So far the United States and their coalition have conducted 12,199 aerial bombing operations in Syria and Iraq – exactly 8,322 in Iraq and 3,877 in Syria. Hence Inherent Resolve, the operation of said US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria, has not at all been irrelevant at militarily level. If anything, it lacked a “war aim”, just to quote Von Clausewitz.
For the time being, the Inherent Resolve operation has destroyed 139 tanks; 374 Humvee, the specific armed self-propelled units produced by the United States and spread among all the warring factions; 1,162 Command and Control areas, especially ISIS ones and, more recently, areas of the Al Nusra Front, the Al Qaeda “branch” in Syria and in the Iraqi Shiite “Green Zone” around Baghdad; 5,894 buildings and 7,118 ISIS combat areas; 1,272 oil infrastructure units, including both wells and connecting lines, as well as 6,820 other unspecified “targets”.
But the central issue of the Syrian war is still centred on Aleppo: on May 7, 2016 Turkey sent its Special Forces to the Northern Syrian town, which is the real “centre of gravity” of this great and original proxy war, with a view to identifying the position of the ISIS missile launchers.
Moreover, Turkey also wanted to detect and follow the Kurdish movement lines in the areas east of Aleppo, so as to ban any YGP collaboration with the forces of the US-led Coalition and of the coalition coordinated by the Russian Federation.
As always happens, immediately after the “cease-fire”, clashes started around the town in order to reposition the forces, soon after the diplomatic-political balances portraying the existing situation.
During the “ceasefire”, the side forces of Assad’ Syrian Arab Army, with support from Iran and the Hezbollah, tried to conquer the Handarat district, north of Aleppo, precisely while both the United States and Russia were about to close the negotiations.
Negotiations which they both need to definitively clarify the balance of power in their respective coalitions, as well as to refine the selection of future goals and to better observe the opponents’ strategy and tactics.
Handarat is the last ring of Bashar’s encirclement of Aleppo and we must not forget that very recently the Alawi regime has gained the support of a new pro-Assad force created among the Palestinians, namely “the Leopards of Homs”.
Even before, the Palestinian movement had shown its new pro-Alawi (and pro-Iranian) configuration with the creation of the “volunteer” militias for Bashar, called “the Khaybar Brigade” and Quwat al-Ridha, namely “the al-Ridha Forces”, integrated into the Hezbollah units in Syria.
Where there is no more Saudi support, no longer interested in Israel’s encirclement, there is the new Iranian geopolitics, interested in managing a dual war, the one against the ”Zionist Entity” and the other against what we might call the Sunni International.
And it is precisely on May 7, 2016 that Iran announced it had lost – in an ambush by the “Al Nusra Front” and the “Brown Berets” of the Turkish Special Forces – over 30 “military advisers” killed by a battery of MILAN anti-tank missiles bought and distributed by the Turkish intelligence services to the Al Qaeda section in Syria..
Hence Assad’s army difficulty in regaining full control of Aleppo, which is also the contact point between Syria and Turkey, as well as the hub of ISIS’ illegal trade, the point of friction between the Kurds and the other warring factions and hence the real goal of the current Syrian proxy war in the North.
This adds to the rebellion in the Hama prisons, another failure for the Syrian Arab Army.
Too many open fronts are the sign of imminent defeat.
In essence, Russia is realizing it can no longer sustain – on its own – the operations in the region without a collaborative relationship with the Unite States, while it has no interest in exploiting Bashar el Assad and especially the Iranians, who may have greater ambitions for the new Alawi Syria and even endanger the autonomy of the Russian bases in Latakia and Tartus, by surrounding them with Pasdaran cells to support Assad’s future regime – if ever any for the whole Syria.
Nor Moscow wants to increase costs and engagements in the Syrian region, already too expensive and anyway oversized compared to Russia’s real interests on the field.
Furthermore, the assassination of the Supreme Commander of the Lebanese “Party of God” in Syria, which took place on May 13, 2016 at Damascus International Airport, where the Hezbollah had their Supreme Command, is further evidence of the jihadist Sunni forces’ resilience in Syria, as well as of the structural weakness of Iran’s engagement in the region and the difficulties still incurred by Bashar el Assad in fully controlling his territory.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah in the Lebanon, is sure that this operation is the seal of a new unity of action between the United States and Russia in Syria, while the Lebanese victim was reprogramming the dislocation of the “Party of God” along the border between Syria and the Lebanon, which certainly neither Assad nor Russia likes.
Until few days ago, the latest Russian aircraft sorties hit east of Idlib, directly in the Aleppo area, then south of Hama, the area still held by the so-called “rebels” and finally Deir el Zour, in the West of the country.
Upon US request, however, both the United States and Russia immediately included Aleppo in the region of the current truce, which means that also Assad’s army has decided it would certainly opt for a “regime of calm” around that city.
Nevertheless Russia emphasizes that the Syrian Arab Army is still waging and fighting “a wide jihadist offensive in Aleppo”, implicitly backed by Turkey which, obviously, does not want a change of the US strategy and, above all, does not want to miss the strategic axis of the town where the soap was invented – a city which is the real gateway to Syria and its hub vis-à-vis the large Sunni jihad system.
Strangely Turkey – which is the second NATO armed force in terms of size – has not been reprimanded by the Alliance for its behaviour in Syria, but probably the Atlantic forces must face two long-term geopolitical problems: the increasingly evident US disengagement from the Greater Middle East, as well as the impossibility for the Alliance’s “EU pillar” to militarily take charge of the Syrian issue on its own.
Therefore we confine ourselves to a business as usual strategy and to paying lip service to humanitarian goals.
Currently the French and German Ministers for Foreign Affairs want an impossible long truce in Aleppo, so as to renew the Geneva and Vienna “peace talks” of the International Syrian Support Group, a diplomatic organization which met for the last time on May 17 (the day when the US offensive began) with the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the United Nations, always supporting the cessation of hostilities.
The operational, and still tacit, agreement between the United States and Russia might not go along the lines of the national cessation of hostilities – as precisely called for in Vienna as from May 17, but along the lines of a new distribution of costs and future areas of influence in Syria.
The “tacit agreement” in the region of a huge proxy war between Russia and the United States is supported even by Bashar el Assad, although we do not know until when.
So far it is supposed to be based on the fact that the United States are convinced that the Russian Federation has “a deep and unique knowledge of the ground”, which they still lack, while Russia still states it wants to military support the Alawi “legitimate government”.
Against this background, however, the real card to play is the Israeli one.
Last Monday, President Putin met secretly with the Head of the Israeli government, Netanyahu, both for an “exchange of information ad views” on the Syrian issue and for Israel’ support to the effective and definitive contact between the United States and Russia.
Hence the US allegations of a Russian “military intervention” in the region are soon dispelled, but covert and secret operations increase, also with the Jewish State’s brokerage, so as to unite the forces of the two major States involved in the Syrian region.
As we saw earlier, we cannot even maintain that the large US-led coalition has stood idle faced with the war operations in favour of the “moderate rebels”, at first – an odd invention of the US propaganda – and later, more decisively, against the Al Nusra Front and the huge jihadist Sunni system – which could be seen as a sort of acknowledgment of previous faults and mistakes.
Probably the United States do not even trust too much the autonomous and significant Saudi presence in Syria, and do not even want to provide – through the deterioration of the situation in the Syrian region – the opportunity for a full scale confrontation between Iran and the Sunnis led by Saudi Arabia.
President Obama has well tried and tested the irrationality of the current Wahhabi ruling class.
And this is President Putin’s real victory.
The Head of the Kremlin who, even in the case of the Russian military aircraft shot down by Turkey, showed a strategic balanced and rational attitude which, however, will not be for free for Turkey when the dust settles and the situation gets back to normal.
Most importantly, President Putin has clearly calculated that the Russian direct and ongoing engagement would immediately call for equivalent American support, thus leading to Russia’s real goal of the war in Syria: to force the United States to hold talks on an equal footing, which Russia may also focus on the Ukrainian issue and the NATO and US actions along the new borders of the old Cold War in Europe.
President Putin’s strength and decision blocked the first US operations in Syria, designed to tacitly stop the expansion of Russia’s engagement.
During that phase the US goal was that the Russian troops could increase the Russian Federation’s weight at the final negotiating table.
Moreover, the United States have realized that it is not possible to contain Russia’s expansion in Western Syria and to fight ISIS at the same time, by possibly using the jihadist groups calling themselves “moderates”, sometimes trained – at the beginning of hostilities – by CIA before their moving to Al Baghdadi’s Caliphate.
The less naïve or incapable Europeans, however, have always denied there was a realistic plan to reduce the Russian clout in the Syrian region and have also stated that the cost of sanctions (and Russian counter-sanctions) is really too high, even compared to a final reasonable bilateral agreement between the United States and Russia.
The EU economy must not be killed to shape a bilateral deal which, however, could not occur.
Hence, precisely after the elimination of the Hezbollah leader in Syria, the United States decided to increase their military engagement in the country and, for the first time, again on May 17, the US F-16 aircraft bombed the jihadist forces around Aleppo, without hitting directly – as far as we know – the Iranian positions and the positions of the Lebanese “Party of God”, as well as the positions of the Afghan Shiites “volunteers” and the other 13 groups supporting the Pasdaran in Iran.
According to the data provided by our intelligence sources, the targets of the US air strikes were troops, bases and transport infrastructure used by ISIS and the Al Nusra Front, which, sensing the change in the US strategy, had already begun to fight even against the “moderate” jihad.
It is US sound support also for Bashar el Assad, but now we have got accustomed to these US sudden changes of strategy in the Middle East and in the rest of the world.
In this case, the primary issue for President Obama is obviously to quickly settle the Syrian issue, by recognizing Russia’s right to be present in Tartus and Latakia and in the whole local system, at least to prevent the Iranian expansion and to stabilize the presence – which could become dangerous – of Saudi Arabia, south and east of the State that the French colonizers wanted to be led by the Alawi minority, becoming officially Shiite only after the decision of the Lebanese Imam, Mussa Sadr, who disappeared in Libya in 1978.
The US F-16 aircraft took off from the Turkish base of Incirlik, which could lead us to think that also Turkey is not interested in an endless extreme radicalization of the Syrian “proxy war”.
Probably the United States have ensured to President Erdogan his droit de regard, namely some scrutiny on the Sunni majority in Syria, in discordant harmony with Saudi Arabia.
The F-16 aircraft hit Aleppo and Idlib, another difficult position for the axis between Assad and Russia.
The Turkish scrutiny will be curbed and restrained by the Russian presence on the territory, so as to avoid Turkish adventures in Central Asia which would do much harm also to the United States, thus calling them again into the region for a confrontation which could not but finally affect also China.
The US air strikes, however, have always been coordinated with the Russian command of the Humaynim base and “mediated” by the information available to the Russian and American officers in Jordan.
Hence, today, the contenders in the Syrian skies are ten: USA, Russia, Israel, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Syria, Turkey and Jordan.
Moreover, the US CENTCOM, namely the structure which commands and controls all American forces in the Middle East, has repositioned some of the Special Forces units at the Remalan base, in northern Syria, near the Kurdish town of Hassakeh.
Therefore some support of the US Special Forces is expected for the final taking of Aleppo, which is and will be the real turning point of the war in Syria.
But what will happen afterwards?
President Putin will sit at the negotiating table in Vienna or Geneva with the winner’s hard, but relaxed, look.
He will be in a position to keep his vital Mediterranean region, an ever more inevitable strategic counterweight as against the Western penetration in Ukraine, as well as an essential bargaining chip for negotiations both in the Middle East and in the Don region.
Conversely President Obama will be ensured an important role and place for the United States in Syria – at a time when the US-led Coalition forces become strategically irrelevant, despite the large number of operations carried out successfully – and will be in a position to have a right of direct strategic brokerage even with Bashar al-Assad, as in the good old days of his father Hafez.
Turkey will be in a position to have a controlled system of influence on the Sunni areas, with the guarantee – carefully monitored – it will break any relations with the local jihad.
Furthermore Saudi Arabia will not directly clash with Iran, at a time of economic difficulties for the Kingdom and of slow internal destabilization.
Iran will avoid radicalising the clash in its Shiite system that it has also shown to be unable to fully control, at least in an exclusively military way.
Moreover Israel will prove to be able to play its new role as great power broker in the Greater Middle East, as well as genuine regional and international power, by balancing itself with Russia and maintaining its old relations with the United States, thus playing a future role as “maverick” that currently nobody can fully predict.