Category Archives: Iran

Trump’s belligerence towards Iran plays into the hands of Tehran’s hardliners

Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes: Distorting realities, ignoring nuances and hijacking people’s fears: that’s the recipe for a demagogue who lives not on his own wits but others’ miseries. It is particularly bad when the person or the country being targeted by that demagogue does little to straighten things out, which is exactly what is happening right now with Iran and Donald Trump.

Iranians know too well from their own experience with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, their hardline former president, how dangerous it is to have a politician telling you passionately half of the truth without caring that the other half is often a lie or a distortion of facts.

Trump’s increasingly bellicose approach towards Iran, first by imposing a blanket travel ban, then putting Tehran “on notice” after a ballistic missile test, as well as by reported plans of new sanctions, carries two subtle messages. The first message is that Iranophobia is going to be his adopted weapon to distract attentions at home, appeal strongly to the US’s wealthy Arab allies who are already welcoming him as a moderate president, and please Benjamin Netanyahu. Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, reacting on Twitter to the missile test, is right to point out that Iran only spends a fraction on defence compared to the US’s Arab allies in the region, which are big recipients of US, UK and French arms.

Trump’s second message, albeit one barely admitted by his officials, is that his administration’s problem is not just with the Iranian state, but with its people too. His executive order suspending all entries to the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries affects Iranians to a greater extent than it does nationals from the other six states.

There are more Iranians in the US, and far more Iranian students are likely to be affected by the new measures than those from Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen put together. Last year, there were 12,269 Iranian students studying in the US, according to data by the Institute of International Education, compared to 5,085 from the six other countries. Iranians are struggling to understand why they are being targeted in this way. [Continue reading…]

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Iran carries out new missile tests after Trump imposes sanctions

Bloomberg reports: Iran carried out further missile tests during an annual military exercise, a day after President Donald Trump imposed fresh sanctions on a raft of individuals and companies in response to the country test-firing a ballistic rocket last week.

The country successfully tested a range of land-to-land missiles and radar systems during the drills in a 35,000 square-kilometer stretch of desert in the northern Iranian province of Semnan, the semi-official Tasnim agency reported Saturday, citing Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ aerospace division.

“If the enemy falls out of line, our missiles will pour down on them,” the brigadier general was cited as telling reporters on the sidelines of the military trials, without referring to any particular nations. Any threats made by the U.S. against Iran were “nonsensical,” Tasnim cited him as saying. [Continue reading…]

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National Security Adviser Michael Flynn puts Iran ‘on notice’

ABC News reports: Making an appearance at Wednesday’s White House press briefing, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn delivered a stern warning to Iran for recent weapon testing and actions by state-supported militants, saying that the United States is putting the country “on notice.”

“The Trump administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity, and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place American lives at risk,” said Flynn. “As of today we are officially putting Iran on notice.”

A U.S. government official confirmed to ABC News on Monday that Iran tested a medium-range ballistic missile over the weekend that exploded after travelling 550 miles. The official classified the event as a failed test. A United Nations Security Council Resolution bars Iran from undertaking “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology.” [Continue reading…]

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Aleppo’s bitter lessons

Sam Heller writes: Syrian rebels’ loss of east Aleppo in December was a turning point in the country’s civil war. But rebel Aleppo didn’t just fall — it fell hard.

Rebels had braced themselves, even under siege and surrounded on all sides, to hold out for as long as a year. Instead, faced with an overwhelming assault by the forces of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and its Russian and Iranian allies, they collapsed in weeks. Cornered in a last handful of neighborhoods, they barely managed to negotiate their safe exit from the city.

Aleppo had been a stronghold of Syria’s “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) rebels and of revolutionary civil society — one of the last vital pieces of opposition territory where patriotic nationalists dominated, not jihadists. Its loss effectively ends the Syrian opposition’s ability to challenge the regime for control of Syria’s most populous urban centers and the country as a whole. Now, after Aleppo’s fall, rebels and their backers have been left to piece together just what happened. What they take away from the loss of Aleppo will likely determine how they move forward — whether they will hold fast to the revolutionary flag or run up the black flag of jihadism, and what kind of war they can win, if any.

“We all knew there was an attack coming, during this period when a new U.S. president was coming in, this political vacuum,” said Omar Salkhou, Aleppo commander of rebel faction Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki. “We expected it. But we didn’t expect that we’d lose the city.”

According to a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, rebels’ rapid collapse caught their foreign backers flat footed.

“The only way [Western intelligence liaisons] could know what was happening was through communicating with people inside, and all they could work on was the story being told to them by these [armed] groups,” the diplomat told me. “They said they’d be fine for six months, that the regime would pay for every street.”

Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern neighborhoods had been a symbol of the Syrian revolution: of self-governance under an opposition city council; of spontaneous civil society and activism; and of the patriotic, FSA armed opposition, rebels who still flew the revolutionary tricolor instead of Islamists and jihadists’ more austere black banners.

But according to opposition-friendly Western diplomats, Aleppo rebel commanders, and local civilians and activists who spoke to me for this report, eastern Aleppo also seems to have been undone by many of the same contradictions and weaknesses that have plagued the FSA across the country and over the course of Syria’s protest movement turned armed struggle.

Aleppo’s rebels were outgunned. They were facing down a regime whose allies, Russia and Iran, were willing to do whatever it took to ensure its victory. Rebels’ backers were never ready to match that commitment. The regime and its allies trapped rebels inside a free-fire zone with tens of thousands of panicking civilians, including the rebels’ neighbors, families, and friends. And — unbeknownst to rebel backers, and maybe rebels themselves — Aleppo’s rebels were too broken, exhausted, and generally dysfunctional to properly hold the line.

After four years of war and against a Syrian regime buttressed by thousands of Iranian-organized militia auxiliaries and the full force of Russian artillery, air power, and likely special forces, Aleppo’s rebels were set to lose.

“Russia was going to win this,” another Western diplomat told me. “Iran, in particular, was going to win this. There was almost no limit to how much they were prepared to escalate to make that happen.”

The problems of Aleppo’s rebels are the problems of Syria’s rebels writ large, especially the internationally approved and backed “FSA” armed opposition. They’ve picked a head-on fight they can’t win — not in Aleppo, or anywhere else. [Continue reading…]

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Syria deal draws Iran into alliance with Russia and Turkey

The Washington Post reports: Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed Tuesday to the outlines of a plan to reinforce a cease-fire in Syria, establishing the three most significant allies of the protagonists in the conflict as guarantors to a peace process.

The deal concluded two days of talks in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, that drew Iran into a burgeoning alliance with Russia and Turkey over ways to secure a settlement. It set broad but vague parameters for a cease-fire enforcement mechanism and committed the three countries to jointly fight the Islamic State and Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate. It will also provide a test of Russia’s new role as the lead power broker in efforts to secure a sustainable, long-term solution to the war.

The United States, which is not a party to the emerging peace process, said it welcomed any “actions that sustainably de-escalate violence and reduce suffering in Syria,” according to a statement issued by the State Department in Washington. [Continue reading…]

Martin Chulov writes: Russia and Turkey had much on the line at the Astana peace talks, but at the end of the two-day summit on Syria, their returns were – at face value – modest. The gathering culminated in a predictable communique, endorsed by Iran, which aims to strengthen a nominal ceasefire in place since 30 December.

But other, more enduring, themes emerged from the gathering. First, Russia, one of the six-year war’s main protagonists, is serious about negotiating an end to the conflict and is prepared to do more than ever to achieve that. Second, although the Assad regime is winning on the battlefield with the robust backing of Moscow and Iran, it has a relatively weak diplomatic hand.

The long predicted moment when Russia will need to declare its intentions towards Bashar al-Assad is closer than ever. So too is a reckoning for the Syrian leader with his other patron, Iran, against whom Russia and Turkey have increasingly sided since Iranian-backed forces led the recapture of Aleppo.

For the first time, Russia broke ranks with the Assad regime at Astana, chiding it for claiming that al-Qaida was leading an assault on the Wadi Barada area near Damascus, and suggesting that Iranian and Syrian forces, not the opposition, were breaching the ceasefire. It also overtly legitimised two groups that Syrian officials had long labelled as terrorists, the conservative Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, both significant components of the armed opposition. [Continue reading…]

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Why Donald Trump’s pro-Assad stance won’t end Syria’s turmoil

Murtaza Hussain writes: After nearly six years, the Syrian civil war is heading towards a possible conclusion. High-profile talks organized by the Russian government are set to commence later this month, seeking to bring a negotiated end to the brutal conflict. The U.S. has been encouraging these talks as a step towards a broader political settlement that will require American participation.

While President-Elect Donald Trump and Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader, have both publicly flirted with the idea of partnering in the future, any normalization of U.S. relations with Syria should occur only if major reforms and a transition of power are carried out, according to many experts on the region. Any other outcome would not end the country’s instability, only postpone it.

“The attitude of the United States towards the upcoming talks is very important,” says Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. “Donald Trump has said he prefers Bashar al-Assad over any alternatives, but the reality is that any outcome that doesn’t result in guaranteed political transition and reform in Syria will not end the conflict there.”

At the heart of the problem is the Assad regime itself. While the Assad family has managed to hold onto power in the country for over four decades, it has done so in a brutal manner that repeatedly generated major crises between itself and its own population. The most recent conflict has only been the largest, and has taken on regional and even global dimensions. Among these are a massive refugee crisis and the emergence of transnational terrorist groups that have launched attacks across the world.[Continue reading…]

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Iran opposes U.S. participation in Russian-backed Syria talks

The Washington Post reports: Iran opposes the participation of the United States in Syrian peace talks backed by Russia that are due to be launched in Kazakhstan next week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tuesday.

His comments contradicted promises from Russia and Turkey and indications from U.S. officials that the newly installed Trump administration would be invited to the talks, scheduled for Jan. 23 in the Kazakhstan capital, Astana.

They also pointed to the potential for conflict over at least one of the Middle East’s flashpoints between Tehran and the incoming Trump administration, which has consistently indicated that it plans to adopt a more hawkish posture toward Iran than the Obama administration. [Continue reading…]

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Iran moderates hope Rafsanjani’s death can soften attitudes

Saeed Kamali Dehghan reports: The turnout was huge and for those who still hope that Iran’s hardline theocratic regime can be reformed, it was full of pathos. As Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Islamic republic’s former president, was laid to rest on Tuesday in south Tehran, hundreds of thousands of Iranians gathered in and around Tehran University.

For many of those present, the scene was reminiscent of the heady days of protest during the stillborn “green revolution” of 2009. Mourners turned the funeral into a rare display of public dissent, in the biggest gathering of its kind for seven years. The volume of state loudspeakers was turned up to drown out the chants in support of the two main opposition leaders under house arrest, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, as well as former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who has also faced growing harassment.

Rafsanjani’s sudden death has deprived moderates of a key powerbroker who retained significant influence in the regime despite his views becoming steadily less hardline in recent years.

Iran’s current president, Hassan Rouhani, a close ally of Rafsanjani, urged unity after the ceremony, tweeting “let’s make bridges, not walls”. A deputy speaker of the parliament, Ali Motahari, a rare outspoken MP, said the passion on display showed the establishment had to end the house arrests.

Though many mourners took part simply to show respect for Rafsanjani, others took the size of the crowd as grounds for hope that a campaign for greater democracy, women’s rights and personal freedoms could be revived. Leading student activist Bahareh Hedayat, who was released in September after nearly seven years in prison, was among the crowd. “Rafsanjani’s popularity was a sign that people still want change and that they’re pursuing this through legal and peaceful means,” she told the Observer from Tehran. [Continue reading…]

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Obama hoped to transform the world. It transformed him

Adam Shatz writes: At his final news conference as president, Mr. Obama expressed anguish over the fall of Aleppo, but insisted that his Syria policy had been guided by his sense of “what’s the right thing to do for America.”

It may well have been; American lives were spared. But noninterference created a vacuum that autocrats like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey were happy to fill. What’s more, Mr. Obama’s understanding of American interests in Syria was more restrictively drawn than one might have expected from a man so worldly, someone who had always stressed the interdependence of the global community and the moral burdens of “what it means to share this world in the 21st century.” Who governs Syria may not be a core American interest, but the country’s apocalyptic splintering is another matter. The effect of Mr. Obama’s caution, as much as Moscow’s belligerent resolve, was to help prolong the war.

The consequences of Syria’s disintegration have spread far beyond its borders. Not only has the crisis placed dangerous strains on neighboring states, but it has emboldened the far right in Europe, which has played on fears about Islam and terrorism in its campaign against immigration and the European Union. Nor has the United States been unscathed by what Mr. Obama recently called the “tug of tribalism”: Donald J. Trump owes his election to it. Mr. Trump is an open admirer of tribal politicians like Mr. Putin, Mr. Erdogan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, not least because they remind him of himself with their love of the mob, contempt for liberal elites and penchant for conspiracy theory.

In his 2009 speech in Cairo, Mr. Obama imagined Muslim and Western democrats working together in partnership, overcoming borders imposed by war, prejudice and mistrust for the sake of a common future. Instead, the very prospect of a common future, of global interdependence, has been jeopardized by the emergence of an illiberal world of tribes without flags. Despite the best of intentions, and for all his fine words, Mr. Obama became one of the midwives of this dangerous and angry new world, where his enlightened cosmopolitanism increasingly looks like an anachronism. [Continue reading…]

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Rare show of dissent in Iran as millions mourn ex-president Rafsanjani

The Guardian reports: The funeral of Iran’s former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has turned into a rare display of public dissent as at least 2 million people packed the streets of Tehran to pay tribute to a man whose death has shaken the country’s political balance.

In what was thought to be the biggest crowd honouring a politician since the death in 1989 of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranians from across the political spectrum attended the funeral.

All attempted to claim Rafsanjani, who died on Sunday aged 82, as their own as he was buried alongside Khomeini in a sumptuous shrine in south Tehran.

The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led the funeral prayers at Tehran University campus as critics and supporters stood behind him, bidding farewell to a man who was considered a pillar of the Islamic republic, a crucial mediator and, more recently, an advocate of political openness and better relations with the west.

But in the streets outside, mourners sympathetic to the opposition and supporters of Iran’s pro-reform Green movement, which was suppressed in bloody unrest in 2009, voiced dissent, chanting in support of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, opposition leaders under house arrest. [Continue reading…]

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Rafsanjani’s death could increase the IRGC’s succession role

Mehdi Khalaji writes: Unlike in 1989, the Revolutionary Guards and other powerful Iranian institutions will probably play an outsize role in determining and influencing the next Supreme Leader, especially now that another major revolutionary figure has passed away.

The unexpected death of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani could be the first scene in Iran’s nascent leadership transition theater, whose subsequent acts are probably yet to be written. The former president played a unique role in consolidating the power of both the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and his successor Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Later, he paved the way for the rise of Mohammad Khatami as a “reformist” president after his own two terms in that office. And in 2013, his well-known protege Hassan Rouhani won the presidency due in large part to Rafsanjani’s vital support. It is therefore important to consider how Iran’s upcoming transitions — the June 2017 presidential election and the eventual task of determining the elderly Khamenei’s successor — will play out in the absence of a man whose fingerprints can be found on most every such moment in the regime’s four-decade history, and who embraced his role as a major irritant to Khamenei in his later years.

In practical terms, Rafsanjani’s positions as head of the Expediency Council and a key member in the Assembly of Experts will presumably be filled by a figure who is more loyal to Khamenei and the regime’s hardcore military camp — no surprise given his advocacy for replacing the position of Supreme Leader with a leadership council. Yet such an appointment would not necessarily produce a more united hardliner front. If regime “moderates” become even more marginalized following the death of one of their main boosters, new divisions will likely emerge in the radical camp as various figures jockey for position in order to take power post-Khamenei. [Continue reading…]

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The hunger strike, the protest tactic of Gandhi, is vexing Iran’s penal overseers

The New York Times reports: The hunger strike, a pressure tactic of self-starvation used by political protesters around the world, is forcing Iran’s powerful judiciary to reconsider the conditions of at least one of its inmates after several started fasts that are leading to widespread support on social media.

The exact number of hunger strikers in Iranian prisons is unclear, but according to human rights organizations and reports in local media outlets, seven inmates, sentenced for crimes against the state, have refused to eat for intervals ranging from several weeks to more than two months.

Their backgrounds vary, but they include an antigovernment protester, a children’s rights activist, an ayatollah, a spiritual leader and a Lebanese computer technology specialist convicted of espionage.

It is not possible to verify their conditions because of restrictions preventing foreign reporters from visiting Iranian prisons without permission. While some members of Iran’s Parliament have said on their social media accounts that they are investigating the reports, other officials have dismissed the hunger strikes as plots organized by foreign opposition groups.

Conservative critics further argue that the extensive support for the hunger strikers seen on social media networks is an exaggeration created by automated messages.

One of the inmates, Arash Sadeghi, stopped his strike last Tuesday, after the judiciary met his demand to temporarily release his imprisoned wife. She was transferred back to prison on Saturday, said the couple’s lawyer, Amir Raeesian.

Refusing to eat to protest conditions in prison is illegal in Iran, but is not uncommon. However, the number of inmates now simultaneously fasting, in combination with a large social media campaign, is unusual in the country. It also providing a publicity platform for those in prison, Iranian analysts say. [Continue reading…]

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Death of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is blow to Iran reform movement

The New York Times reports: Iran’s state television on Sunday confirmed the death of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and a leading reformer, who had a stroke on Sunday. He was 82.

“Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the expediency discernment council, after a lifetime of ceaseless endeavors towards the path of Islam and the revolution, left this world,” a ticker on the state television Channel One read.

His death is a huge blow for Iran’s marginalized reformist movement, and moderates in the government, for whom the Shiite Muslim cleric was a leader and figurehead.

Mr. Rafsanjani also was one of the main voices in Iran calling for an outreach to the West and the United States.

“He will be missed,” said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst close to the reformists. “He was increasingly powerless, but gave us hope. Now we will have to do without him.” [Continue reading…]

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Why Russia-brokered Syrian ceasefire has chance of succeeding

Patrick Wintour writes: Labelled an international pariah only months ago by Boris Johnson, and warned he would be stuck in a Syrian quagmire by a patronising Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin ends 2016 if not as the undisputed victor, then at least as the man at the centre of decision making.

It is Moscow and not Washington that is calling the shots in the Middle East.

Reeling from its cold war defeat and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet empire, Moscow was unable to save Yugoslavia from what it termed western aggression.

But in the case of Syria, it can claim it has recovered its self-respect. In the process, it has built a brutal reputation for sticking by its friends, understanding the dynamics of the region better than America, and knowing how to use military power to forge diplomatic alliances.

The US, by contrast, ends 2016 out in the cold, holding a postmortem into the failure of its peace drive with Israel.

Many will rightly warn that experience in Syria shows ceasefires are fragile and do not lead to peace talks, let alone peace deals. But the unlikely Russian-Turkish peace drive has a propitious backdrop.

No single formula or manual exists for ending a civil war. But a sense of futility born of exhaustion, a decisive change in the military balance, a recasting of the key actors and a shift in the diplomatic alliances are all key ingredients, and in the case of the Syrian civil war all four factors exist.

After five years, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and the displacement of millions, the Syrian people have experienced the deepest depth of despair. Whatever democratic hopes led to the rebellion, those dreams seem further away than ever. [Continue reading…]

Charles Lister notes: “Although excluded from the negotiations, JFS/AQ [Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra] has said behind the scenes that it’ll abide by a ceasefire so long as it exists 100%.”

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Russia, Turkey, Iran eye dicing Syria into zones of influence

Reuters reports: Syria would be divided into informal zones of regional power influence and Bashar al-Assad would remain president for at least a few years under an outline deal between Russia, Turkey and Iran, sources say.

Such a deal, which would allow regional autonomy within a federal structure controlled by Assad’s Alawite sect, is in its infancy, subject to change and would need the buy-in of Assad and the rebels and, eventually, the Gulf states and the United States, sources familiar with Russia’s thinking say.

“There has been a move toward a compromise,” said Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank close to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“A final deal will be hard, but stances have shifted.”

Assad’s powers would be cut under a deal between the three nations, say several sources. Russia and Turkey would allow him to stay until the next presidential election when he would quit in favor of a less polarizing Alawite candidate.

Iran has yet to be persuaded of that, say the sources. But either way Assad would eventually go, in a face-saving way, with guarantees for him and his family.

“A couple of names in the leadership have been mentioned (as potential successors),” said Kortunov, declining to name names.

Nobody thinks a wider Syrian peace deal, something that has eluded the international community for years, will be easy, quick or certain of success. What is clear is that President Vladimir Putin wants to play the lead role in trying to broker a settlement, initially with Turkey and Iran. [Continue reading…]

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Cease-fire to begin across Syria starting at midnight, Syrian army says

The Washington Post reports: A cease-fire will take effect across much of Syria from midnight Thursday, the Syrian army announced, in a deal that opposition officials hailed as a rare chance to tamp down violence in the country’s bloody war.

In a statement posted to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the military declared a “comprehensive” cessation of hostilities following “victories and advances” by Syria’s armed forces.

But it said the deal excluded “terrorist organizations” including the Islamic State and the country’s al-Qaeda affiliate, now an influential component of what remains of Syria’s armed opposition. The caveat suggested that the fighting could continue in the northwestern province of Idlib, now the rebels’ final bastion.

Their most important stronghold, east Aleppo, fell earlier this month to a coalition of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That victory is likely to be seen as a milestone in Syria’s five-and-a-half-year war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of Assad’s most important backers, announced earlier Thursday that agreements on a cease-fire have been reached with the Syrian government, Iran and Turkey. [Continue reading…]

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Russia, Iran ties with Taliban stoke Afghan anxiety

AFP reports: Allegations over Russia and Iran’s deepening ties with the Taliban have ignited concerns of a renewed “Great Game” of proxy warfare in Afghanistan that could undermine US-backed troops and push the country deeper into turmoil.

Moscow and Tehran insist their contact with insurgents is aimed at promoting regional security, but local and US officials who are already frustrated with Pakistan’s perceived double-dealing in Afghanistan have expressed bitter scepticism.

Washington’s long-time nemesis Iran is accused of covertly aiding the Taliban, and Russia is back to what observers call Cold War shenanigans to derail US gains at a time when uncertainty reigns over President-elect Donald Trump’s Afghanistan policy.

“(Russia’s) narrative goes something like this: that the Taliban are the ones fighting Islamic State,” top US commander in Afghanistan John Nicholson said recently, denouncing the “malign influence” of external powers.

“This public legitimacy that Russia lends to the Taliban is not based on fact, but it is used as a way to essentially undermine the Afghan government and the NATO effort and bolster the belligerents.

“Shifting to Iran, you have a similar situation. There have been linkages between the Iranians and the Taliban.” [Continue reading…]

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Trump’s Syria conundrum

Kim Ghattas writes: President-elect Donald Trump’s position on the conflict in Syria has been a confusing assortment of positions, the latest of which – his call for a safe zone in Syria – seems informed by his most recent conversations with candidates he interviewed for the position of secretary of state.

But all of his statements carry within them an inherent conundrum, two contradictory perspectives that will be hard to reconcile in Syria: his stated desire to work with Russia, or at least please Vladimir Putin, and his expected efforts to contain Iran.
Beyond the question of whether Trump will try to rip up the nuclear deal there is also the issue of Iran’s ascendant power in the region.

Trump made no secret of his admiration for Russia’s president during the US presidential campaign, and his willingness to deal with Vladimir Putin.

But Trump’s appointments of Lt Gen Michael Flynn as national security advisor, James Mattis as secretary of defence and Mike Pompeo as CIA chief, form a trio that looks geared for a fight with Iran. Tehran has played a pivotal role in Syria to keep Bashar al-Assad in power and crush the rebels in Aleppo. [Continue reading…]

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