Bahrain and Turkey are also Sunni.
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The United States has welcomed a Saudi offer to deploy special forces to support a possible coalition ground operation inside Syria.
“Syria is a great global problem and the leading powers must find common ground on how to solve it. We will continue to be part of the worldwide effort to establish peace in the region”, the minister concluded.
The commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard mockingly said Saudi Arabia wouldn’t dare send ground troops, and that any such intervention would be suicidal.
When asked about the possibility of Saudi ground troops entering Syria, he said although it was unlikely, “with the insane Saudi leadership nothing is far-fetched”.
“We know that air strikes can not be enough and that a ground operation is needed”.
He says that Russia’s role won’t end until the defeat of the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and other groups tied to al-Qaida, which is in accordance with United Nations resolutions.
“There are still a large number of civilians inside the city”, he said. Egypt’s stance toward Syria is to support a political process that maintains the shape of the Syrian state. “Our stance has not changed”, he said. Regarding the potential impact of such a decision on Egypt, he said since Egypt has its own agenda of fighting terrorism in Sinai and on the Libyan borders, this should not affect Egypt at all.
A years-long civil war in Syria has stoked tensions – Iran is one of the Syrian regime’s few allies, while Saudi Arabia has given financial aid and weapons to rebels. Riyadh is already bogged down in a costly war in neighboring Yemen that has achieved few strategic goals while leading to thousands of civilian deaths and wide-scale destruction, according to human rights monitors, and abetting the growth of extremist groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State. 21 Arab and Muslim countries will participate in it and there will be joint military command centres. Just this week The Daily Mail reported that a democracy activist in Saudi Arabia, arrested at 17 and sentenced to death for “crimes against religion”, will be beheaded and have his corpse publicly crucified.
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Issa also pointed out to a unison between Riyadh and Ankara about the intention to militarily intervene in Syria, especially with the Turkish dismay with the progress of the Syrian army, particularly in Aleppo, where most of the Turkey-backed rebels are located. Meanwhile, Minister of Defence Sedki Sobhi met with his UAE counterpart Hamad Al-Romeithy in Cairo.
