Iran's abrupt eviction of the Russian air contingent at its Hamadan air base barely a week after the announcement of the groundbreaking collaboration by the Axis of Fatima is now being disclosed by Tehran as merely the end of a one-time usage, at its own behest, of the vital facility.
Apparently, the bombers were originally called in at the joint request of the Syrian regime and its Iranian benefactors both to conduct actual heavy strikes and, even more to the point, to make a strong show of force against the insurgents led by the jihadists of Al Nusra Front in the decisive standoff at Aleppo.
Having achieved a great physical and psychological impact which must have played a role in Turkey's about-face regarding Assad, however, Russia got a little giddy: its media went overboard trumpeting the new, uniquely privileged use of Iranian runways as evidence that the nation's great power status had dramatically been elevated. Such American-style hubris - which Putin himself apparently failed to rein in - had to be severely reprimanded.
While it's been pointed out that Iran's historic suspicions of Russia played a role in a rising popular backlash against the bomber deployment, the Shiite Islamic regime clearly had a much more immediate consideration: keeping itself in the driver's seat of the Syrian conflict, which it can never concede to an extra-regional Christian power, given that it's always posed it as a holy war (indeed, its own jihad) against the Salafists who would murder all the adherents of Ali.
That's in keeping with Iran's long-term ambition to spread Shiism across the Middle East to challenge the millennial Sunni supremacy: no hint whatsoever of subservience or vassalage to a non-Muslim power could be tolerated.
Despite the embarrassing spat, both Iran and Russia have gotten what they want in Erdogan's reversal over Assad's potential role in a Syrian transition, which came just in the nick of time on Saturday, August 20. This diminishes the political and diplomatic price they'd otherwise pay with such a public falling-out (however limited).
In the two weeks prior to Turkey's concession, with the government siege of Aleppo having been breached by jihadists spearheaded by the former Al Nusra Front, Russian and Syrian warplanes ruthlessly escalated their bombardment of the rebel-held eastern part of the city, ultimately exacting such a heavy direct and indirect civilian toll - including the now-infamous injury of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh and the death of his brother - that probably tens of thousands of additional residents have vacated it.
In this context, Damascus and Tehran saw fit to call in an even heavier array of Russian firepower in the form of Tupolev Tu-22M3 strategic bombers and advanced Sukhoi Su-35 fighter-bombers based out of Iran: their immediate mission was to take advantage of the shorter distance to Syria to pound both rebel and ISIS supply lines, thus pressuring the former's positions at Aleppo and blunting any opportunistic thrusts by the latter to take advantage of reshuffled regime manpower.
As of a week ago, when Russia announced its new bomber deployment in Iran, this first task had effectively been accomplished: the reinforced pro-regime troops were on the offensive to gradually wrest back the corridor they had lost to Al Nusra in southwestern Aleppo in the first week of August, if still unable to consolidate major gains. More significantly, with the existing tactical Russian and regime airstrikes now blasting the eastern rebel sector's support infrastructure to rubble, there'd soon be a lot less Aleppo left for the rebel-jihadist alliance to save - and even less so once enough additional civilians cleared out to run for their lives to make an all-out saturation bombardment by the Iranian-based Tu-22's feasible. With the threat of such fully-loaded Tuploevs flying such a shorter distance to rain wholesale destruction on both the east of the city and the urban jihadist positions in the southwest, Turkey could see the writing on the wall.
At that point, Tehran must have decided to throw Ankara a juicy bone: agree to Assad's role in a transitional government, and we'll cut the Russian heavyweights out of the region with a sharp rebuke to the Orthodox Christian superpower. Such a proposal would have been music to Mr. Erdogan's Islamist ears - and just the kind of deal which conveniently suits Turkish Sunni Islamists and the Shia fundamentalist regime of Iran alike.
With the Russians having been put in their place by Iran to Turkey's satisfaction, the continuing fight at Aleppo is itself becoming subsumed in a broader dance of triangular Turkish-Iranian-Syrian diplomacy. As Assad's forces tentatively retake portions of the jihadist corridor that purported to relieve the government siege of the rebel east (and even partially blockade the regime-held west itself), the Turks have stepped up their activity further east: with the priority of preventing a Kurdish statelet in northern Syria, they're far less keen on Al Nusra victory at Aleppo, giving the Axis of Fatima a much-needed breather in its central struggle to keep Assad viable.
Instead, Ankara's Syrian intervention is now squarely aimed at the Kurds: its shelling of ISIS around the recently US-backed Kurd-liberated town of Manbij is clearly laced with a threat to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), whose People's Protection Units (YPG) militia so happened to be hit as well: you better behave or we won't mind making you collateral damage in our legitimate fight against Daesh.
This comes as the YPG has elsewhere liquidated the pro-regime resistance pocket of Hasakah: Assad's outpost there in the far northeast, which never really stood a chance, at least gave him the opportunity to demonstrate to Erdogan that his own opposition to Kurdish autonomy is consistent with Turkey's policy of maintaining Syrian territorial integrity for its own Kurdish problem's sake.
The YPG's links to the infamous Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is still waging a low-intensity guerrilla war against Ankara across the Turkish border from northeastern Syria, guarantees that Erdogan will continue to use a stepped-up campaign against ISIS mainly to contain the emergent Northern Syrian Federation modeled on the longstanding Kurdish autonomous federations which have existed in northern Iraq since the 1990s. As before, Turkish-backed "moderate" rebels will do Ankara's bidding: still implacably opposed to Assad, they'll now have to settle for serving Erdogan by putting an acceptable Syrian - but not Kurdish - face on his influence in the Kurdish-ISIS contested zone vis-à-vis Damascus.
Going forward, these developments point to a major fluid shift in the Syrian conflict: as Assad's core position is stabilized, the question now turns to just how the vast tracts of the country he doesn't control will be divvied up - and that of course includes the fate of both ISIS and the Kurds. While Turkey and Iran - with their new rapprochement that's followed and possibly already exceeded the Turkish thaw with Russia - would appear to be the decisive actors, Moscow retains significant leverage and will seek to maximize its efficacy.
Though the specifics will have to play out over the course of more years yet, the Axis of Fatima has essentially won. Moscow and Tehran have for practical purposes secured their foothold on the Levantine Mediterranean coast: in this objective, which the former has taken care to prevent the latter from expanding, they are increasingly untouchable. Meanwhile, the US-NATO-Sunni coalition's once maximalist goal of regime change and regional hegemony through a pipeline from the Persian Gulf to Europe through Syria and Turkey (thus circumventing Russia) has been thwarted: even if Russia can't make Assad whole, it can easily live with his strategically critical rump because it will have snatched a much bigger prize, namely Turkey, from Washington's clutch.
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