Last week, the US scrambled two F-22s after Syrian regime air forces bombed in Hasaka, where USA special operations forces are operating with Kurdish YPG forces against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
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In 2013, Gen. Martin Dempsey, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that imposing a no-fly zone over Syria would cost as much as $1 billion a month, require thousands of USA troops and put us aircraft at risk of being shot down.
“We always have the right to defend our forces”, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said at a news conference in reference to an incident last Thursday in which Syrian Su-24s bombed near a U.S.
Syrian warplanes struck the Kurdish militias, which prompted the US-led coalition to scramble its own jets in order to cover American ground forces.
“Our warning to the Syrians is the same that we’ve had for some time, that we’re going to defend our forces and they would be advised not to fly in areas where our forces have been operating”, Cook said.
“We’re going to defend our forces where they are”.
Buoyed by the support of the USA -led coalition, the YPG and the allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have made sweeping victories against the IS in key areas in northern Syria.
On Saturday, the new commander of United States forces in Iraq and Syria, General Stephen Townsend, has vowed to defend USA troops against any attacks by regime forces.
The northeastern city has been rocked by deadly clashes between US-backed Kurdish forces and fighters loyal to President Bashar al-Assad since Wednesday.
Cook said that partnered operations would come under the USA air umbrella when the opposition groups are engaged in action against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Last week, the United States contacted Moscow through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) deconfliction channel after the Syrian Air Force had conducted airstrikes near ground forces in the vicinity of Hasakah, to ensure flight safety during combat missions over Syria.
Meanwhile, Russia has stopped using an Iranian air base for strikes in Syria, Iran’s foreign ministry announced yesterday, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that was criticised both by the White House and some Iranian lawmakers.
The U.S. has studiously aimed to avoid military conflict with Russian Federation and Syria, and has emphasized it is only fighting ISIS. Most Syrians are strongly opposed to Sharia law.
Civil defense team members and the citizens try to rescue people who were trapped under the wreckage after a bomb attack with bomb-laden vehicle over a building belonging to the PYD Forces in the Al-Qamishli region of Al-Hasakah, Syria on July 27, 2016.
Furthermore, that same poll found: “70% agree “Oppose division of country”.
They also set fire to governmental buildings in Hasakah.
Russian Federation too is now under warning from the United States, that, if Russian Federation, an ally of Syria, takes any action to expel or kill any of the US invaders in Syria, then the USA will also be at war against Russian Federation.
He said that by “intervening militarily in this civil war, Russian Federation assumed enormous responsibility for Syria’s future”.
But the lines between the USA fight against ISIS and the Syrian regime could become blurred, as the US -backed Kurdish fighters begin an offensive against Syrian regime forces in Hasaka. If Putin backs down, that would greatly diminish his support from the Russian people, which is above 80% in all polls, including Western-sponsored ones.
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As Seymour Hersh reported, on 7 January 2016, “the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then [in the summer of 2013] led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya”, and so Dempsey quit, and Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, was sacked over the matter. “‘I felt that they did not want to hear the truth'”.
