Satellite footage from Friday shows what appeared to be at least two Antonov AN-124s, among the world’s largest cargo planes, at the Hmeimim base with their nose cones open, apparently preparing to load up.

At least one cargo plane flew out on Saturday for Libya, a Syrian security official stationed outside the facility said.

Syrian military and security sources in contact with the Russians told Reuters that Moscow was pulling back its forces from the front lines and withdrawing some heavy equipment and senior Syrian officers.

But the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, said Russia was not pulling out of its two main bases and currently had no intention of doing so.

Some equipment is being shipped back to Moscow as are very senior officers from Assad’s military but the aim at this stage is to regroup and redeploy as dictated by developments on the ground, a senior Syrian army officer in touch with the Russian military told Reuters.

A senior rebel official close to the new interim administration told Reuters the issue of the Russian military presence in Syria and past agreements between the Assad government and Moscow were not under discussion.

“It is a matter for future talks and the Syrian people will have the final say,” said the official, adding that Moscow had set up communication channels.

“Our forces are also now in close vicinity of the Russian bases in Latakia,” he added without elaborating.

The Kremlin has said Russia is in discussions with the new rulers of Syria over the bases. Russia’s defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Reuters reporting.

A Russian source who spoke on condition of anonymity said discussions with the new rulers of Syria were ongoing and Russia was not withdrawing from its bases.

Reuters was unable to immediately ascertain how Syrian rebel leader Ahmad al-Sharaa – better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani – saw the long-term future of the Russian bases.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose 2015 intervention in the Syrian civil war helped prop up Assad when the West was calling for him to be toppled, granted Assad asylum in Russia after Moscow helped him to flee on Sunday.

Bases

Moscow has backed Syria since early in the Cold War, and had recognised its independence in 1944 as Damascus sought to throw off French colonial rule. The West long regarded Syria as a Soviet satellite.

The bases in Syria are an integral part of Russia’s global military presence: the Tartous naval base is Russia’s only Mediterranean repair and resupply hub, with Hmeimim a major staging post for military and mercenary activity in Africa.

Russia also has eavesdropping posts in Syria which were run alongside Syrian signals stations, according to Syrian military and Western intelligence sources.

The Tartous facility dates from 1971, and after Russia intervened in the civil war to help Assad, Moscow was in 2017 granted a free of charge 49-year lease.

Yoruk Isik, a geopolitical analyst based in Istanbul who runs the Bosphorus Observer, said that Russia was probably sending cargo planes out of Syrian via the Caucasus, and then on to the Al Khadim airbase in Libya.

On the highway linking the Hmeimim air base to the base in Tartous, a Russian convoy of infantry fighting vehicles and logistics vehicles could be seen driving toward the air base, a Reuters journalist said.

The convoy had stopped due to a malfunction on one of its vehicles, with soldiers standing by the vehicles and working to repair the issue.

“Whether it’s Russian, Iranian or the previous government who was oppressing us and denying us our rights … we don’t want any intervention from Russia, Iran or any other foreign intervention,” Ali Halloum, who is from Latakia and lives in Jablah, told Reuters.

At Hmeimim, Reuters saw Russian soldiers walking around the base as normal and jets in the hangars.

Satellite imagery taken on Dec. 9 by Planet Labs showed at least three vessels in Russia’s Mediterranean fleet – two guided missile frigates and an oiler – moored around 13 km (8 miles) northwest of Tartous.

Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Tartous, Syria and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; and Guy Faulconbridge in London; editing by Giles Elgood

Namely, the Washington Post reported Tuesday that Ukraine sent 150 first-person-view drones and 20 drone operators to Idlib about a month ago.

The New York Times reported earlier this month, moreover, that Ukraine and HTS were coordinating efforts including “countering Russian misinformation and providing medical assistance.” The reporting also highlighted Ukrainian intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov’s repeated suggestions that Ukraine would target its enemy Russia internationally.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius mused that Ukraine’s intentions for assisting HTS were obvious, writing that the war-torn nation was looking for other ways to “bloody Russia’s nose and undermine its clients.” In turn, a source told the New York Times that the HTS offensive in Syria was likewise timed in part to strike a blow against mutual enemy Russia.

Indeed, Russian officials have repeatedly complained that Ukraine and HTS collaborate within an intelligence or military capacity. As Russia’s special representative for Syria, Alexander Lavrentyev, told Russian News Agency TASS in November: “We do indeed have information that Ukrainian specialists from the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine are on the territory of Idlib.”

“Cooperation between Ukrainian and Syrian terrorists… is underway both when it comes to the recruitment of fighters to the Ukrainian army and to mounting attacks against the Russian and Syrian troops in Syria,” permanent Russian representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia likewise alleged in early December. “Far from concealing the fact of Ukraine’s support, the HTS fighters are openly flaunting this.”

The overall impact of Ukraine support to HTS ultimately seems unclear. On one hand, an anonymous Ukrainian official recently confirmed Kyiv-Idlib cooperation to Middle East Eye, but explained that their engagements ultimately did little to steer outcomes in the militia’s successful December attack. “We might claim less than a fraction of help for [the recent] offensive,” the Ukrainian official said. On the other hand, as Middle East Eye also reported, Turkish observers posit drones gave HTS forces an advantage over Syrian government fighters.

All matters considered, Ukraine’s assistance to HTS may partially be intended to accrue legitimacy with the West amid continued war with Russia.

“Ukraine’s alleged assistance to HTS forces is of limited military significance insofar as the SAA was inherently unprepared to resist the rebel offensive,” said Dr. Mark Episkopos, Quincy Institute Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor of History at Marymount University.

“But it is part of Kyiv’s broader effort to court Western support for its NATO accession bid by demonstrating to the US and other stakeholders its effectiveness in countering Russian interests around the world.”

Stavroula Pabst is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft.

This was only one year into the Syria uprising, with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremists groups getting increasingly involved. Russia’s fears described here rose to the extent that President Vladimir Putin, in his last address to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015, publicly called on the United States to join Russia in a military campaign against the common enemy of ISIS, al-Qaeda and other jihadists, the way the U.S. and the Soviet Union fought together against Nazism.

The Obama administration arrogantly rejected the proposal out of hand with some American commentators calling it “Russian imperialism.” Odd to invite your adversary to join your imperial adventure. 

In fact the United States was in alliance with al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and did not want to fight them. This became clear to me by Feb. 16, 2012, four months before this article was written, when I had the temerity to say so on the PBS NewsHour.

Russia’s unyielding support for Damascus throughout the 16 months of Syria’s escalating crisis has earned Moscow strong condemnation from Washington and other Western governments, but the reasons for Russia’s implacable position have never been fully explained by Moscow or its critics.   

Washington’s latest tension with Russia over Syria came last week in a face-to-face meeting between President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin. The week before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Russia’s assertion that it sold only defensive weapons to Damascus “patently untrue.”

That was after Clinton had accused Russia of shipping attack helicopters to Syria to crush the rebellion, a charge denied by Moscow. The New York Times then reported that Russia was only returning repaired helicopters sold to Syria decades ago.

In February, Susan Rice, the top U.S. diplomat at the U.N., used undiplomatically strong language to say the U.S. was “disgusted” by Russia’s veto of a Security Council resolution that would have condemned the Syrian crackdown.

The tough talk appears designed to embarrass Russia, especially after the recent upsurge in fighting and a string of grisly massacres blamed on Moscow’s client.

But until now Russia’s motives for defending Damascus have remained largely a subject of speculation, with the U.S. media seemingly disinterested in exploring it.

Against Regime Change

Russian officials say their position is based on an adamant opposition to regime change, particularly if it is led by Western military intervention, as in Libya. Moscow’s support for the Syrian regime has not changed though it has recently inched away from President Bashar Al-Assad leading it.

Analysts routinely cite three additional reasons for Moscow’s Syria policy: Russia’s millions of dollars a year in legal arms sales to Syria, Russian naval access to a port at Tartus on Syria’s Mediterranean coast and a desire to maintain its last ally in the Middle East.

But a clearer image of Russia’s stance comes into focus when put in the context of Moscow’s 30-year struggle against encroachment into its sphere of influence by militant Islam. The support at times given
these groups by the U.S. and Gulf Arab nations has opened a three-decade rift with Russia that began in Afghanistan and has run across the Northern Caucasus to the Balkans and now into Syria.

Russia is opposed to regime change in Syria not only on principle, but because the likely new regime would be headed by an Islamist government inimical to Russian interests, analysts and diplomats say.

“You can talk about arms sales, and the port, but the real thing that Russia is worried about is an Islamic government coming to power in Syria,” said a senior Western diplomat, who would only speak on condition of anonymity because of the current tension in Western-Russian relations.

“Russia is obviously concerned about Islamic regimes and perhaps most important of all it is terrified of chaos,” said Mark Galeotti, who chairs the Centre for Global Affairs at New York University. He said chaos and anarchy in the Middle East fuels the rise of Islamic extremism.

“Russia feels that the West doesn’t know how to handle regime change and that the outcome is almost invariably the kind of the chaos from which Islamic extremist movements arise,”  Galeotti said.

The dominant member of Syria’s opposition is the Moslem Brotherhood, suppressed for 40 years by President al-Assad and his father Hafiz al-Assad before him. The discord in the Syrian opposition arises largely from differences between the Brotherhood and secular liberal groups, the Western diplomat said. 

The emergence of al-Qaeda affiliated groups, responsible for several bombings, has added a menacing dimension.

“There is a general sense in Moscow that if Syria fell to extremists’ hands the whole Middle East could explode, which is also a security concern for the Russians,” Galeotti said.

Afghanistan Roots

Russia’s struggle against Islamism has its roots in the 1979 to 1989 Afghan conflict, in which the Soviet Union ultimately failed with helicopter gunships and ground troops to defeat militant mujahedeen, armed with weapons, cash and intelligence from Washington, Riyadh and Islamabad. Shoulder-fired American Stinger rockets came to symbolize the conflict as they blasted Soviet helicopters out of the sky.

Russian troops withdrew in defeat in February 1989. The Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991 with analysts pointing to the Afghan debacle as a primary cause. Out of the war emerged Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, which later came to wreak havoc on its former sponsors.

Washington policymakers typically employ a short-term foreign policy that later comes back to haunt them, analysts said. From the Islamists’ point of view it is hard to turn down American arms and financing when policies are aligned, and then implement its agenda once it is helped to seize power.

“Afghanistan [under the pro-Moscow regime] was a secular government, women were not forced to cover, they were given suffrage, yes it was a dictatorship, but the U.S. helped overthrow [it] and replaced it with a religious, dogmatic theocracy that destroyed Afghanistan,” said Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington.

“They are doing the same thing in Syria,” he said, predicting a failed state with uncontrolled, armed groups threatening the region. “You will see Afghanistan emerging in Syria next door to Israel and it will
be a huge, huge problem for the United States,” with Lebanon devolving into the equivalent of Pakistan, he said.

The unfortunate choice in Syria is between a Russian-backed secular dictatorship, which allows freedom of religion and protects Christians, Alawis and Sunni businessmen, or a U.S.- and Gulf-supported religious dictatorship with even fewer freedoms, al-Ahmed said. “They are repeating their history and Russia was both times on the other side,” al-Ahmed said.

The collapse of the Soviet Union after the Afghanistan defeat opened former Soviet republics in the Caucuses to an Islamic insurgency helped by the U.S. and the Gulf that still troubles Moscow.

“Chechnya is a classic example of what goes wrong when things go out of hand,” said  Galeotti. “The West thought they would be politically supporting nationalists, reasonable figures and they wind up creating a situation in which Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists and suicide bombers found a haven.”

In the Balkans, Russia defended its traditional Slavic and Orthodox Christian Serb allies, against separatist Croatians and Bosnian Muslims, whom the International Criminal Court accused of hosting an al-Qaeda unit known as the “El Mujahedeen.”

Dmitri Simes, a former adviser to President Richard Nixon who heads the Center for the National Interest in Washington, says he still hears “a lot of anger” from Russian officials over what “the Clinton administration did in the Balkans.”

He see a parallel in Syria where Russian officials are especially concerned about the fate of Christians if Islamists take over.

“They are concerned that Muslim fundamentalists, not just the Moslem Brotherhood, but people more extreme might come to power and it would be destabilizing for the region,” Simes said in a phone interview. “But as Syria is not a Russian neighbor a possible massacre of Christians would be seen as a greater problem.”

Russia might be willing to do a deal to try to ease out  al-Assad, which it sees as a liability, if the U.S. would offer something in return, such as an agreement on missile defense, he said. “If that was made clear to Russian officials perhaps Putin would be prepared to deal,” Simes said. “But he is simply told that his position is morally inferior.”

In the absence of a deal Moscow strongly fears Western military intervention to overthrow yet another Russian ally, Simes said, leading to chaos.

Moscow is willing to deal because it had “no great sympathy for Assad even before he was in full massacre mode” and is backing away, realizing that “a regime like Assad’s is not in the long run
sustainable,” said Galeotti.

“If it were clear that regime change were not on the cards, I think Russia would be a lot more willing as allies and interlocutors,” he said. “They are digging their heels in because they feel that the only
policy the West is willing to push is regime change.”

Moscow would ideally prefer “a controlled, steady reformist who could in some ways manage the process and not allow Islamic fundamentalists to dominate the narrative,” Galeotti said.

Russia thinks Washington’s motive to remove al-Assad is to weaken Iran at almost any cost,  Simes said.

The U.S. does not publicly discuss what it believes Russia’s motives are for backing Syria, leaving the impression that moral deficiency makes it complicit with Damascus.

The closest the U.S. has come to acknowledging Russia’s fear of an Islamist regime in Syria and America’s own apparent tolerance for it came from a cryptic remark by Clinton in the U.N. Security Council chamber last March with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sitting across from her.

“I know there are those who question whether Islamist politics can really be compatible with democratic and universal principles and rights,” Clinton said. “Our policy is to focus less on what parties call themselves than on what they choose to do.”

Lavrov did not respond.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

It is also further demilitarizing Syria by bombing every Syria military storage site in its reach. Air defense positions and heave equipment are its primary targets. For years to come Syria, or whatever may evolve from it, will be completely defenseless against outside attacks.

Israel is for now the big winner in Syria. But with restless Jihadists now right on its border it remains to be seen for how long that will hold.

The U.S. is bombing the central desert of Syria. It claims to strike ISIS but the real target is any local (Arab) resistance which could prevent a connection between the U.S. controlled east of Syria with the Israel controlled south-west. There may well be plans to further build this connection into an Eretz Israel, a Zionist controlled state  “from the river to the sea”.

Turkey has had and has a big role in the attack on Syria. It is financing and controlling the ‘Syrian National Army’ (previously the Free Syrian Army), which it is mainly using to fight Kurdish separatists in Syria.

There are some 3 to 5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey which the wannabe-Sultan Erdogan wants, for domestic political reasons, to return to Syria. The evolving chaos will not permit that.

Turkey had nurtured and pushed the al-Qaeda derived Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to take Aleppo. It did not expect it to go any further. The fall of Syria is now becoming a problem for Turkey as the U.S. is taking control of it. Washington will try to use HTS for its own interests which are, said mildly, not necessary compatible with whatever Turkey may want to do.

A primary target for Turkey are the Kurdish insurgents within Turkey and their support from the Kurds in Syria. Organized as the Syrian Democratic Forces the Kurds are sponsored and controlled by the United States. The SDF are already fighting Erdogan’s SNA and any further Turkish intrusion into Syria will be confronted by them.

The SDF, supported by the U.S. occupation of east-Syria, is in control of the major oil, gas and wheat fields in the east of the country. Anyone who wants to rule in Damascus will need access to those resources to be able to finance the state.

Despite having a $10 million award on its head HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani is currently played up by western media  as the unifying and tolerant new leader of Syria. But his HTS is itself a coalition of hardline Jihadists from various countries. There is little left to loot in Syria and as soon as those resources run out the fighting within HTS will begin. Will al-Golani be able to control the sectarian urges of the comrades when these start to plunder the Shia and Christian shrines of Damascus?

During the last years Russia was less invested in the Assad government than it seemed. It knew that Assad had become a mostly useless partner. The Russia Mediterranean base in Khmeimim in Latakia province is its springboard into Africa. There will be U.S. pressure on any new leadership in Syria to kick the Russians out. However any new leadership in Syria, if it is smart, will want to keep the Russians in. It is never bad to have an alternative choice should one eventually need one. Russia may well stay in Latakia for years to come.

With the fall of Syria Iran has lost the major link in its axis of resistance against Israel. Its forward defenses, provided by Hizbullah in Lebanon, are now in ruins.

As the former General Wesley Clark reported about a talk he once had in the Pentagon:

“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

Six of the seven countries mentioned in that famous memo have by now been thrown into chaos. Iran is -so far- the sole survivor of those plans. It will urgently have to further raise its local defenses. It is high time now for it to finally acquire real nuclear weapons.

The incoming Trump administration sees China as its major enemy. By throwing Syria (and Ukraine) into chaos the outgoing Biden administration has guaranteed that Trump will have to stay involved in the Middle East (and eastern Europe).

The massive U.S. ‘Pivot to Asia’ will again have to wait. This gives China more time to build its sphere of influence. It may well be the only power that has been a winner in this.

On the neocon list of ways to make the world safer for Israel, Iran originally occupied pride of place. “Real men go to Tehran!” was the muscular brag. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was persuaded to acquiesce in a less ambitious plan — to “do Iraq” and remove the “evil dictator” in Baghdad first.

As the invaders/occupiers got bogged down in Iraq, it seemed more sensible to “do Syria” next. With the help of “friendly services,” the neocons mounted a false-flag chemical attack outside Damascus in late August 2013, blaming it on President Bashar al-Assad, whom U.S. President Barack Obama had earlier said, “had to go.”

Obama had called such a chemical attack a red line but, mirabile dictu, chose to honor the U.S. Constitution by asking Congress first. Worse still for the neocons, during the first days of September, Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by persuading Syria to destroy its chemical weapons under U.N. supervision.

Obama later admitted that virtually all of his advisers had wanted him to order Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria.

Morose at CNN

I was lucky enough to observe, up-close and personal, the angry reaction of some of Israel’s top American supporters on Sept. 9, 2013, when the Russian-brokered deal for Syria to destroy its chemical weapons was announced.

After doing an interview in Washington on CNN International, I opened the studio door and almost knocked over a small fellow named Paul Wolfowitz, President George W. Bush’s former under-secretary of defense who in 2002-2003 had helped craft the fraudulent case for invading Iraq.

And there standing next to him was former Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut neocon who was a leading advocate for the Iraq War and pretty much every other potential war in the Middle East.

On the tube earlier, Anderson Cooper sought counsel from Ari Fleischer, former spokesman for Bush, and David Gergen, long-time White House PR guru.

Fleischer and Gergen were alternately downright furious over the Russian initiative to give peace a chance and disconsolate at seeing the prospect for U.S. military involvement in Syria disappear when we were oh so close.

The atmosphere on TV and in the large room was funereal. I had happened on a wake with somberly dressed folks (no loud pastel ties this time) grieving for a recently, dearly-departed war.

In his own interview, Lieberman expressed hope-against-hope that Obama would still commit troops to war without congressional authorization. I thought to myself, wow, here’s a fellow who was a senator for 24 years and almost our vice president, and he does not remember that the Founders gave Congress the sole power to declare war in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

The evening of Sept. 9 was a bad one for more war and for pundits who like to joke about “giving war a chance.”

Menendez: ‘I Almost Vomited’

The neocons would face another humiliation three days later when The New York Times published an op-ed by Putin, who wrote of growing trust between Russia and the U.S. and between Obama and himself, while warning against the notion that some countries are “exceptional.”

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an Israeli favorite, spoke for many Washington insiders when he said: “I was at dinner, and I almost wanted to vomit.”

Menendez had just cobbled together and forced through his committee a resolution, 10-to-7, to authorize the president to strike Syria with enough force to degrade Assad’s military. Now, at Obama’s request, the resolution was being shelved. 

Cui Bono?

That the various groups trying to overthrow al-Assad had ample incentive to get the U.S. more deeply involved in support of that effort was clear. It was also quite clear that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had equally powerful incentive to get Washington more deeply engaged in yet another war in the area — then, and now.

NYT reporter Judi Rudoren, writing from Jerusalem had the lead article on Sept. 6, 2013, addressing Israeli motivation in an uncommonly candid way. Her article, “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria,” notes that the Israelis have argued, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria’s at the time two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome.

Rudoren wrote:

“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win, we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”

US Arming ‘Moderate Rebels’

Instead of Tomahawks, Obama approved (or winked at) covert action to topple Assad. That did not work out very well. An investment of $500 million to train and arm “moderate rebels” yielded only “four or five still in the fight,” as then-CENTCOM commander Gen. Lloyd Austin explained to Congress on Sept. 17, 2015.

In late September 2015 at the U.N., Putin told Obama that Russia is sending its forces into Syria; the two agreed to set U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov off to work out a ceasefire in Syria; they labored hard for 11 months.

A ceasefire agreement was finally reached and approved personally by Obama and Putin. The following list of events beginning in the fall of 2015 is instructive in considering how the revived conflict might work out (probably minus U.S.-Russian talks), if the ongoing jihadi attack on Syrian forces continues for more than a few weeks.

Does 2015 Chronology Foreshadow 2025?

Sept. 28, 2015: At the U.N., Putin tells Obama that Russia will start air strikes in Syria; invites Obama to join Russia in air campaign against ISIS; Obama refuses, but tells Kerry to get together with Lavrov to “deconflict” U.S. and Russian flights over Syria, and then to work hard for a lessening of hostilities and political settlement in Syria — leading to marathon negotiations.

Sept. 30, 2015: Russia starts airstrikes both against ISIS and in support of Syrian forces against rebels in Syria.

Oct. 1, 2015 to Sept. 9, 2016: Kerry and Lavrov labor hard to introduce ceasefire and some kind of political settlement. Finally, a limited ceasefire is signed Sept 9, 2016 — with the explicit blessing of both Obama and Putin.

Sept. 12, 2016: The limited ceasefire goes into effect; provisions include SEPARATING THE “MODERATE” REBELS FROM THE, WELL, “IMMODERATE ONES.”  Kerry had earlier claimed that he had “refined” ways to accomplish the separation, but it did not happen; provisions also included safe access for relief for Aleppo.

Sept. 17, 2016: U.S. Air Force bombs fixed Syrian Army positions killing between 64 and 84 Syrian army troops, with about 100 others wounded — evidence enough to convince the Russians that a renegade Pentagon was intent on scuttling the ceasefire and meaningful cooperation with Russia AND FELT FREE TO DO SO AND THEN MERELY SAY OOPS, WITH NO ONE BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE!

Sept. 26, 2016: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said:

“My good friend John Kerry … is under fierce criticism from the U.S. military machine. Despite the fact that, as always, [they] made assurances that the U.S. commander in chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia (he confirmed that during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin), apparently the military does not really listen to the commander in chief.”

Lavrov went beyond mere rhetoric. He specifically criticized Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford for telling Congress that he opposed sharing intelligence with Russia, “after the agreements concluded on direct orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama stipulated that they would share intelligence. … It is difficult to work with such partners. …”

Sept. 29, 2016: KERRY’S HUBRIS-TINGED FRUSTRATION: Apparently Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, et al. had told Kerry it would be easy to “align things” in the Middle East.

And so, this is how Kerry started off his remarks at an open forum arranged by The Atlantic magazine and the Aspen Institute on Sept. 29, 2016. (I was there and could hardly believe it; it made me think that some of these stuffed shirts actually believe their own rhetoric about being “indispensable.”) Kerry said:

“Syria is as complicated as anything I have ever done in my public life in the sense that there are probably about six wars going on at the same time: Kurds against Kurds, Kurds against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sunni, Shia, everybody against ISIS, people against Assad, Al-Nusra…this is a mixed up sectarian and civil war and strategic and proxies, so it is very difficult to be able to align forces.” 

Ultimately, Syrian, Russian and Hezbollah forces beat back the jihadists and liberated Aleppo and other parts of the country in spite of U.S. opposition and are being called upon again now to do the same.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).