Vienna peace talks: depends on actual military situation in Syria

All key international stakeholders of the Syrian conflict finally met in Vienna earlier today, and that in itself was the biggest step forward to peace. Despite pledges to meet again in two weeks to begin discussing details of proposed ceasefires between the Assad regime and rebels seeking to overthrow it, neither side demonstrated willingness to compromise their polar opposite viewpoints as to the fate of Mr. Assad.

Most likely, this means both camps - the Axis of Fatima consisting of Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Assad on the one hand, versus the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Gulf monarchies on the other - will focus their efforts on improving their actual positions on the ground in the multi-front conflict, as Obama today approved the first detachment of US special forces to northeast Syria to help the Kurds against ISIS.

Since my last post on the military situation, it appears the rebels have swung the war back into effective stalemate: one report has them erasing all Syrian government gains since early this month in the crucial Hama province and threatening yet again to advance on Assad's core areas of control. This would be a stunning setback for Damascus considering a whole month now of heavy Russian air support.

In the meantime, the regime-controlled portion of Aleppo remains cut off by ISIS, even as Syrian army gains in the sector since mid-month were further confirmed.

These next two weeks before the Vienna powers reconvene will determine will be critical for Assad and Putin. If the Syrian military suffers additional setbacks, it will prove that even Russia can only hope, at best, to preserve a small Assad statelet around Damascus and the Mediterranean coast. Such an outcome would make Putin much more amenable to compelling Assad into negotiating with moderate opposition, including armed groups, on terms not to the latter's liking.

Iran has been invited to the newest round of Syria peace talks Friday in Vienna, a potentially significant development that will increase the chances of a successful political settlement.

One must hope and pray that moderate voices in Tehran will win out, and not only will Iran attend these talks, but it won't come with such demands that Turkey and especially Saudi Arabia, who see the mere fact of Iranian participation as a concession on their parts, will be hardened in their opposition to Assad.

Two weeks ago, an article noted that Russia's intervention on Assad's behalf could wrest the Syrian war out of Iran's control. Indeed, this is what Ayatollah Khamenei must be wrestling with in deciding whether or not his nation should attend the Vienna peace talks: such a move would signal to the world that his clerical regime's hardline religious war policy has been tempered to some degree by Westphalian-sovereignty realpolitik among its more pragmatic elements.

It's likely that Khamenei, like Assad, had originally hoped that Putin's intervention would afford them the chance to actually win back Syria militarily; but now all signs indicate that even if Putin thinks this is feasible, he's more willing to settle for a much cheaper partial success here and now that secures Russia's key interests; if Khamenei and Assad still want their resounding military reconquest with Russian air cover, they'd better hope and pray that the Syrian rebels and their Turkish, Saudi, and US sponsors are so stupid that they still won't concede anything in the negotiations short of Assad's immediate exit from power.

Russia, for its part, is serious about finding moderate Syrian opposition to work together with against ISIS. This most certainly isn't music to Assad's ears, but with Russian aircraft now dominating his war effort, he's in no position to do much about it.

And unsurprisingly, despite the clear inaccuracy of sensationalistic reports earlier this month about China joining Russia's air campaign in Syria, Beijing is quite interested in making some money rebuilding Assad's battered telecom infrastructure.

Syrian updates: despite setbacks, it is Putin's and Assad's to lose now

Both Al-Nusra and ISIS have apparently shifted their focus to cutting the Syrian regime's fragile supply lines from the solidly government-held south to the embattled north.

A YouTube video report indicates that Al-Nusra is trying to sever one such road linking Latakia and Hama provinces, thus threatening recently beefed up regime control of its sector of the country's northwest.

Similarly, the Syrian government's main supply route to the key northern city of Aleppo - now a renewed focal point of the whole conflict - has been compromised by ISIS and is being contested for recapture by Damascus.

The battle for Aleppo pits each of the main camps - Syrian regime, rebel/Al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda, and ISIS - against one another in a three-way fight over the nerve center of the country's north; the regime's ability to supply its forces in the area will determine the speed with which it pacifies it. This is very much Assad's and Putin's fight to lose: until the loss of the road to ISIS, they had already effectively choked off every artery that the rebels within Aleppo itself relied on, and with their complete domination of the skies, neither ISIS nor the rebels can hold open positions for long. But the Syrian army can still be drained of precious strength and slowed down by surprise attacks in soft areas under its putative control, and that's what both ISIS and Al-Nusra seem to be trying.

The more hardcore rebel groups led by Al-Nusra may also find it more appealing to effectively work in tandem with ISIS at this juncture, depending on how much progress Damascus makes how quickly.

Crucially, it seems pro-regime militias are playing an important role consolidating government areas in the north; they are mentioned both in the aforementioned YouTube video and in updates on the unofficial Syrian army Facebook page. They not only fill the defensive gaps against ISIS and Al-Nusra once government units have reestablished nominal control of sectors, but seem to provide valuable local intelligence and nonlethal, including logistical, support for regular army offensives.

As I mentioned, despite various setbacks and inevitable losses, it is now Putin's and Assad's fight to lose. May the Axis of Fatima proceed with prudence, caution, and humility.

Peace in Syria may hinge on Putin bringing Assad and rebels together against ISIS

An article on Russia Today - essentially Putin's main English mouthpiece - titled "Putin: No need to distinguish between ‘moderate’ & other terrorists" has the Russian leader asking Assad during the latter's recent trip to Moscow, rather ironically, about forming a united front with the opposition against ISIS:

Syrian President Bashar Assad has also agreed with the possibility of Russia offering support to the Syrian opposition in their fight against ISIS, Putin said. "I've asked [Assad]: What would you say if we support the opposition's efforts in their fight against terrorists the way we support the Syrian Army? And he said: My attitude is positive," the Russian leader told the Valdai forum.

So behind all the tough talk, in fact Putin's conflation of "terrorist" with "opposition" (to Assad) is more fluid than first meets the eye. Not only has he cultivated ties with secular, nonviolent dissenters that want Assad out of power about becoming part of a new unity government, but earlier this year Russia negotiated with some of the very same "terrorists" they've been bombing lately about fighting ISIS together. Presumably, the door is still open to them if they change their minds or, more likely, find Russian bombs too annoying to continue putting up with.

Newsweek appears to confirm Assad's apparent moderation of stance towards some rebel groups provided they decide to treat ISIS as a common enemy.

The New York Times, reporting on Mr. Assad's recent trip to Moscow, notes that Putin has already expended considerable effort getting his Syrian client to be more conciliatory towards the opposition; and unsurprisingly, Assad has probably stretched his patron's patience thin.

But if Putin now succeeds in finally getting Assad and some rebels to the table, the brilliance of his air campaign will be evident: the sheer dependence of Syrian government forces on Russian jets and pilots means that he's effectively taken Assad's grip on power out of Assad's hands and squarely into his own.

In other words, so long as Assad was fearful of complete collapse because he didn't have Russian air power, he could use Moscow's fear of losing Syria to tweak Putin's beak; but now that his regime is utterly dependent on Putin's air force to lock in its refortified strength, he has every reason to ingratiate himself with the Kremlin, even if that means talking to some "terrorists".

Russia and Fatima: Israel and the Jews are the key link

In my last post, I referenced Henry Kissinger's assessment that the US must now rebuild its role in the Middle East, which Russia's intervention in Syria has reduced to rubble...indeed, Russia is now coming back full circle in terms of its historic relationship with Israel and with the Islamic world. Our Lady of Fatima not only links Russia to Iran, Syria, and the wider Shia Muslim Middle East, but it's also important to remember that the Virgin Mary is Jewish (like her Son, of course), and it's hardly a surprise that this Russian link to the region runs through the nation of Israel, whose rebirth as a powerful state since the 1970s was the direct result of the interaction between American and Soviet Jewry in the late Cold War.

Back in 1973, it was none other than Kissinger - the Jewish childhood refugee from Nazi Germany who is best known for engineering Nixon's historic opening to China - who played a central role in laying the foundation for US-Israeli domination of the Mideast at Russia's expense. That October, the Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arab coalition of Egypt and Syria brought the two sides' respective superpower patrons, the US and USSR, to the brink of all-out nuclear war.

The ejection of the Soviet military from the Mideast in the aftermath of that conflict coincided with the mass exodus of Russian and other Soviet Jews to Israel, the US and UK over the remaining 18 years of the USSR's existence; by the USSR's collapse in 1991, international Jewry, bolstered by these Soviet transplants, had attained a dominant position in the so-called "New World Order" of globalization, spearheaded by disproportionately Jewish banks and financial networks centered in New York and London.

In the 1990s, post-Soviet Russia descended into economic ruin as a small clique of Jewish "oligarchs" with deep links to organized crime privatized vast swathes of the national wealth; their greed and corruption made enough of a mockery of the young post-communist Russian democracy that it paved the way for the rise of Vladimir Putin in 1999-2000, i.e. the rise of a new strongman.

Putin's consolidation of power since first assuming the presidency 15 years ago has coincided exactly with his string of victories over Jewish oligarchs and disproportionately Jewish political liberals. He first kicked out Yeltsin-era Kremlin power broker Boris Berezovsky; then in 2004 he jailed young oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky for 10 years, seizing and nationalizing the latter's conglomerate Lukos to tighten his own grip on the strategically crucial energy sector; last February's mysterious assassination of Jewish liberal Boris Nemtsov marked perhaps the final nail in the coffin of any credible Jewish opposition to the Putinist neo-autocracy.

Having attained such security at home from potential Jewish efforts to undermine him, Putin is now supremely confident in his dealings with the Jewish state of Israel, about a quarter of whose citizens are Russian or ex-Soviet Jews. The 40-year process of Jewish emigration out of the former USSR is now complete, but it has inevitably left deep social and cultural links between contemporary Russia and Israel which also translate into political ties.

Needless to say, Russia's relationship with Israel is a love-hate one: there's plenty of baggage in this relationship, but with ex-Soviets such a large segment of the Israeli population, it's all outweighed by the thicker-than-water ties of blood and marriage.

Russia and Israel now need each other's cooperation very badly in the Middle East. It's not a comfortable position for either of them to be in, but Our Lady of Fatima is their common mother whose very lifeblood, spiritually speaking, runs through their veins.

And Our Lady of Fatima will lead them to Fatima: the grand bargain with Shia Iran that will stabilize the region between Christian, Jew, Sunni and Shia Muslim once and for all.

America must lead again...but it's time for a balanced debate

This Economist cover cartoon which accompanies the week's leading article, "The New Game" (i.e. great power competition), depicts the current state of world affairs: American dominance being challenged by the new Sino-Russian quasi-alliance.

Americans of all political and social persuasions who can't agree on many things can probably agree on at least one undeniable fact: the world doesn't feel like a warm and fuzzy place these days.

Henry Kissinger has also just written his prescription in the Wall Street Journal as to how America can recover the initiative it has now largely squandered in the Middle East.

Both articles quite aptly conclude, if even just by implying: the core problem is that America is basically reeling from the sense of loss that our botched 2003 invasion of Iraq and 2008 financial crisis produced, which in turn created much of the foreign policy timidity that has characterized Obama's second term. We've not only learned the hard way that our good intentions and firm convictions, backed up by the world's mightiest military and dominant economy, aren't quite enough to shape a global environment we can be secure and confident about; in a deeper sense, we've even begun to lose the foundations of trust in ourselves.

This is true for both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, left and right: we seem caught now between those who say we should simply surrender to our enemies without even resisting on the one hand, and those who basically say we should simply bomb everyone who doesn't like us back to the stone age on the other. Of course, there's also very little love lost between these opposite ends of the spectrum themselves: to take either camp at its word, America would truly get back on track but only for the other camp's shenanigans.

And so, instead of rising resolutely to the challenge of mastering this new world by learning the parameters and contours of a whole new ballgame, we as a nation, from our leaders (including the 2016 presidential candidates) on down, seem more preoccupied with assigning blame and pointing fingers at who we should get even with.

Now is the time for Americans to hear all sides of the story, not just the skewed partisan cacophony that masquerades as unbiased commentary, which filters, skews, and mis-contextualizes all manner of solid argument and analysis to advance goals that are, in the end, downright childish.

It's time for some real debate...

And it had better lead us, still the world's sole superpower, to an appreciation of the absolute necessity of cooperating with Russia and China, even if it means swapping concessions with them that make us feel a little less exclusively blessed by God.

Iran's going all in...turning point on the ground?

With Iran's deployment of hundreds of troops to Syria, the ground war has officially entered a new stage. Despite two weeks of Russian aerial bombardment, the Syrian government forces can't make much headway against the better armed and organized rebel groups, who have been resupplied with large numbers of the US-made anti-tank "TOW" missiles that were already instrumental earlier this year in anti-Assad rebel advances.

These fresh Iranians are most likely full battalions of the elite Revolutionary Guards/Quds Force, whose high-ranking officers have already played key advisory roles in Assad's forces and have been dying lately at an alarming rate, notably General Hamedani last week.

Of course, many suspect the Quds Force hasn't been in Syria in a merely advisory role since last spring...it's just that now, Iran has crossed the final threshold to being a full-fledged, open belligerent on the field.

Given the performance of Assad's depleted regular army even with Russian air support - apparently they still rely heavily on tanks and armored vehicles that are easy prey for American TOWs - it's likely that the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah coalition is now acquiring, at last, the capability to conduct a genuine counterinsurgency campaign.

At the same time, Iranian MPs are in Damascus to discuss their proposed peace plan for Syria which, without doubt, has as its baseline the continuity of Assad's regime in the dictator's Shia Alawite stronghold and its surrounding pacified sectors...the Russo-Iranian military operation will determine just how big this battered yet reclaimed Baath party-state is.

Crucial juncture: next weeks and months will usher in the War or Peace of Fatima

All eyes are now on Vladimir Putin's intervention in Syria. Now 2 weeks into Russia's bombing campaign to prop up the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, the Russian strongman has met with the Saudi defense chief Prince Salman (son of the new King Salman).

Of course, the positive niceties were stressed, i.e. assurance that Russia and Saudi are working closely to bring an end to the destructive conflict, to ensure Syria doesn't become a permanent haven for jihadist terror groups ISIS and Al Qaeda's affiliate Al-Nusra Front. But quite openly, Prince Salman reiterated Saudi's opposition to any peace settlement that leaves Assad in power. It's way too early, in other words, for Riyadh to concede that Russia's entry into the conflict has tipped the scales decisively in favor of Assad's political survival. What Putin was looking for in this meeting was some hint of flexibility - perhaps a Saudi acknowledgment that Assad's ouster will have to be a gradual and phased process that leaves him in control until international monitors can regulate fair elections. But that would have been a clear concession of Russian victory and it seems Saudi is now doubling down for an intensified proxy war against the Moscow-Tehran-Damascus axis - the Axis of Fatima.

So these next weeks will be crucial. Putin's strategy is very simple: keep squeezing Al-Nusra and the so-called "moderate" Syrian rebels that are directly and openly supported by Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Turkey, so that their territory in northwest Syria is chiseled off both by Assad's resurgent forces from the south and opportunistic ISIS elements from the east. This will secure Assad's regime for the foreseeable future and offer Russia - and the world at large - the best hope to contain ISIS to the sparsely populated desert swathes of Syria and Iraq.

The formation of a new US-backed rebel coalition centered around the Kurds is likely a recognition of the new reality by Washington: the "free Syrian" forces and "moderate" Sunni jihadists, along with their more overtly terrorist fellow travelers like Al-Nusra, are in an increasingly untenable position in their northwest Syrian corridor between Homs and Aleppo. Once they lose control of the main M5 highway linking all these major west Syrian cities all the way down to Damascus, they will have to resort to underground guerrilla tactics, else flee and abandon the whole area altogether to regroup with the only other non-ISIS, anti-Assad strongholds in the Kurdish far north, northwest and northeast. This latter outcome is the more likely, and that's probably why US efforts have now shifted to this new Kurdish-centered coalition.

But only the extreme northwestern Kurdish sector will have a direct front against the Syrian regime: the north-central and northeastern sectors are sandwiched between ISIS and Turkey, Kurdistan's historic enemy. Thus, any new Kurdish-led anti-ISIS, anti-Assad coalition will in effect be mostly an anti-ISIS coalition - and one that will also have to deal with a hostile President Erdogan of Turkey behind their backs. With this eventuality, Assad's survival is all but assured, and he can even think of turning the clock back to 2010, i.e. the time when he and Erdogan were regional rivals who could at least recognize each other's rule over all the pesky sectarian separatists under their nationalist dominions. They will have every incentive to wipe out the remaining Kurdish-Sunni rebel enclave stuck between them in the far northwest - and it will be a piece of cake if they cooperate with Russian support.

In conclusion, more likely than not, Washington's decision late last week to abandon its existing Syrian rebel army effort was a grudging acceptance that regime change in Damascus is no longer possible. Unfortunately, the new replacement strategy centered around the Kurds will probably do little to restore lost US regional influence. Don't expect the Beltway to suddenly embrace the cause of "Free Kurdistan" in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq as its new trump card and effectively declare war against the other important players in the common fight against ISIS.

For now, it increasingly seems only a matter of time until Assad reclaims his country's northwest and mop up any die-hard Sunni jihadists that choose to remain. He will deal with any sanctuary towns and villages with his customary brutality and wholesale population cleansing. With Russia and Iran fully behind him, he now has little reason left not to turn any remaining non-compliant Sunnis in the northwest into terrorists...terrorists who will soon have no choice but to join ISIS if they hate him more than they fear the caliphate's already legendary reputation for sowing dread within its own ranks.

Keep the civilians of Syria's northwest in your prayers...whoever is left is in for a very rough stretch that could see additional hordes of them flee across the Turkish border.