France began the bombing campaign inside Syria Sunday, despite the not having approval from Syria’s government nor any coordination with Syrian military.
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Over the past weeks, the USA and its allies have been accusing Moscow of a covert military buildup in Syria. After months of staying on the sidelines, Turkey announced in August that it was ready to being a comprehensive fight against IS militants in Syria alongside the United States.
Both nations acknowledge that they are fighting ISIS, albeit in different ways.
Divisions over the role of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remained critical. And that, backed by Russian Federation and Iran, Assad will eradicate IS and stem Europe’s migrant crisis.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) was prophetic at CNN’s GOP presidential debate September 16, predicting that Russian Federation would continue to exploit a vacuum in the Middle East and “prop up” Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to demonstrate to the Middle East it was the most important power broker there.
United States and coalition forces have been helping the rebels in the hope that they can bring down Assad and provide an easier way of fighting ISIS inside Syria, but the Russia’s entry has ultimately complicated this push. He noted that Russian authorities were looking for these talks to happen “as soon as possible“, as the Islamic State is gaining ground against the Assad regime in Syria.
Arming rebels in Syria with the ultimate goal of toppling Assad seems fraught with many problems.
In USA, there are around a dozen Iranian and Iranian-Americans detained in prison and charged with arms smuggling or supplying equipment to Iran usable in its nuclear program.
“We are just at the beginning of trying to understand what the Russians’ intentions are in Syria, in Iraq, and to try to see if there are mutually beneficial ways forward here. Well, at least we don’t plan on it right now”, Putin said in a Sunday interview with CBS news on the eve of a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. The version omitting the anti-America rhetoric is the version now hosted on the UN’s site. And, for the country to move forwards, he should be left there.
The king has called the rise of extremist groups like the Islamic State, and the crises they have caused, “a third world war, and I believe we must respond with equal intensity”.
To quote the words of Colin Powell, USA former Secretary of State, “War should be the politics of last resort”.
Praising the contribution to the session from the King of Jordan, he said: “There is nothing more powerful than when Muslim leaders and Muslim countries reclaim their religion and explain why what these people are saying is not Islam but a perversion of Islam”.
Indeed, a country should only go to war to win.
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Republican Senators Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Joni Ernst, a committee member, sent letters to James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, and Jon Rymer, the Department of Defense Inspector General, expressing concerns about the assessments.
