... backed by Shiite Persian Iranians and the Arab Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Sunni Muslims, in general, do not like Shiites, and that is an understatement; many Sunnis do not even consider Shiites to be Muslims. That is why so much money from rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar is going to fund, train, arm, and equip Sunni jihadist extremists like ISIS to go fight Assad’s regime, and this has been the case for a while now. It is part of the reason why the Syrian Civil War is so deadly, so intractable, and so long; it is about so much more than just Syria when you throw the age-old Sunni-Shiite sectarian rivalries into the mix, which have been red-hot since the Lebanese Civil War, continuing through the ...
A Sensible Grading of Obama’s Middle East Strategy: The Syrian Civil War
Grading Obama on what has—and has not—been done by his ... ... Syria is currently the largest and deadliest. Here, as in other situations, we have a crisis in which we must be careful not to blame Obama too much but must also note the... ... other major international meddlers in this conflict (e.g. Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, the Gulf states…), and 4.) since the overall post-2003 Iraq mess, for which the U...
... here’s what we can expect:
1.) America will try very hard to distance itself from the Gulf.
It’s amazing that it’s taken us so long to realize how much our... ... back to haunt us: though Joe Biden recently got in trouble for saying so, support for ISIS and other Islamic extremists and terrorists from very wealthy individuals motivated... ... the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid, Obama and Americans, as was/is the case in Syria and Iraq, seems to prefer a “don’t do stupid shit” (to quote...
