The United States and Iran both say they are fighting ISIS terrorists, but in practice they have different goals: The United States is supporting rebels trying to oust Assad, while Assad’s close ally Iran became involved to defend his regime.
Advertisement
The USA and Russian Federation are closer to agreement on the terms of safe flight over Syria to which each nation is pledging to adhere, the Pentagon said Friday.
They believe the air strikes are primarily created to prop up Assad, who Britain, the U.S. and other Western countries insist must go as part of any political settlement of Syria’s four-year civil war.
“For the Russians to have done that without giving any warning is further indication that they’re not thinking through the consequences of their conduct”, Carter said.
Strikes on Aleppo killed “some 100 militants”, and other raids struck command posts and training camps in Latakia, Hama and Idlib.
“We’ve seen increasingly unprofessional behavior from Russian forces”.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration scrapped its costly but ineffective scheme to recruit, train and equip Syrians keen to fight Islamic State on Friday, admitting that hundreds of millions spent and years of effort had failed to put more than a handful of “boots on the ground”.
“I’m also concerned that Russian Federation is not targeting ISIL but instead attacking the Syrian opposition and civilians,” he said.
The jihadists are now just over 10 kilometres (six miles) from the northern edges of the city and three kilometres from pro-regime forces in the Sheikh Najjar industrial zone.
The areas were seized from hard-line and mainstream rebel groups, including the ultra-conservative Ahrar al-Sham and the Levantine Front.
Antonov said the Defense Ministry was ready to establish different types of working groups with any interested country to prevent new problems similar to the Russian aircraft’s violation of Turkish airspace.
Another USA official said the new weapons supplies could eventually be channelled through vetted commanders to thousands of fighters, but declined to be more specific about the numbers.
The USA will provide ammunition to Syria Arab Coalition, a few 5,000 moderate rebels in the north, a defense official said Friday.
The Army of Conquest, which had made a string of advances against government troops in recent months, has come under attack from Russian warplanes.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps said separately that one of its generals had been killed near Aleppo, once Syria’s most populous city.
The commanders, played an important role in Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, got killed in the suburbs of Aleppo, Iranian state television reported.
Advertisement
Iran is one of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s main allies.
