On Thursday, the chief of the Russian military General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, had a phone call with his French counterpart to discuss co-operation in the fight against the IS.
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All this suggests that Russia’s commitment to indefinite prolongation of the Assad regime – even as a rump inside Russia’s protected perimeter and under the protective umbrella of Russia’s surface-to-air missiles – is rooted deeply in Putin’s geostrategic and domestic political calculus.
After the terrorists are defeated, the political transition in Syria won’t require a lot of time, the president stressed.
Last week’s Paris attacks added urgency to the work of US diplomats.
ISIS consists of Al Qaeda in Iraq and hardcore Saddam Hussein Baathists after the vaccum was created due to the sectarian violence between 2009 and 2014 in Iraq and soon Aleppo and Idlib provinces and raqqa became strongholds of the terror group.
But rebels don’t trust Washington, which has been unwilling to fight any group but the Islamic State.
“The departure of Assad is still essential, not because I say so or France says so or another country, but because you literally can not stop the war if Assad is there”, Kerry told French TV on Wednesday.
The permanent members of the Security Council each have the power to veto resolutions – something Russian Federation and China have repeatedly done when it comes to Syria.
French President François Hollande is set to meet Putin and US President Barack Obama next week to pitch for the same.
The bomb is now waiting to be dispatched from Syria and follows the news that Isis were responsible for last week’s Paris attacks as well as the Russian plane crash in Egypt. The question, he said, is how to let go of Assad while safeguarding state institutions and the capital of Damascus. “We must not rule anything out”, Valls said. Russia’s foreign minister appeared to disagree.
Iran, another major ally, wants to maintain a counterbalance to Israel and keep another Shiite ally in the region. “The Russians are bombing during the daytime, the [U.S.-led coalition] is bombing at night”, a USA official monitoring the Russian strikes told Fox News.
“Saudi Arabia, much like a lot of their neighbors in the Gulf, is very, very focused on the Iranian threat and that informs how they think about Yemen and it informs how they think about Syria”, says Danielle Pletka, senior vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
The United States and France have been firm backers of Syria’s uprising, while Russian Federation and Iran remain staunch allies of Assad.
The Islamic State (ISIL) jihadist group, operating in Syria and Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attacks.
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A monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian and Russian warplanes conducted 50 bombing raids in Deir al-Zour province – Russia’s most intense assault there to date. Lebanese national carrier Middle East Airlines said a few flights to Gulf Arab states would take longer because alternative routes would be taken. “If we talk after that, one year-and-a-half to two years is enough for any transition”, the Syrian leader said.
