WTF are Iranian forces doing in Syria?!? Who let these scumbags in? Just no! And if they’re around Damascus, well, that less than 50 miles from Israel. No, no, no. No Iranians. As bad as ISIS and need to be killed, every one of them.
The Iranians and the Russians were invited into Syria by Assad, the recognized leader of the country and head of state. Assad appoints his ambassadors to Syrian embassies around the world and to the UN.
The real question is what are 2,000 uninvited US troops doing in Syria and why have we been bombing Syria since September 22, 2014. It started with bombing ISIS and evolved into bombing Syrian government targets. We violate Syrian airspace daily.
At the direction of U.S. President Barack Obama, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was put in charge of the operations, worth about $1 billion annually, to arm anti-government forces in Syria, an operation which formally began in 2013, more than two years after the start of the civil war in 2011. Prior to 2013, the CIA only supplied certain rebel groups of the Free Syrian Army with non-lethal aid, but later began providing training, funding, and intelligence to selected rebel commanders.
Targeting Iranians and Russians is not an endgame. It can only escalate our involvement there. I hope Trump has dumped regime-change as an objective. His instincts to get out are spot on.
I don’t disagree with us having no mission in Syria beside defeating ISIS.
Like the invasion of Cambodia a half century ago, we cannot let our enemies, actively engaging us, have such safe sanctuaries.
We could certainly make the case that those parts of Syria completely in ISIS control were not Assad’s territory at the time, but he should have been allowed to move his forces back in once the pest control job was finished.
You’re a diplomat, does any nation have right to intervene when the nation they intervene in is in rebellion? What about France helping the US in 1779? What about the Western Powers in the Soviet Union in 1919? And I’m sure you know of dozens of such historical incidents.
No one can say that Syria is not in a civil war, and that parts of it are not under control by its own government.
I do strongly agree that replacing Middle East dictators with Islamic Fundy radicals, or weak politicians who will be overrun by Islamic Fundies, is not in our national interests. It’s been a huge mistake everywhere we try it.
I guess the Iranians and Syrians are natural allies of sorts with assad keeping many of the Sunnis out of higher positions I guess he’s sorta shia of sorts. I know the Syrians 87% muslim and 75% of those are sunni. But Iran who has a shia majority is trying to repopulate many Syrian cities by letting many shia go into the areas where many have left. I think Russia is trying to take advantage of all that to their benefit is so many ways.