a scumbag who cooperated for the MONEY...
Obama is the TRAITOR IN CHIEF
I'm as patriotic as anyone else, but when it comes to our disastrous military campaigns in the Middle East, I have to admit that I find more than a small bit of delicious irony in watching the U.S. sitting on the sidelines watching helplessly as Russia goes over there and wages their own "War on Terror."
Saudi Arabia and Iran are already fighting a proxy war in Yemen.
Iran has forbidden it’s citizens from traveling to Mecca, the pilgrimage/hajj. Further, Iran is trying to supplant the significance of the shine at Mecca with a Shia shrine and pilgrimage to Karbala (Iraq). If you know your history...without question....Sunni-Shia strife was forged at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. (It’s where the bloodline of the profit Mohammed was severed by what would later be Sunni Muslims.). The mass pilgrimage of Shia’s now to Karbala...instead of Mecca...will deepen the Sunni-Shia strife, this is the intent of the Iranians.
Saudi Arabia has a standing army of 250,000 and the Iranian have ten times that at 2.5 million.
The Saudi’s are in big trouble.
Bahrain? Bahrain is 90% Shia and ruled by a Sunni super minority. Start packing.
” Iranian adventure now made much worse”
Hate to be tin foil, but it almost seems like Captan is working for the other side.
Yup
“After the war broke out in Syria, midway through his first term and in the following years, the Russians and the Iranians told the obsessed American president that if he took action against Assad, as strategic rationality dictated, he would get no nuclear deal, and no rapprochement with Tehran.
So Obama let Syria burn. He let Iran and Hezbollah transform the country into their colony. And he let Putin transform the Mediterranean into a Russian lake. Obama enabled the ethnic cleansing of Syria’s Sunni majority, and in turn facilitated the refugee crisis that is changing the face not only of the Middle East but of Europe as well.”
Now he wants to start WW III after making sure the US will lose. Impeach him, hang him.
What a fine job Hillary has done. EPIC FAIL.
The US MSM should be hanged for not informing the public how truly bad Obama’s/Hillary's foreign policy is and will be for generations to come.
Gog & Magog are rising fast.
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