Going to War?

[Casino67]

PJMedia:

Jonathan Spyer, one of the best reporters on things Syrian, now believes that the tide of battle has turned against President Assad, and that the regime may be forced to retreat to a rump state in the western coastal region sometime in the next several months. If that happens, it would be a stunning defeat for Assad and his allies in Moscow, Beijing, and Teheran, even though the regime might well live on in an amputated form for many years.

The Russians and the Iranians have been arming and funding the regime’s Army. We’ve read recently about Iranian airplanes exploiting Iraqi airspace to smuggle weapons, and there’s a busy ground traffic as well. The Iranians have also been doing a good deal of the killing. You’ll recall that they started by sending snipers and advisers at the beginning of the uprising–figuring that the same methods they used in the streets of Iran would succeed in Syria as well–and today there are abundant Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the battlefields, thereby violating the regime’s strong preference for sending others (preferably Arabs) to fight and die for the Islamic Republic. They are losing a considerable number of them; in the last 10 days alone, more than 45 RG’s have been killed by opposition forces, and this does not take into account a significant number of Hezbollahis.

The strategic importance of Syria is demonstrated by the surprising fact that supreme leader Ali Khamenei has given Assad a blank check. The Syrian tyrant has been promised all the money, all the weapons, and all the manpower he needs to survive. The Russians are acting with similar resolve.

It isn’t very difficult to figure out why the Russians and the Iranians are going all in: Syria provides the Russians with their only reliable ally in the region, as well as that warm water port the czars always coveted, while for the Iranians Assad’s country has provided the operational base for Hezbollah, and a training center for terrorists who killed so many Americans in Iraq.

So when you hear stories about the misery Western sanctions are inflicting on the Iranian people, remember that the regime is dispersing a lot of hard currency and a lot of bodies to the Syrian war. And that comes on top of all the money going to Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and various terrorists and supporters of the Islamic Republic all over Africa and the Middle East, most notably Jordan of late.

[Casino67]

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