Game Changer: Putin deploys Russian troops in Syria
Emboldened by Obama’s retreat, Iran and Russia carve out a new Middle East
As if biting off a big chunk off Ukraine in Crimea wasn’t enough, Putin is now putting Russian troops on the ground in Syria. Counting on President Obama’s continuing Foreign Policy paralysis on Syria, Russian army is reinforcing Dictator Bashar al-Assad’s air and ground forces. Neither Russia nor Assad’s Syria have any real intentions of destroying the Islamic State (ISIS) in the region. Their primary aim is to restore and maintain territorial control.
Emboldened by America’s retreat under President Obama’s reign and the recent rise of its regional ally Iran in the Middle East, Russia feels confident opening up a new front in the Arab heartland.
A story by Michael Weiss in The Daily Beast confirms that Russian troops are playing combat role in Syria. Previous reports from the Syrian frontlines dating back to 2013 had indicated Russian presence amidst the ranks of Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA). Michael Weiss writes:
Russian pilots are gearing up to fly missions alongside the Syrian air force, dropping bombs not just on ISIS but on anti-Assad rebels who may or may not be aligned with the United States or its regional allies.
Several sources consulted for this story said the Pentagon is being unusually cagey about Russia’s reinvigorated role in Syria. A former U.S. military officer told The Daily Beast, “I’m being told things like, ‘We really can’t talk about this.’ That indicates to me that there’s some truth to these allegations.”
After Iran gets access to over $100 billion of frozen reserves as a signing amount for the nuclear deal, Regime in Tehran is setting about carving out a new map of the Middle East — tightening its hold on Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Russian want to play a bigger role in this scramble for the Middle East.
While President Obama is deliberately shrinking America’s global foot-print in his ideological pursuit to get on the “right side of the history”, Putin’s Russia is vengefully craving to reach Cold War imperial glory by filling in the vacuum created by America’s disengagement.
Handing over half of the Middle East to Mullah Regime of Iran and reinstating Russia as an imperial power would be the real legacy of the Obama presidency.
Video; a recent CNN report talking about rising Russian influence in the Middle East:
(Image source: Screenshot Reuters)
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Comments
“Emboldened by Obama’s retreat, Iran and Russia carve out a new Middle East”
Yeeeeeeup. Nature…and realpolitik…abhor a vacuum.
And power always looks to exploit weakness, which Barracula displays all over the globe.
Putin is sitting on vast sea of Siberian Oil that is not worth pulling out of the ground. But – if nuclear war disrupted Middle East oil supplies – Russia would be the new Saudi Arabia.
Not exactly. Extracting Russia’s Siberian oil is a far more complex proposition than the Bakken shale in North Dakota, and transporting it even more so. Crude would have to be well north of $100 a barrel, and stay there, for it to be economically viable. If Middle Eastern production were seriously disrupted, our domestic production would benefit more than Putin’s would.
Not exactly. The Russians were producing over 10million barrels a day in 2011. Very little of this was shale oil. The great majority was simple liquid petroleum.
The Oil & Gas Journal says Russia has 60 billion barrels in proven reserves. And, there are another 100 billion barrels offshore in the nearby arctic waters.
If they could harness their shale oil – Russian Reserves would be much, much higher.
Kissinger seems to think that the end game for the US is to take apart Russia. Makes sense to me, otherwise why are we in Ukraine?
However, looking how we are doing in the Middle East, I seriously doubt our ability to see this project through.
This will end badly for both would be powers…….
That is, the US and who?
Russia Iran
Didn’t Russia get involved in a little kerfuffle in another Muslim country back in the 1980’s?
How’d that go?
KABOOM!!!! KABOOM!!!!
Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, were Syria’s (and Iraq’s) sponsors for decades. Putin is merely “renewing an old friendship”. This is not a good thing, but one that was entirely predictable.
What was it that Obysmal sneeringly quipped a mere 3 years ago? “The 80s called and want their foreign policy back”?
USSR withdrew, but not because it couldn’t take the casualties. 15K men died, but what’s 15K men for a country like USSR?
It ended with a landscape full of dead locals.
Since we are already giving US weapons to the terrorists in Syria and Iraq, we’ve got a jump on Soviets this time!
Who could possibly have foreseen that receding American influence would lead to worse actors gaining that influence?
Unexpectedly!
After Obama’s work in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, etc. etc. who can claim Putin is worse?
Another thing about Russia is that they allow their Dagestani terrorists slip into Syria [in hope that this will create a problem for us?]. There is a tone of Russian-speaking jihadis in ISIS.
ton, not tone.
And conditions ripen for the Battle of Megiddo (Armageddon).
Just one little push….
No fair! You’ve read the end of the book!
Russia will have no issues killing the people who need to be killed.
Obama just handed a fattened loose and nearly feral hog to a pig butcher.
This ends very well for Putin. Good thing Obama had the flexibility to gift it to him.
The unwanted? The inconvenient? The defenseless? The wholly innocent?
Russians do not subscribe to a pro-choice moral/religious philosophy. They should not now start taking cues from Obama. The Russians have nothing on Obama and progressive liberals’ policy and rite of indiscriminate killing, before and after birth.
I disagree. They are the world leaders on abortion, albeit things are not nearly as bad as they were in the late Soviet period, and technically they have a 12 weeks cut off.
Not “they”, but rather individuals. There is a reason why abortion is fundamentally a “wicked problem”.
Russian pro-life initiatives turning the tide: abortion rate is plummeting
In 2013 Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning abortion advertising. In 2011 a law was passed banning abortion of unborn babies older than 12 weeks and mandated a waiting period of 2 to 7 days for women seeking an abortion. The government also pays a one-time baby bonus of the equivalent of $13,000 to the parents of every newborn.
They are not pro-choice. They support neither selective-child nor one-child policies.
“They” as a reference to Russian society. Both population as a whole and the elites understand that they are in the midst of demographic collapse, and they view it, correctly, as a problem. However, there is still nothing like a culture of life there, and no government program can fix it.
Why would anyone think that Putin is going to pussy foot like obama. He is in it to win it. The sunnis will be going back to Iraq when the going gets rough and rough is how Putin plays the game.
It was only a matter of time. This alliance actually stands a chance of fixing the Obama-created disaster in the Middle East. It may even bear fruit to fix the joint Obama-European created disaster in Libya. The Obama-created disaster in Ukraine, and perhaps the general disaster that was “Arab Spring”.
The people of the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Eurasia may yet survive the Nobel Prize recipient’s social activism. And the Europeans may still avoid massive dislocation and chaps created by excessive and illegal immigration.
I was going to pick a nit about the phrase “President Obama’s reign”.
The US president has an administration, not a reign. It is an elected office, not a monarchy.
But then I paused, remembering that Obama rarely abides by any law he does not favor, and gets away with it. He appears to be so above the law, that I guess “reign” is the right word after all.
Carry on.
Perhaps it should be President Obama’s rein, as in horse’s reins…….His puppet masters hold the reins…..