Washington’s Conundrum in Syria: Russia, Iran and China Team Up
China’s recent announcement of an increase of
its humanitarian support for the Syrian people and that it would
provide additional training to the Syrian forces comes as a “headache
for the US,” according to the American media.
“As if the multi-party war in Syria weren’t
complicated enough, it now appears that the People’s Republic of China
has decided to take a more active role in the conflict, providing
increased humanitarian assistance and possibly military training
to Syrian forces,” says the New York-based news website The Fiscal News.
The website notes that Beijing’s announcement comes just a day
after Russia announced that it had launched strikes against Daesh
from an airbase inside the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“Combined, these two events create a major
foreign policy conundrum for the Obama administration, as three of the
countries, most resistant to the US on the global stage, appear to be
teaming up against a non-state actor that has frustrated the US
for years,” it further notes.
This point of view is echoed by The New York Times, which says that
Russia now has “the ability to strike from virtually all directions in a
region where it has been reasserting its power — from Iran,
from warships in the Caspian Sea, from its base in the Syrian coastal
province of Latakia and now from the Mediterranean.”The newspaper however notes that the decision to fly the long-range bombers from Iran rather than from Moscow is even “far more important militarily”: if it continues, this “could result in a more devastating air war over a long period of time.”
The outlet explains that “while both Russia and
the US say they share the goal of defeating the Islamic State group
(Daesh) in Syria, they are waging parallel but separate wars against the
militant group while simultaneously backing opposite sides in the
conflict between Russia’s ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and
his other opponents, including rebels backed by the US.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said
that he US has acknowledged that it has been unable to separate the
opposition in Syria from terrorists.”Regrettably, our partners in fact
acknowledged that they cannot do this,” Lavrov said.“But we are not making a tragedy out of this. The directions of our work now allow switching to a coordinated and a more efficient cooperation in the fight against terrorists,” Russia’s top diplomat added.
Earlier in August Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said that the US was unprepared to separate terrorist organizations from the moderate opposition in Syria.
“The Syrian government has embarked on the
separation of terrorists from the moderate opposition and the
civilians.. Our colleagues in Washington were not ready to do
for political reasons, and did not intend to do throughout the
past months in defiance of the signals and the promises they gave us,”
Ryabkov added.
Russian-US partnership in Syria cannot be genuine as long
as Washington puts forward additional demands, according to the
diplomat.
“We have repeatedly drawn the Americans’
attention to the fact that after each successful round of closed
negotiations and after reaching certain agreements, Washington begins
putting forward additional requirements that violate the entire balance
and prevent progress immediately afterward,” Ryabkov then said.
He added that “there are regular Russia-US contacts along various
lines. Both foreign and defense ministries are involved in these
contacts.“We attribute as unflattering the assessments we hear from our American colleagues,” he said.
“Washington has been completely inconsistent in its actions in Syria, putting forward demands to stop fighting terrorists as soon as the Syrian army has achieved real success in fight against terrorists”, Ryabkov said.
As soon as the Syrian government and the armed forces have achieved, with Russian support, a real progress in the fight against terrorists, the Americans began to use unacceptable methods, demanding, in essence, the cessation of the fight against terrorists.
RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY
Last year the former US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford (2010-2014), admitted that the Obama administration had long “looked the other way while the [al-]Nusra Front and armed groups on the ground, some of which are getting help from the US, have coordinated in military operations against the regime.”
Now, backed with US weaponry, these same groups are a significant barrier to upcoming peace talks in Geneva.