RNA - Guess what? With the recapture of Deir Ezzur and so many other cities and towns by the Syrian Army and Iranian-Russia-Hezbollah allies, war-party Washington has finally come to terms with the reality that President Assad is here to stay.
To substantiate, an unnamed “senior US official” reportedly made a surprise visit to the capital city of Damascus earlier this week, meeting with Ali Mamlouk, the Syrian National Security Chief. Those familiar with the situation say the US official pressed American concerns in the war, in particular a number of Americans who are “missing” inside Syria, including CIA operatives who were on the ground – the same people who trained and weaponized Washington’s “moderate” terrorists.
However, this is the first official high level American visit to Syria since the war began in 2011. The US has since backed its favorite terrorists and demanded regime change, while refusing any contacts with the Syrian government or working for peace through dialogue. Mamlouk was said to have complained to the official about the unauthorized presence of US ground troops in Syria, though the official insisted the troops are just “advisory” and are fighting ISIL.
This is while US officials have continued to insist they will only accept regime change in Syria, but with many of the proxy forces defeated outright, the talks suggest that the War Party and its regional allies are starting to come to terms with the reality that the elected government in Damascus isn’t going to be militarily removed.
For sure, it never occurred to them in the early days of the regime-change campaign that this could one day become a reality, but an irrefutable reality it has finally become and there are perfect reasons as to why the American officials have started making surprise visits to Damascus:
Firstly, the United States’ diplomatic policy on Syria for now is no longer focused on making the war-torn country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, leave power. That’s also according to US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, in a departure from the Obama administration’s initial and public stance on President Assad’s fate. The view of the Trump administration is also in line with European powers, who used to insist Assad must step down.
Then again, that does in no way mean the regime changers might not try their luck at a later date. After all, they have built illegal military bases and occupied the city of Raqqa and several other places deep inside the Syrian territory for this particular purpose, and there are no objective guarantees that they will withdraw troops once ISIL is defeated. This reflects a measure of just realism, accepting the facts on the ground.
Secondly, Iran's Syria policy has focused on eliminating the terrorist group of ISIL. But for Israel, the greatest threat is from Iran, whose advisors and allies show no signs of leaving unless the mission is accomplished. Besides, Israel opposes any ceasefire in southern Syria. A senior delegation of Israelis has even started consultations with their US counterparts to begin planning a wider strategy to pressure Iran and Hezbollah – which are there at the official invitation of Iraqi and Syrian governments - to leave the Levant as the US-led war on Syria peters out. The plan is to make it less pleasant for Iran to stay than to leave.
Finally, Israel does not love Russia's military involvement there either, but can tolerate it. Iran is a different story. Russia, unlike Iran, has not anchored its state ideology in never recognizing the Zionist regime. Trump's team has also pursued cooperation with Russia in Syria, but has not sought such cooperation with Iran. Indeed, the US-led mission is to defeat ISIL in designated areas of Iraq and Syria and to set conditions for follow-on operations to increase regional presence and dominance through building permanent military bases and propping up Kurdish-Arab proxy forces. All this to appease Israel by making sure that the Russian-US cooperation does not entail acceptance of a permanent Iranian presence in Syria. In fact, the US is seeking to separate Russia from Iran in the Syrian battlefield in order to weaken its role in the country.
Another leg of this scheme should be seen in the Saturday resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri in a bid to lay political pressure on Hezbollah accompanied by the US sanctions against Lebanon's banking system and Israel's rather naive military threat to Lebanon. All this is meant to lay pressure on Tehran and its allies to start a new round of schemes that rely on political and economic leverage after the failure of the war-of-militancy initiative that started by the US and its allies in the region some 6 years ago. And part of this new plot is materialized through the advancement of the Syrian Democratic Forces in Southeastern Syria to come in control of the strategic city of Albu Kamal along the border with Iraq to open up a corridor from the Kurdish populated Northeastern Syria to the South-East that borders Jordan and cut off the corridor that has been opened by the Resistance Front from Iraq to the Mediterranean.
This is not the end of the US intervention in the region. It is just a transition from proxy warfare to another plot that is comprised of the use of a smaller number of selected proxy militants but combined with economic and political leverage. Now that the US and its allies have come to realize that they can't move Iranian allies, they intend to play all their remaining cards to receive as many concessions from Tehran and its allies as possible.
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