[FreedomPoster]

This graphic, courtesy of Travis McGee, explains a lot. Add in the Sunni-Shia split, which it implies, but you should consider explicitly, and you get a much better lens into what is going on than you get from headlines.

[SunkenCiv]

The Shiite-Sunni split is, as always, just a canard, or to put it another way, pure bull****.

Any pipeline from Iran will be going through Turkey (another one already does).

The Gulf States wouldn't have trusted Syria with a burned-out match. Any pipeline they may build could (at this point) go through Israel (with or without going through Jordan) or Egypt, then to Europe across the Med floor.

What the Syrian conflict is *really* about and has always been about is Iran having geographic continuity to the Mediterranean in order to attack Israel while keeping the Arabs fighting amongst themselves.

The Russians got involved because of Obama-Kerry nuke surrender document "agreement" that is now up for reconsideration.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Bkmrk.