... myopic side, you have Putin thinking that risking the ire of almost all the Sunni governments, Sunni people, and Sunni jihadists by helping Shiite Alawite Assad massacre mainly Sunni rebels and civilians with the help of Shiite Hezbollah and Shiite Iran just for Russia's having a naval base on Syria’s coast and a few new bases inside Syria as well as a client in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who accounts for roughly 10% of global Russian arms sales is worth it (oh, and there’s ...
... been the Assad regime: though secular in ideology (Ba'athist), it is headed by Arab Alawite (a sect of Shiite Islam that is a small minority in Syria) Bashar al-Assad and is controlled mainly by Alawate Shiites. It is 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 ...
... Syria, with both 2012 and 2013 each seeing extreme escalations in violence and lethality. Foreign Shiite militias joined the Iranian government’s and Lebanese Hezbollah’s well-trained militia forces (both Shiite as well) already aiding and ... ... elected). Furthermore, if Obama was able to muster Congressional support, it would empower him that much more in the public and politics senses. And yet, Obama’s putting so much power and influence in the hands of Congress on so crucial an action showed ...
... troops in December 2011, I had come to agree that, having spent blood and treasure to give Iraqi politicians breathing room to make politics work—the explicit stated objective of the “Surge”—while having seen no serious effort at politics on the part of Iraq’s government, having seen that our leverage and influence (being eclipsed by Iran) was clearly no longer high enough in Iraq produce meaningful results, and having seen Iraq clearly align itself with Iran over America, it made sense to get out. The “Surge” and subsequent maintaining and improving of its security gains ...
... 5th)
Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse here and also published by Stupid Party Math v. Myth here thanks to Patrick Andendall
TEL AVIV — Outside of Israel and America’s Republican Party, very few people are against this emerging Iran nuclear deal, which represents the will of the governments of the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China, as well as America (sorry, Congress and the opposition party generally don’t make foreign policy in America’s constitutional system) ...
... colonizers, will eventually necessitate a change in American policy as Israel refuses to change its policies and boxes itself into being an apartheid-like political pariah within the Western world.
4.) There’s a good chance for a thaw/deal with Iran in the near future.
More than any president since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Obama has shown an energy and a willingness to move past long-failed non-engagement, as has Iran’s President Rouhani. Normalization is a very real possibility....
... face of an unprecedented situation in Iraq, the Obama Administration realized that it was the divisiveness of Maliki’s politics in Iraq that needed to change for any hope for Iraq’s security in the long-run. That mean he had to change, or ... ... designed to produce one of those two outcomes. Ayatollahs and tribal leaders and all manners of people, including Europeans and Iranians, were part of an intense behind the scenes diplomatic-ballet-of-a-process (or perhaps mosh pit is a better term?), pushed ...
