They are still there after many years - that proves Syria cannot get rid of them.
It would not be irrelevant on the diplomatic field under any circumstances.
So it is relevant on the diplomatic field.
Military Events in Syria and Iraq Thread #4
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Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
An interesting map from what remains from the Rastan pocket:
Initially, they the same map would have been mainly green. with the pocket reaching the region close to Salamiyah, and the road Homs-Rastan-Hama being in the middle of the pocket. So, it has been reduced to 1/3 or 1/4 of the original size. Not many fighters remaining there.
Progress in Yarmuk is now slow. This is the IS, they do not plan to give up, and they probably don't even receive any offers in this direction. So, this needs some time.
Initially, they the same map would have been mainly green. with the pocket reaching the region close to Salamiyah, and the road Homs-Rastan-Hama being in the middle of the pocket. So, it has been reduced to 1/3 or 1/4 of the original size. Not many fighters remaining there.
Progress in Yarmuk is now slow. This is the IS, they do not plan to give up, and they probably don't even receive any offers in this direction. So, this needs some time.
No, it simply shows that Syria was, up to now, afraid to shoot them. Not much time ago they were simply unable. Russia has done a lot of work to improve their ability to defend itself, and it seems Russia thinks they are good enough now to start shooting.
You mean "Yes, Syria has been unable to get rid of them so far, that's why they are still there".
Odd that you look with favor on a Russian proxy attacking a nuclear power. Wasn't that supposed to be your big worry?
Just noting that your attempts to dismiss the damage done are far from universally accepted. Makes sense that Iran would be taking far more casualties than they generally admit to considering the scope of the equipment and infrastructure they've lost in all these attacks.
You think the S-400 effortlessly tracks stealth planes, or the Su-57 effectively evades radar, because Putin says so? If you're happy believing that, I'm happy too. India's not so happy though, at least with the latter claim. It's irrelevant though, because Assad is using Cold War equipment, Russia is staying out of the fray.
Nor is shooting down an F-16 that wasn't performing evasive maneuvers because it wasn't expecting anything, and that's one plane in 35 years.
with a video of a hit of a single shack as the proof of this heroic victory.
There's tons of videos and satellite photos of buildings and vehicles that no longer exist. One video should suffice for you though, because that's all it apparently takes to convince you that the Douma attacks were faked, and that Ukraine elected a Nazi party majority.
I'll admit that I might be slightly mistaken about Assad denying the attacks, and I'm having trouble now finding the right info on Google because of all the other redundant articles that keep coming up with the keywords I'm trying. If you have an official Iranian or Syrian source taking credit for the attacks, I'd like to see it. According to The Times of Israel, Assad was reportedly not even informed of the Iranian attacks until they were underway, and I don't see why Israel would feel the need to lie about it given all the dozens of times they've struck Assad for similar "errant" fire in the past. I haven't yet found any details on where the report was originally sourced from.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-may-10-2018/
As for the past info I mentioned on Russia sending bridge equipment to Syria for the recent attack on US-backed Kurds which was successfully repulsed, here's a pro-Russian source, although I originally read about the events on debka.com:
https://southfront.org/russia-ships-more-military-equipment-to-syria-photos/
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
Not attacking but retaliating. Which is completely legitimate.
I have not attempted to dismiss damage to Iran by Israeli attacks. I don't remember to have given any information about such damages. Claims about losses are, in general, quite suspect to be distorted by propaganda reasons.
I think that stealth is overestimated, even the Serbian old air defense has shot a stealth plane in the Kosovo war. They have later said "sorry, we didn't know that it was invisible".
I have not heard any claims made by Putin about these questions.
As far as I remember they have performed evasive maneuvers, and some have succeeded.
I have only https://www.facebook.com/syrianmili...04089.83004.349059891842066/1710999095648132/ which is not an official site.
If it was not an Iranian attack, they cannot inform Assad about it too.
There is no doubt that Russia sends bridge equipment, and builds bridges to the places where Syrian troops are already on the Eastern side, as they are near Deir Ezzor. But this bridge building was unrelated to that recent attack, because these villages were near the region where the Syrian army is already on the Eastern side.
It's pretty amusing to go to rt.com and see all the Russian trolls in the comments inventing excuses for why they couldn't stop Israel from conducting these strikes, and why Israel had an easy time destroying air defenses that attempted to interfere. Dozens of conspiracy theories pandering about, lots of whiny attempts to dismiss losses as insignificant. They have a real hard time swallowing the truth when a small Jewish country embarasses one of their allies operating Soviet equipment.
Meanwhile on Iran's presstv.ir, apparently Vladimir Putin is the 12th Imam, and the hordes of Shia marching on Jerusalem didn't plan on fighting their own battles, because the warmongers over there are wondering why Russia can't and won't deliver a divine victory for them.
I think that stealth is overestimated, even the Serbian old air defense has shot a stealth plane in the Kosovo war. They have later said "sorry, we didn't know that it was invisible".
I have not heard any claims made by Putin about these questions.
You traded Kosovo for one plane and had a big parade over it. Since it's such a good deal for you, how about you trade Crimea and Chechnya for another? The bomb bay doors on the F-117 were jammed open, that's why it popped up on radar. Once again, you're boasting about shooting down another plane designed in the 1970's. At this rate you'll be shooting down F-22's by 2050.
But yes, since Russia still can't successfully design and manufacture a working stealth plane after all these years and all the troves of stolen blueprints, even though we've been spoonfeeding all the technical details and theory to your universities this entire time, let's just pretend that stealth is a buzzword and a myth, kinda like the Terminator T-1000.
They were accustomed to not being shot at except in a couple of rare incidents which made the news much earlier. The F-16 was flying high to survey the target it had bombed, and got picked up on weapons radars as a result.
If it was an Assad attack, there'd be no reason for him not to claim it, because Israel retaliated regardless, including against the original rocket launcher and others that were preparing to launch, just as they've retaliated for Assad's troops firing into the Golan in the past. So if Assad did it, why is he hiding that from his supporters, who've been demanding that he strike?
Well apparently whatever bridges are currently in operation, they're not sufficient to serve the Assad regime's war against the Kurds east of the Euphrates, because this isn't the first incident in which Russians helped build bridges to start an attack. Might have to do with the terrain, might be that the existing enclaves were taken by helicopter or river boats, and the bridges are needed for heavy equipment. Whatever the case, Assad doesn't do anything in Syria without either Russian or Iranian approval, and whatever they've been doing to help him drive the US and its allies off the Iraqi border hasn't been working.
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
The Rastan pocket has been finished completely. All those who have claimed to continue fighting have given up too and are now somewhere in Idlib or so.
The progress in the Yarmuk pocket in Southern Damascus is, as expected, slow, but nonetheless steady.
The progress in the Yarmuk pocket in Southern Damascus is, as expected, slow, but nonetheless steady.
I don't know, I don't read rt. The Russians I read know that that Russia does not even try. There is some minor disagreement, some think it would be better if they would, but the fact that they simply don't do such things is not questioned.
Russians did not have a problem acknowledging that Israel has been able to fight Soviet equipment even during Soviet times. (At that time of course only informally.)
I did not trade at all. The Russians at that time were under a US puppet government, and did not trade too.
Fine, if they cannot even bomb without being shot, there is no big problem.
using a radar from the 50's. So, its a good time now to shot F-22 with Soviet time weapons.
Russians know that stealth technology is fine for fighting Papua-New Guinea, but not serious enemies. They are happy to see that the US spends some more billions developing stealth.
https://www.facebook.com/syrianmili...04089.83004.349059891842066/1710999095648132/ is a site of his supporters, so it was obviously not hidden from them.
For the simple reason that actually there is no such war. The two actions were both not by the Syrian army, but by some local players. You may not know this, but there are a lot of quite different local players, in particular forces of some tribes, on the Syrian side too. But fighting on the Syrian side does not mean to follow the Syrian command.
Against IS, yes. But there was no such thing against SDF.
They have not yet started to work seriously to drive out the US.
The bulk of the pro-Russian English commenters on Russia's main news portals seem utterly livid about the situation and very much perplexed that Russia doesn't get more involved, they feel it indicates weakness and cowardice.
Well your opinion doesn't seem to be shared by the majority of these commenters and trolls as mentioned above, who apparently feel that even aging Soviet equipment in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent ally should fare well against the American paper tiger and its allies. They think Israel is using sneaky Jew tricks to get the upper hand, including manipulating Mr. Putin himself.
Oh yes of course, jammed bomb bay doors have proven to be a truly insurmountable problem which will always prevent American stealth planes from being able to accomplish their missions.
Russia has lost more planes to technical malfunctions in the last year alone, than the US has lost in stealth fighters getting shot down in decades of operation. One plane in 30 years, you simply can't make a mountain out of that no matter how many different ways you count to 1. How would you even know the capabilities of a technology you're unable to duplicate, in order to write it off? If stealth didn't matter to the Russians, they wouldn't have invested billions of dollars in developing the Su-57 and calling it a "stealth" aircraft. The Su stands for "Sucks".
That page explicitly states that it doesn't represent or speak for the Syrian Arab Army. They can tell whatever story they want, where are the sources? Israel has published plenty of verifiable before and after photos. There were buildings and vehicles before the bombings, now they're missing and certain sites appear to be abandoned. Where are the Syrian photos and videos of the catastrophic damage they claim they did to Israel in the Golan?
The US stated that the confrontation was ended by contacting Russian officers under the mechanisms established by their deconfliction agreement. Russia hasn't said anything to contradict this claim. That means the forces that attacked the SDF and were successfully repulsed, were under the authority of the Syrian government and the Russian military.
You're insulting the hundreds of morons who've already died for your country trying to do what you say they weren't seriously trying. Oh and by the way, you're going to need far more than a few dozen rusty jets and some ragtag Shia militants if you intend to drive the US out of the region.
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
Now great progress in South Damascus. Most of what was controlled by IS in Hajar al Aswad, the Yarmuk camp and Yarmuk itself, has been completely liberated (or, as a variant, is in the process of clearing):
There was some ceasefire for evacuation either of a large part of the fighters with families, or only of families, children and elders. This is not completely clear, but given the large immediate progress after this, it seems plausible that some fighters have given up too. It is clear that some have refused to be evacuated, and they are now in Al Tadamon.
What one needs to drive out the US some experience exists. Remember the Vietcong? Also take a look at Afghanistan, how much the US controls there - and this without any support from wherever for those who don't like the US. A similar partisan movement has already appeared, and they have claimed that they have already attacked US forces.
There was some ceasefire for evacuation either of a large part of the fighters with families, or only of families, children and elders. This is not completely clear, but given the large immediate progress after this, it seems plausible that some fighters have given up too. It is clear that some have refused to be evacuated, and they are now in Al Tadamon.
They are clearly a different community from what I read in Russian.
The US is also losing a lot of planes to technical malfunctions or so in the last year alone. In the place where I read I see a lot of postings of type "some US plane crashed somewhere in Nevada or so", the reason for posting such things is that some of them think that the US likes to hide Syrian losses in such a way.
Its not that it does not matter completely, but it is certainly not the main thing. How much Russia has invested into improving stealth properties you cannot know. The point is simply that stealth will matter a lot if you fight some Third World country, which is a main issue for the US, but irrelevant for Russia.
The claim was about supporters of the SAA. If you don't believe them, your choice. I couldn't care less. I don't even care if there was damage at all. The political decision to shoot is much more relevant. This is a change of the rules of the game in this part. Whenever Israel attacks, there will be shot some rockets to the Golan heights. That's the point. If they don't do any damage, no reason for Israel to care about this. If they have damaged something, Israel will think twice if such an attack is worth doing it. I don't think they will stop attacks completely, but we will see. By the way, to give such a signal, they may have even intentionally hit nothing - simply to show that they are not afraid to react in such a way. Useful targets may be attacked next time.
No. It means those forces were successfully repulsed, and no conflict with SAA or Russian forces followed.
I don't care even about thousands of morons who have died for Germany wherever and whenever.
What one needs to drive out the US some experience exists. Remember the Vietcong? Also take a look at Afghanistan, how much the US controls there - and this without any support from wherever for those who don't like the US. A similar partisan movement has already appeared, and they have claimed that they have already attacked US forces.
I give you the information what Russia is doing or promising to do. This is quite predictable. If Russia will be attacked, they will retaliate. And the question if I like this or not is irrelevant, because nobody asks me for permission. Whatever you name "Russian proxies" will not start a nuclear war.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_military_aircraft_(2010–present)
I don't see any incidents in the last 9 years where a US stealth aircraft was damaged in any significant way, in any location, which could be explained by getting shot down in Syria or anywhere else. Plenty of Russian fighter aircraft shot down in that time. My point is that the losses are utterly insignificant- essentially only 1 plane in all of history, the earliest model ever designed - and thus America's stealth capabilities appear to be paying off going all the way back to the Gulf War or even Panama.
But India knows, and apparently they're very disappointed in the quality of the product, enough to essentially throw away everything they've invested in it thus far.
Israel has reportedly being using the F-35 in Syria to great effect, as has the US. Russian equipment thus far has only ever intercepted a single fighter whose technical malfunction left it exposed on radar, two decades ago. Not irrelevant.
You still haven't given any evidence that the Assad regime was even behind the attack, nor an explanation why it hasn't claimed as much while supposedly trying to establish a deterrent. Pointing to a Facebook fan page with no pictures to back anything up is like pointing to the village storyteller. All verifiable evidence thus far is consistent with an Iranian action launched without Assad's knowledge or permission, causing no damage of note to Israel, followed by a successful Israeli pounding of Syrian air defenses and Iranian military installations with no further retaliation from either. It seems likely that Iran was trying to commit a small symbolic act of resistance without triggering a harsh retaliation, and miscalculated Israel's reaction rather than achieving any form of deterrence or propaganda value. I doubt Israel grieves the spent jet fuel and bombs as much as your friends are grieving the things they lost as a byproduct.
There would have been no reason for the US to contact Russian officials and mention this to the public, if forces under Russian command/authority weren't involved.
What little equivalent Syria has to the Viet Cong is mostly busy fighting against your boys. If you think millions of Syrians are going to rise up and storm US positions after all the times you've gassed and barrel bombed them, you must be high on Krokodil. Russia for its own part can barely afford to keep 5000 staff and service members there. The only way you're forcing the US out is if you've got sex tapes for half of Congress, and those clowns win their re-elections.
How come you're always threatening nuclear war when the US contemplates hitting vital Assad regime targets?
And so Russian proxies retaliating against a nuclear power by attacking their forces on their home ground - that's ok with you as well.
You've suddenly acquired priorities far more important to you than the threat of nuclear war, apparently.
Not on purpose, maybe. Nobody is going to start one on purpose, except possibly Trump if he can consolidate his hold on power. But once launched war is not under anyone's control - shit happens.
According to you, Assad now has the capability of attacking Israel and defeating its forces, and the desire to do that - Israel is a nuclear power, and already paranoid. Whoever is setting Assad up to do that is risking nuclear war.
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Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
The operation in South Damascus is finished, everything in Damascus is now under control of the Syrian Army. Demining has started. The attacking forces are claimed to move to the South, Daraa. One can expect the next operation there.
Arabs are not known for high morals, no comparison with Vietnamese, they prefer to fight on the side of the winner. But actually the winner in the internal Syrian fighting is Assad. In East Qalamoun whole organizations have simply switched sides. Much more simply choose not to travel to Idlib but to use the amnesty, but instead of staying without a paid job as a soldier now join the Syrian army. So, the majority of fighters is now behind Assad. In general, the situation is not that different - there was even a government of South Vietnam, which had a quite serious army too, so not only US vs. Vietnamese. Of course, the whole fighting in that time was much more serious in numbers. But this much smaller scale is about everything - on all sides, the morals of the US army is also much lower today than at that time, too much snowflakes there too. The US army is not at all a serious enemy except if they own the airspace, and if they do they simply bomb everything.
So, the most interesting question is about air control, and this is mostly political. Actually, the US can bomb on the East side of the Euphrat without any danger. This will remain so for some time - as long as there are terrorist gangs not yet under open US support. During this time, the partisan movement will be organized and start to act similar to what is done in Afghanistan - so, the US forces are fine if they sit like ducks in their bases, or in air, but whenever they are on the ground out of the bases they risk. After this, it is a question of time until the US boots on the ground are essentially worthless, because the don't risk to leave the bases.
Then, I would guess, there will be a game of shifting the Syrian red lines similar to what we see on the Israeli front. You will not hear much about this in the media, and in fact the Israeli game is an exercise for the game against the US. The differences are, of course, important, but not one-sided. On the one hand, Israel is much weaker militarily as the US, even if from a technical point of view there is no difference. On the other hand, Israel is much more interested to stand, to defend its own red lines. They have no option to run away.
Who cares? You have introduced general Russian military aircraft accidents into the discussion, so we compare now general Russian military aircraft accidents with general US military aircraft accidents, everything else is irrelevant.
No. The SU shot by the Turks who was not prepared for this, the recent SU shot by some unknown special forces during a control flight over a peacekeeping zone, everything else was technical problems, not shots.
If they are happy with this, fine. The Russians have not tried to shot them, but have established rules of cooperation with the Israelis as well as the US to avoid any conflicts.
Feel free to believe the Marsians were behind this.
The US does not know if Russian forces are involved on the Syrian side. There are Russian instructors in a lot of Syrian army detachments, so if the want to attack the Syrian army they cannot know and have to contact.
There is no need for millions. The millions of dead Vietnamese people are the result of US bombing civilians, not of fighting.
Arabs are not known for high morals, no comparison with Vietnamese, they prefer to fight on the side of the winner. But actually the winner in the internal Syrian fighting is Assad. In East Qalamoun whole organizations have simply switched sides. Much more simply choose not to travel to Idlib but to use the amnesty, but instead of staying without a paid job as a soldier now join the Syrian army. So, the majority of fighters is now behind Assad. In general, the situation is not that different - there was even a government of South Vietnam, which had a quite serious army too, so not only US vs. Vietnamese. Of course, the whole fighting in that time was much more serious in numbers. But this much smaller scale is about everything - on all sides, the morals of the US army is also much lower today than at that time, too much snowflakes there too. The US army is not at all a serious enemy except if they own the airspace, and if they do they simply bomb everything.
So, the most interesting question is about air control, and this is mostly political. Actually, the US can bomb on the East side of the Euphrat without any danger. This will remain so for some time - as long as there are terrorist gangs not yet under open US support. During this time, the partisan movement will be organized and start to act similar to what is done in Afghanistan - so, the US forces are fine if they sit like ducks in their bases, or in air, but whenever they are on the ground out of the bases they risk. After this, it is a question of time until the US boots on the ground are essentially worthless, because the don't risk to leave the bases.
Then, I would guess, there will be a game of shifting the Syrian red lines similar to what we see on the Israeli front. You will not hear much about this in the media, and in fact the Israeli game is an exercise for the game against the US. The differences are, of course, important, but not one-sided. On the one hand, Israel is much weaker militarily as the US, even if from a technical point of view there is no difference. On the other hand, Israel is much more interested to stand, to defend its own red lines. They have no option to run away.
Because there is some potential of escalation. Of course, bombing some Syrian targets is much less dangerous than what Clinton wanted (a no fly zone, which means targeting Russian airforce). But, if Russians are hit, even if by accident, the answer would be a US ship sinking. What follows? If Trump reacts firing all those who have started this hitting, nothing else happens. But if not?
Yes, definitely. Everybody has a moral right of self-defense, even Russian proxies if attacked by the US. Not?
I don't think that this increases the threat of a nuclear world, as least not much. Given that the proxies do not even have nuclear weapons, the responsibility for such things resulting in a nuclear war is certainly on the US side. And, indeed, the right of self-defense has superiority over everything else. Else, MAD would be impossible.
What Assad is doing now is retaliating against Israeli attacks, which is something very different from attacking. And completely justified by self-defense. Then, Israel itself is not even endangered by Syria, because there is a well-known and very simple way to make peace with Syria: Return the occupied Golan heights.
Ok, go ahead and compare accident rate per hour of flight time. I can see I've wounded your pride, and now you need to go measure your pecker to make sure it's still adequate. Frankly I don't care about the length of your pecker or how many accidents Russia had, the point I've successfully made is that US stealth aircraft have the best flight records in combat of any comparable plane, despite being assigned to the most dangerous missions.
So you acknowledge that Russia fears the consequences of escalating with the US and Israel, even in Syria? If not, why wouldn't they get more involved protecting their friends?
No, I believe it was Persians. They're the only ones who would be expected to act in exactly the way the perpetrators did before, during and after the incident. Just a simple application of Occam's razor, comrade.
That's not what the US said. They didn't contact Russia to confirm that its forces weren't involved and never said anything to that effect; they said they contacted Russia in order to de-escalate the conflict after driving Russian-affiliated forces out of SDF territory. Better go measure your pecker again, with a proper US-made quality ruler.
Neither the Viet Cong nor US stats back up your assertions. US firepower was effective, but not enough for an easy win.
I don't care what fantasies you want to concoct about Vietnam, Alaska or any other American acquisition or occupation. If you're so certain the US is as weak as you think it is, and that the Arabs are so eager to fight for a bunch of drunken morons whose idea of weekend recreation is to pass out on the street and piss themselves, after those same drunken morons murdered and maimed their families... Then you surely must know the deadline by which American forces can be expected to receive the boot. So when is the tough talk going to turn into a real tangible achievement, rather than just another fake Russian TV report?
You were bragging before about how the US was trapped in their wee little bases like vermin, but then they subsequently took control of the Iraq-Syria border, blocked Iran out, took control of all the oil you need to finance Assad, and killed several hundred Russians who tried to throw them out. Let us hope your predictive skills are just as amazingly terrible as last time.
No, that's just what you'd personally demand of Russia's military, in order to salvage what little pride you have left in your ancestral Soviet heritage.
Nah, Assad had several opportunities to talk peace for Golan heights, but he didn't want to break his ties to Hezbollah and Iran, so he didn't bite. Now it looks like Israel is talking to Trump about official recognition of its territorial claim, so good luck boosting your national pride on that front.
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
LOL, you make nonsensical comparisons with a trivial anti-Russian agenda. Compare whatever you like, I have simply shown that your comparison was stupid, that's all, I'm not interested in participating in such nonsense myself.
Russia has reasonable politicians, and reasonable politicians will always do everything to minimize a lot of very different dangers. You may be proud to be ruled by guys who don't care about any consequences, in this case, Trump will be fine for you.
My sources have said, AFAIR, that they have contacted the Russians before the strike. Too lazy to search for this, the question is too unimportant for me.
No doubt, US firepower was and is effective murdering millions of mostly civilians, but not enough to win wars, not even against local tribes in Afghanistan.
First, there is no tough talk by any Russian politicians, I don't look Russian TV but what I have seen on youtube does not look like tough talk too. Tough talk you can find a lot in Russian forums, which is politically completely irrelevant.
What I see is what has been done in relation to Israel. This was, intentionally, a quite low-level escalation, first by shooting a plane, then by attacking the Golan Heights, both only as retaliation against Israeli attacks. Does that count as Israel "receiving the boot"? I would describe this in different words. And there already have been several claims from some partisan organization of unknown origin that they have attacked some US convoys. What I expect is that this will continue and become stronger, but it will not make it into the Western media at all. All that I expect up to now against the US is, beyond this partisan movement, steps against the US airforce similar to those done against Israeli airforce. That's all. So, as long as you don't name what has already happened "Israel has received the boot", you should not be afraid, the US will not receive any boot.
But, whatever will be done, it has a well-defined timeline. There will be, first, taken control of the Jordan border around Daraa, the IS remains in the desert West of Euphrat, and of some important parts of Idlib. Any escalation against the US will be done only after there is no terrorist left in Syria without open US support.
If there will be an escalation at all. This is far from clear, and a political decision. Putin is known to be very restrictive in such questions. If he thinks that the situation is uncomfortable enough for the US as it is, he may decide to do nothing. Some low-level partisan warfare against the occupation troops on the ground, fighting between Kurdish US puppets with Arab US puppets, not really a big problem for Russia. In fact, the US support for the Kurds is important for Russia, because it creates a confrontation with Turkey.
LOL. Iran has the land bridge it needs. It is the Syrian army which controls Abu Kamal, which gives a quite comfortable land route West of the Euphrates to the Al Qaim Syrian-Iraq border crossing, which is also under Syrian army control. So, Iran is not at all blocked out. Syria has, during the last year, retaken control of a lot of oil and gas fields, and has yet to work to rebuild all that the terrorists have destroyed during the last years, so Syria has already all it needs to recover economically. And the several hundreds of Russians remain an obscure fantasy.
Nonsense. If there is peace, Assad is free to establish ties whatever he likes, so some "breaking of ties" cannot be part of any peace talks at all. The problem is another one: Assad is not ready to give up the Golan Heights, and Israel not ready to give the occupied territory back to Syria. That's all, and this will not change.
I don't care about the Syrian national pride at all.
Sure And US proxies if attacked by Russian ones, and Israel if attacked by Russian proxies, and so forth.
But your earlier priority of avoiding nuclear war at all costs has obviously been set aside for the time being - you have new priorities.
That would be the Israeli side, not the US - the nuclear power you are happy to see attacked by Russian proxies is Israel.
Israel has its own view of its need for self-defense - that was its reason for occupying the Golan Heights in the first place, recall. So Israel regards defending the Golan Heights as self defense.
Meanwhile, MAD doesn't work unless both sides have nukes. Israel may not be restrained by MAD, here.
That's what they all say, and that's how they all start.
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
Read again what I wrote, "at all costs" is your fantasy. The issue came up in Clinton vs. Trump and was about a nuclear war of US with Russia, thus, the worst case of nuclear war. The right of self-defense played no role there, Clinton wanted to start a war with Russia by declaring and enforcing a no-fly zone (an act of unilateral aggression against Syria and Russia, both legitimately flying there).
Again you confuse self-defense (it was Israel which attacked, unprovoked and illegitimately, Syrian territory) with attacking.
Yes, and this "own view of its need for self-defense" in gross violation of international law is what creates a permanent war in this region.
Of course, MAD is between US and Russia. And sufficiently certain also between US and China.
That aggressors often lie that they act in self-defense is clear, but does not change the right of self-defense. Almost every violator of whatever almost every time tries to find such an excuse.
FUKUS probably being an exception, given that their excuse for bombing Syria does not even in theory give them such a right without UNSC permission.
And you were willing to sacrifice anything - competence, sanity, libertarian principles, whatever - for what you saw in your utter ignorance as an off chance that Trump might be less likely to cause a nuclear war. You said that was your overriding issue, above all others, for supporting Trump over Clinton.
No, I don't. Syria is making noises about attacking the Israeli forces currently occupying the Golan Heights, and that is ok with you because Israel started it.
I'm just amused at that distinction, which simply will not matter if a nuclear exchange is somehow launched, suddenly becoming a priority with you - after all your yak about the risk of a Clinton presidency, Assad vs Netanyahu ramping up to nuclear is no big risk because it's "retaliation" or "self defense" on the part of the Russian proxy.
And you are willing to risk nuclear war over it, just as Russia's supposedly justified threats and so forth in Syria are ok with you regardless of the nuclear risk.
um you do understand there are rather substantial differences between a territory that changed hands via treaty numerous times that germany has repeatedly formally stated it cedes or has no claim to it and a territory illegally unilaterally annexed?
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