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Bible Quotation For Today/So will it be also with this evil generation.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 12/43-45: "‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting-place, but it finds none. Then it says, "I will return to my house from which I came." When it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So will it be also with this evil generation."

Bible Quotation For Today/Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth
Book of Revelation 06/09-17: "When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; they cried out with a loud voice, ‘Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?’ They were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number would be complete both of their fellow-servants and of their brothers and sisters, who were soon to be killed as they themselves had been killed. When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?".

Question: “How should a Christian view gun control?”
Answer: The recent shootings across the United States have caused much heartache. The senseless and tragic incidents have also renewed the intensity of discussion regarding American gun laws. Politicians, sportsmen, and theologians have all weighed in on the issue of gun control. Guns are readily available in the U.S., and ownership is protected by the Constitution. How should a Christian view gun control? What does the Bible have to say that would apply to gun control?
The Bible was written long before the invention of any type of gun, so the phrase “gun control” will not be found in Scripture. However, the Bible records many accounts of wars, battles, and the use of weapons. Warfare is presented as an inevitable part of living in a fallen world (Mark 13:7; James 4:1), and weaponry is a necessary part of warfare. Weapons in the Bible were also used for personal protection. In some parts of Israel, robbers were common (see Luke 10:30), and many people carried weapons when they traveled. Carrying a weapon for self-defense is never condemned in the Bible. In fact, it was mentioned in a positive light by Jesus Himself on one occasion (Luke 22:35-38).
Christians are called to submit to governing authorities, and they are to obey the laws of the land (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-17). This would have to apply to gun laws, too. If American gun laws change, American Christians should submit to these changes and work through democratic means toward any desired alternatives. The Bible does not forbid the possession of weapons, and neither does it command such possession. Laws may come and go, but the goal of the believer in Jesus Christ remains the same: to glorify the Lord (1 Corinthians 10:31).
Another biblical principle to consider is that “all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Jesus said this to Peter when Peter tried to mount an imprudent “defense” of Jesus against the mob that had come to arrest Him. Peter’s actions were not only futile against such a “large crowd armed with swords and clubs” (verse 47), but his rash behavior also belied Jesus’ submissive attitude (verse 50) and worked against the fulfillment of Scripture (verse 54). There is “a time for war and a time for peace” (Ecclesiastes 3:8), and Peter confused the two.
Christianity supports personal freedom. Romans 14:1-4 indicates that, when Scripture does not clearly address a particular issue, there is freedom for individual choice. America has historically embraced the concept of personal freedom that resonates with this principle, and the founding documents guarantee wide freedoms regarding firearms. Some point to Matthew 5:9, in which Jesus pronounces a blessing on the peacemakers, and apply it to the issue of gun control. The idea is that guns are antithetical to peace. This may be more of a philosophical or political idea than a theological one, however. There is nothing theologically, or even logically, that links guns to a lack of peace; sometimes, guns help maintain civil peace.
Debates over whether to control guns or how much to control them depend largely on political and philosophical arguments, not moral ones. This is not to say that there is no moral component to the issue. Obviously, the gun itself is amoral, an object that can be used for good or for evil. More important is the morality of the person wielding the gun, and that is too often the missing consideration in the gun control argument. The fact that some sinners use guns to commit sin does not mean guns are the problem. Sin is the problem, and that’s a moral and spiritual issue. Since the very beginning of humanity, people have been killing other people, with and without weapons (see Genesis 4). Taking a certain weapon out of circulation might make murder more difficult but by no means impossible.
As far as the Bible is concerned, the use of guns is a matter of personal conviction. There is nothing unspiritual about owning a gun or knowing how to use one. There is nothing wrong with protecting oneself or loved ones, even if it involves the use of weapons. We need not pretend there is never a need for guns, but pointing a gun at a person should always be a last resort. We should seek to neutralize threats without violence whenever possible.
So, how should a Christian view gun control? With the authority God has entrusted to it, the government has the right to allow or disallow gun ownership to whatever degree it deems right. We, as citizens, are called to submit to whatever gun control laws the government institutes. This is not, however, a statement on the wisdom of gun control. There are good reasons to allow law-abiding citizens to own guns. Ultimately, guns are not the problem. Sinful people are the problem.
Recommended Resources: Politics – According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture by Wayne Grudem and Logos Bible Software.
**GotQuestions.org

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 03-04/15
The best reason for Iran deal? The West will learn where to drop bombs/ALEXANDER MCCOY, JACQUELINE LOPOUR/J.Post/ REUTERS/ October 03/15
Obama: Putin's intervention in Syria is 'a recipe for disaster'/Ynetnews/News Agencies/October 03/15
Misanalysis Makes a Mess/Robert Satloff and James F. Jeffrey/American Interest/October 03/15
Pentagon Overhauls Anti-ISIL War Plans/Middle East Briefing/October 03/15
Putin and Obama Summit: More Progress Than Expected/Middle East Briefing/October 03/15
Obama Lost the Middle East While Putin is Building His Own Trap There/Middle East Briefing/October 03/15
How to Reach a Transitional Truce in Syria/Middle East Briefing/October 03/15
Sweden: 'No Apartments, No Jobs, No Shopping Without a Gun'/Ingrid Carlqvist/Gatestone institute/October 03/15
Will America provide new support for Syrian rebels against ISIS/Phil Stewart, Arshad Mohammed and Julia Edward/Reuters/October 03/15
‘Managed transition’ vs. ‘management of savagery’ in Syria/Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/October 03/15
America invited Iran to the Arab world/Abdullah Hamidaddin/Al Arabiya/October 03/15
Russia in Syria: Putin Fills Strategic Vacuum in the Middle East/Jonathan Spyer/The Australian/October 03/15

Report: Regional Escalation Obligates Lebanese Settlement to Avert Dangers
Naharnet/October 03/15/The escalation in the conflict in Syria with Russia launching air strikes in the country has raised tensions in the region and concerns that Lebanon may be affected by them, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday. A prominent leader working on a government settlement told the daily: “The negative aspect of the tensions in Lebanon is that they coincide with great foreign escalation.” “This will provide a suitable environment for further escalation, which will consequently jeopardize the situation in Lebanon,” he explained. “The only way to avert the regional fire is to fortify the political scene,” he continued. “This therefore necessitates a settlement that would organize the political situation in Lebanon until the election of a new president,” he stressed to the daily.Meanwhile, observers noted to al-Joumhouria that next week may be “decisive” in Lebanon regarding the possibility of easing tensions. “Otherwise we may be faced with more complications and enter a phase of political escalation,” they warned.“The outline of a political settlement could emerge next week if serious efforts are exerted to ensure its success,” they added. In the meantime, various diplomatic efforts have been made to safeguard stability in Lebanon, reported al-Joumhouria. Political tensions in Lebanon have been high in recent months over numerous disputes, most notably over the ongoing presidential vacuum, security appointments and promotions, trash disposal crisis, and obstruction of the work of cabinet and parliament in connection to these pending issues. National dialogue, under Speaker Nabih Berri's sponsorship, was kicked off in September in an effort to defuse the tensions.

Shehayyeb: Garbage Plan to Be Implemented with Agreement of Akkar, Bekaa, Naameh Residents
Naharnet/October 03/15/Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb stressed that efforts are ongoing to find solutions to the waste disposal crisis, reported al-Liwaa newspaper on Saturday. He told the daily: “The trash plan will be implemented after reaching an understanding the with the residents of Akkar, Bekaa, and Naameh.” “There is no need to use force against protesters to reopen the Naameh landfill, or transport waste ro the Srar landfill, or dedicate more than a few regions in the Bekaa for such purposes,” he added. “There are no problems in reopening the Naameh landfill for seven days and for resorting to dumping waste at the Sidon dumpsite,” the minister stated. He revealed that the necessary decrees to dedicate funds for the implementation of his garbage plan have been signed. Revenue from the mobile phone network will be used. Shehayyeb had held talk on Friday with Prime Minister Tammam Salam on the latest efforts to reach a solution to the trash crisis. Salam demanded “quick technical, legal and administrative measures” to facilitate the immediate implementation of an emergency waste management plan devised by Shehayyeb and a team of experts. His recommendations were voiced during a broad meeting at the Grand Serail with Shehayyeb, Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq, the head of the Council for Development and Reconstruction, and a group of consultants, lawyers, experts and contractors in charge of running garbage dumpsites. Shehayyeb announced that another meeting will be held Monday at the Grand Serail to “assess the practical steps that are being implemented at the Srar site (in Akkar) and the possible steps at the al-Masnaa site” in the Bekaa. The minister's proposal calls for the reopening of the Naameh landfill whose closure on July 17 sparked the country's unprecedented garbage crisis. It also envisions converting two existing dumps, in Srar and the eastern border area of al-Masnaa, into “sanitary landfills” capable of receiving trash for more than a year. After he announced his plan earlier this month, the civil society and local residents of Akkar, Naameh, Majdal Anjar, and Bourj Hammoud protested against the step. Experts have urged the government to devise a comprehensive waste management solution that would include more recycling and composting to reduce the amount of trash going into landfills. Environmentalists fear the crisis could soon degenerate to the point where garbage as well as sewage will simply overflow into the sea from riverbeds as winter rains return.

Report: Berri May Postpone Dialogue over Political Tensions
Naharnet/October 03/15/The necessary conditions to hold a new national dialogue session do no seem available given the mounting political tensions in Lebanon, reported al-Joumhouria on Saturday. Political circles noted that given the current situation, Speaker Nabih Berri may postponed the upcoming all-party talks. The sessions are scheduled for October 6, 7, and 8.“The upcoming hours will be decisive in determining whether they will be held or not,” they remarked. The speaker launched in September national dialogue among the rival political powers in an effort to ease tensions over a number of pending problems, most importantly the deadlock over the election of a new president and resolving the dispute over security appointments and promotions. On Tuesday, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun threatened to suspend his party's participation in the talks in the wake of media reports that he had agreed to a settlement over the appointments file. “We will no longer attend the national dialogue sessions if the situation persists,” he had declared. Ministers representing Aoun have been boycotting cabinet sessions over their insistence to agree on a working mechanism for the government in the absence of a president and the promotion of army officers.Their boycott has paralyzed the cabinet, adding to the country's woes, which started with the vacuum at Baabda Palace following the end of President Michel Suleiman's six-year tenure in May 2014. Ongoing disputes between the March 8 and 14 camps over a compromise candidate have thwarted the polls. Parliament has also been paralyzed. The last time it met was when MPs extended their own term in November.

Wanted Terrorist Arrested in Baalbek
Naharnet/October 03/15/The Internal Security Forces announced on Saturday the arrest of a wanted Lebanese terrorist in the eastern city of Baalbek. A communique issued by the ISF general-directorate said a police unit apprehended 33-year-old M.R., known as Abu al-Aqraa, after monitoring his movements. The suspect is wanted on several arrest warrants for among others committing terrorist acts, belonging to terrorist organizations and forming an armed gang, it said. The police unit found a forged ID with him, the communique added.

Clothes Soaked in Millions of Dollars Worth of Cocaine Seized at Airport
Naharnet/October 03/15/Customs agents at Rafik Hariri International Airport discovered on Saturday an attempt to smuggle drugs to Lebanon from Brazil, reported the National News Agency. It said that the drugs were seized from a Bulgarian traveler arriving from Brazil via Addis Ababa. The traveler used an innovative way of concealing the weapons whereby he soaked clothes he was carrying in his luggage in possibly a liquid form of cocaine. The clothes, packed in two luggages, weighed around 40 kilograms with an estimated customs cost of LL200 million. Agents at the airport said that the confiscated goods would cost much more in the market. The suspect has since been referred to the concerned authorities for investigation.

Families of Lebanese Hostages Back into Action
Naharnet/October 03/15/The relatives of the servicemen taken hostage by jihadists last year have warned to take escalatory measures starting Sunday to pressure the authorities into bringing the captives back home. In a statement they released on Saturday, the families accused the authorities of neglecting the cause of the soldiers and policemen who were taken hostage by the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front when they overran the northeastern border town of Arsal in August 2014. They said they would resort to “painful escalatory measures to reprioritize their cause.”The statement said that the relatives would start taking action on Sunday and will announce their next move from downtown Beirut's Riad al-Solh square. They appealed to “supporters” and people with “conscience” to stand by their side at 12:00 pm Sunday. The families have been blocking roads and holding sit-ins since their loved-ones were taken captive following bloody gunbattles between the Lebanese army and the jihadists more than a year ago. A few of the captives have been released and four were executed. Negotiations aimed at their release have stalled.

Ibrahim Meets Pope in Vatican, Discusses Presidential Vacuum
Naharnet/October 03/15/General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim held talks on Saturday with Pope Francis I in the Vatican. Ibrahim, accompanied by a delegation from the General Security directorate, discussed with the pontiff the situation of Christians in the region. They also addressed during their ten-minute meeting the vacuum in the presidency in Lebanon, said a General Security statement. The pope showed interest in the situation in Lebanon and Ibrahim presented him with an icon that dates back to the 18th century. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Ongoing disputes between the rival March 8 and 14 camps over a compromise candidate have thwarted the polls.

2 killed, 2 wounded in Jerusalem attack
Yael Freidson, Rotem Elizra, Elior Levy, Omri Ephraim/Ynetnews/10.03.15
Baby among wounded in attack near Lions' Gate; attacker stabbed one victim, shot at group of tourists before being neutralized by police. Two Israeli males were killed while a two-year-old baby, as well as a 22-year-old woman, were wounded Saturday night by a Palestinian attacker in the Old City of Jerusalem near Lions' Gate. The two males were evacuated to hospital in critical condition and later declared dead. The baby was lightly wounded and the woman was in moderate-serious condition. The baby and its parents were on their way to pray at the Western Wall. One female witness manage to escape the scene and alert security forces located some 50 meters from the scene. A police officer rushed to the area where he shot and killed the attacker. A police spokesperson said the attacker, 19-year-old Mohand Halabi from Ramallah, first stabbed the father of the baby and took his gun, which he used to fire at group of nearby tourists until he was neutralized. In a Facebook post on Friday, Halabi said he believed that the third Intifada had already begun. Hamas called the attack "heroic" and said "We support and welcome any resistance activity that harms Israeli soldiers and settlers. Our people in the West Bank are ready to die, to sacrifice themselve to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque."Police Chief of the Jerusalem District Moshe Erdi arrived at the scene and told the media that the attacker was neutralized within two minutes and that such incidents are "part of the reality of living in the Old City."
The new attack comes after a string of incidents that have increased tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank including a shooting attack that killed two Israelis on Thursday in front of their children. That attack was followed by a night of "price tag" attacks in revenge. This is a developing story.

Palestinian Shot Dead after Killing Israeli, Wounding 3
Naharnet/October 03/15/Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian wielding a knife and a gun after he attacked four Israelis, killing one of them, in the Old City of Jerusalem Saturday, rescue services and police said. The attack comes amid high tensions after clashes recently between police and Palestinians at the city's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound and the murder in the West Bank of a Jewish settler couple in front of their young children. Among the three wounded were a two-year-old child, a woman said to be in serious condition and a third person, whose condition was described as grave. Police did not immediately explain the circumstances of the attack.

Pressure grows on Netanyahu to act with 'iron first' in light of Palestinian terror onslaught
JPOST.COM STAFF/LAHAV HARKOV/10/03/2015
Israel's political establishment reacted to Saturday night's stabbing attack by a Palestinian in Jerusalem's Old City, with calls for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to react decisively. The attack on Saturday resulted in the death of two Jews and the wounding of three others. It came just two days after two Israelis were shot and killed while driving through the northern West Bank, near the settlement of Itamar. On Friday, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, a member of the security cabinet, said the government is not doing enough to fight terrorism. "It's true that this is a nationalist, right-wing, homogeneous government, but there are some problems. For example, the commanders in the field don't have enough backing...The soldiers have to know that they're there to fight and protect the citizens," she told Channel 2 News. Shaked added that Prime Minister Netanyahu believes in two states and Bayit Yehudi considers that a mistake, and that annexation of Area C must be on the table. "We need to do things that will hurt [the Palestinians], so they understand [terrorism] doesn't pay," she added, saying that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is directly responsible for the recent wave of terrorism.
On Saturday night, Economy Minister Arye Deri called to support the IDF and security forces in their fight against terrorism and said ministers should not attack Netanyahu while he's still abroad, because such behavior is "outrageous and intolerable."Deri added that Arab MKs are fanning the flames and cynically using the situation to agitate. Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel said that the wave of terror against "Jews who are only guilty of being Jewish" is growing. "We saw in recent weeks how violence in the streets of Jerusalem is increasing and the writing was on the wall. This was the direct result of continued incitement by the Palestinian Authority...I call on the prime minister to act with an iron fist against terror, and with his second hand, give an appropriate Zionist response and stop the settlement free in Judea and Samaria," he stated. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) said "Netanyahu lost control over the security of Israeli citizens and Jerusalem. His government is showing weakness and a total failure in security and the national mission of protecting Jerusalem's security." Security does not come from speeches, Herzog added. "This government doesn't have a plan to fight terrorism, and that's clear to all Israeli citizens," he said. "The despicable terrorists must be punished to the full extent of the law but the government must have a policy and take action, not just talk and declarations and weak slogans." Yisrael Beytenu chairman MK Avigdor Liberman wrote on Facebook: "This is what losing control and deterrence looks like."
MK Eyal Ben-Reuven (Zionist Union) said the deteriorating security situation is beginning to look like an Intifada. "Security forces must act forcefully to stop the wave, but we must act forcefully with good judgment to make sure it doesn't cause an escalation," he added.
Ben-Reuven also said that only a diplomatic initiative can bring a long-term solution. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat called for the arrest of those guilty of "incitement," which he blamed for the Palestinian stabbing attack that left two Israelis dead and three others wounded in the Old City on Saturday.
Barkat said that the government needed to take "drastic" measures, though he would not specify the nature of those measures. The mayor said that the Palestinian Authority was responsible for inciting "lone wolf" attackers by failing to condemn other terrorist atrocities like Thursday's fatal shooting of a Jewish couple near the West Bank settlement of Itamar.

British PM: Russia Backing 'Butcher' Assad
Naharnet/October 03/15/Russia is backing "butcher" President Bashar al-Assad with airstrikes that are often not aimed at Islamic State (IS) fighters in Syria, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said Saturday. Cameron said Russian forces were "making the situation worse" as they pressed a bombing campaign in the IS stronghold for a fourth day. His comments came as British intelligence forces observed that only one in 20 Russian airstrikes were hitting IS targets, according to Britain's defence minister. "It's absolutely clear that Russia is not discriminating between ISIL and the legitimate Syrian opposition groups and, as a result, they are actually backing the butcher Assad and helping him and really making the situation worse," said Cameron, using an alternative acronym for IS. "They have been condemned across the Arab world for what they have done and I think the Arab world is right about that."
Repeating calls for regime change in Syria, the British prime minister added: "We should be using this moment now to try to force forward a comprehensive plan to bring political transition... because that is the answer for bringing peace to the region."Cameron's comments, delivered ahead of his Conservative Party's annual conference in Manchester, northern England, echo those of his defence minister, Michael Fallon, published Saturday in the Sun newspaper. British intelligence services observed that only five percent of Russian air strikes had attacked the IS group, with most "killing civilians" and Free Syrian forces fighting Assad, Fallon told the tabloid. He said that Russia's intervention had further "complicated" the crisis, while suggesting that Britain should extend its own bombing campaign -- currently only operational against IS in Iraq -- to Syria. "We're analysing where the strikes are going every morning," he told the paper. "The vast majority are not against IS at all."The United States has also accused the Kremlin of trying to buttress Assad, with President Barack Obama describing the airstrikes that began Wednesday as "a recipe for disaster".

Saudi Arabia arrests Syrian man over bomb plot
By Staff writer | Al Arabiya News/Saturday, 3 October 2015/The Saudi Interior Ministry on Saturday said it arrested a Syrian man and Filipina woman in Riyadh on charges of obtaining material in preparation for a suicide bomb attack, Al Arabiya News Channel reported. The man had planted several explosive devices around his home in the al-Fayhaa neighborhood in the Saudi capital. It is believed he was intending for security forces to enter his home, before setting off the bombs.It took security forces 12 hours to dismantle the explosive devices and evacuate the premises. The material seized inside the Syrian man's home. (Al Arabiya) The man, named Yasser Mohammad al-Brazy, is believed to have forced the Filipna, named Lady Joy, to live with him after she ran away from her sponsor a year ago. Brazy is also believed to have forced her to convert to Islam. It is believed that Joy was given the job of sewing explosive belts to be used in the planned suicide mission. The belts have now been seized by authorities. The ministry also announced on Saturday that it had uncovered a base in al-Jazira district of Riyadh used to house and equip suicide bombers. On Monday, the Interior Ministry announced it had intercepted an ISIS cell during four simultaneous operations in the Saudi capital Riyadh and the eastern city of Dammam. In recent months, militants have carried out several attacks on mosques and security forces in the kingdom which have killed dozens of people.

Russia warned U.S. ‘ahead of latest Syria strikes’
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News/Saturday, 3 October 2015/Russia had warned the United States ahead of launching its air strikes and recommended that the United States stop its own flights in areas where Russia’s air force was operating, a senior Russian army official said on Saturday. Andrei Kartapolov from the Russian army’s General Staff, said Russia’s Air Force had targeted more than 50 Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) objects in its air strikes. Kartapolov added in a statement that Russian intelligence “shows that militants are leaving areas under their control. Panic and desertion have started in their ranks… Some 600 mercenaries have abandoned their positions and are trying to find their way into Europe.”Russia would also increase its air strikes on terrorists in Syria, the official said. “We will not only continue strikes..., we will also increase their intensity,” said Kartapolov, according to RIA news agency.
“The Americans told us during discussions, that no one apart from terrorists were in that region,” Kartapolov said, referring to the area where Russia’s Air Force was active, according to Interfax. Another defense ministry official, Igor Konashenkov, said earlier that Su-34 and Su-24M fighters took part in strikesn over Syria. Sunday marked the fourth day of air strikes by Moscow in support of President Bashar al-Assad which have dramatically escalated foreign intervention in Syria.
Strong criticism
Russia’s air campaign in Syria, where a U.S.-led air coalition and fighters on the ground from regional states are already entangled in the four-year-old civil war, has drawn strong criticism from the United States and its allies, including Saudi Arabia and the UK. Only one in 20 Russian air strikes in Syria are aimed at ISIS targets, Britain's defence secretary said on Saturday, warning that Vladimir Putin was instead killing civilians to shore up the Assad regime. In an interview with the Sun newspaper, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said the vast majority of Russian air strikes were not aimed at the militant group at all. “Our evidence indicates they are dropping unguided munitions in civilian areas, killing civilians, and they are dropping them against the Free Syrian forces fighting Assad,” he said. “He's shoring up Assad and perpetuating the suffering.” At least 39 civilians, including eight children and eight women, have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria in the past four days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday. It said 14 fighters had been killed - 12 from ISIS around the eastern city of Raqqa, and two from the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said the figures only included those which had been verified. (With Reuters)

Kerry holds impromptu Iran nuclear talks
By AFP | United Nations, United States/Saturday, 3 October 2015/U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held an impromptu meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York on Friday to discuss steps to implement the Iran nuclear deal. The meeting was scheduled at the last minute after a week of intense diplomacy on the Syria crisis. U.S. officials did not provide details, saying only that the talks focused on implementing the historic deal reached in July to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The U.S. has sought to enlist Iran in trying to find a way forward on the Syria crisis after Russia launched its air war.

Two suicide car bombs kill at least 18 people in Baghdad
By Reuters, Baghdad/Saturday, 3 October 2015/Suicide car bomb attacks targeting two mainly Shi'ite Muslim districts of Baghdad killed at least 18 people on Saturday, police and medical sources said. The attacks targeted the mainly Shiite districts of Kadhimiya and Hurriya in northern Baghdad. Police said at least 60 people were wounded.

Russia strikes kill 39 civilians, 14 ISIS, Nusra Front militants
Reuters, Beirut/Saturday, 3 October 2015/At least 39 civilians, including eight children and eight women, have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria in the past four days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday.
It said 14 fighters had been killed - 12 from ISIS militant group around the eastern city of Raqqa, and two from the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said the figures only included those which had been verified.

Analysis: The best reason for Iran deal? The West will learn where to drop bombs
By ALEXANDER MCCOY, JACQUELINE LOPOUR/J.Post/ REUTERS/10/02/2015/
In the emotional debate in Congress over the Iran nuclear deal, both sides claim they do not want war. But their ways to avoid it are radically different. Republican presidential candidates, in their Sept. 16 debate, argued that Iranian leaders are so untrustworthy that any deal is foolhardy. They said Washington should walk away. Though President Barack Obama and many Democrats support the agreement, the GOP candidates, and many in Congress, argue that Iran will cheat. If they truly believe this, there is one thing they can do to help military strikes succeed: support the deal. The Iran deal creates inspections that allow the United States and five world powers - Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany - to probe the strategic importance of various nuclear sites. If inspectors suspect cheating, they can demand access to the location. Any resistance by Iran would shine an enormous spotlight on that particular site. It would tell the West the site is important enough for Iran to risk war and would suggest that Tehran’s activity there violates the deal. It creates, in effect, a clear military target.
Without a deal, the allies have no way of knowing which sites are truly important. So Washington and its allies would have to consider bombing them all. The more targets Washington asks the military to destroy, the greater the chance for failure, collateral damage and escalation.
At the end of any strike, the United States and its allies may never fully know how effective they were in delaying Iran’s path to a bomb. At worst, they could find themselves repeating the mistakes of the 2003 Iraq invasion and discover afterward that they were unable to locate any nuclear weapons or proof that they ever even existed.Military strikes require several key features to have the best chance of success: specific actionable targets, accurate intelligence on those targets and broad international support. The Iran nuclear deal provides all three. Rejecting the deal would make the mission of American forces more difficult and dangerous, should it come to a military showdown with Tehran.
If Congress or the next president tears up the agreement, as several Republican presidential candidates have sworn to do if elected president, they would handicap US military and intelligence analysts. Washington would be less able to accurately track Iran’s nuclear stockpile or probe the true importance of suspect nuclear facilities.The United States and allied intelligence services could continue monitoring Iran. But without the inspections, the six world powers could only guess at the real value that Iran places on a particular site. If the deal is scrapped, it would be far harder to distinguish between secret nuclear facilities, possible decoys or military and industrial sites that have nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
If Iran later decides to openly sprint for a bomb, throwing off all pretense of compliance, the deal still leaves us in a better position than before. The agreement requires Iran to give up most of its stockpile of enriched uranium and centrifuges. If bombing Iran is the only way to stop its pursuit of a nuclear bomb, common sense tells us it is easier to destroy 6,000 centrifuges than 20,000 or more. Finally, if the United States upholds the deal, Washington would likely have support from a broad, international coalition of allies for military action - if Tehran decides to break its end of the bargain. The international community would be more inclined to provide military, financial and moral support for strikes if Washington first gives diplomacy a chance.
Make no mistake: Destroying Iran’s nuclear program requires more than just dropping a few bombs on nuclear sites. International allies can help the United States secure the critical trade route through the Strait of Hormuz, suppress Iranian air defenses and protect and recover any downed pilots.
If Washington tears up this international agreement, it tells the rest of the world that the United States is an unreliable negotiating partner - and that it will only be satisfied by war. America’s enemies are waiting to see Washington weakened on the world stage, its diplomats embarrassed in front of its allies and the US military bogged down in a new Middle Eastern quagmire. They will certainly seize any opportunity to undermine America. Iran cannot and should not be trusted. It may still pursue a nuclear weapon. Even if Iran cheats, however, the deal would not have been in vain. The plan negotiated by Obama and the State Department will make Washington’s odds of success greater and save the lives of American service members - if it should come to military action.
**Alexander McCoy served six years in the US Marine Corps, with assignments to the State Department at the US embassies in Saudi Arabia, Honduras and Germany. He is now communications director of US Military Veterans of Columbia University. Jacqueline Lopour spent 10 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, specializing in South Asia and the Middle East. She now works at the Center for International Governance Innovation, a nonpartisan policy organization focused on global public polic

Obama: Putin's intervention in Syria is 'a recipe for disaster'
Ynetnews/News Agencies/10.03.15/
US president calls Russian strategy 'self-defeating', vows there will be no proxy war; US said to be rethinking strategy against ISIS in Syria. Russia's military intervention in the Syrian Civil War is "a recipe for disaster", US President Barack Obama said Friday, less than a week after Moscow began airstrikes to support Syrian President Bashar Assad. Obama vehemently rejected Russia's military actions in Syria as self-defeating and dismissed the idea that Moscow was strengthening its hand in the region. He vowed not to let the conflict become a US-Russia "proxy war."
At a White House news conference on Friday, Obama pledged to stay the course with his strategy of supporting moderate rebels who oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad, but he dodged questions about whether the US would protect them if they came under Russian attack. Russia's dramatic entry into the Syrian Civil War, after a year of airstrikes by the US and its coalition partners, has raised the specter of dangerous confrontations in the skies over Syria.
And it prompted a question at the news conference as to whether Putin was outfoxing the US at a time when the American-led military campaign in Syria has failed to weaken the Islamic State. Obama dismissed that idea with an expression of disdain."This is not a smart strategic move on Russia's part," he said, referring to Putin's decision to "double down" on his support for Assad by stationing warplanes, air defenses, tanks and troops in Syria. Moscow says it is targeting Islamic State forces and fighting terrorism, but US leaders are skeptical of that and Obama said the Russian president has overplayed his hand.
"It's only strengthening ISIL, and that's not good for anybody," Obama contended. He said he hoped Putin would come to realize that allying Russia with Iran to try to keep Assad in power "is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire, and it won't work. And they will be there for a while if they don't take a different course."
Obama said Putin has stepped deeper into a conflict that cannot be solved by military power alone, and that his approach is misguided in not distinguishing between Syrian rebels who want Assad ousted and those who are terrorists. "From their perspective they're all terrorists, and that's a recipe for disaster," Obama said in his most extensive comments on the topic since Russia began its airstrikes on Monday. Evoking the Cold War era of US and Soviet forces working behind the scenes to prop up client states, Obama added, "We're not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia."
Asked if he felt out-smarted by Putin, Obama argued that Putin was acting in Syria out of political weakness and trying to gin up support at home while Russia's own economy struggles. "As a consequence of these brilliant moves, their economy is contracting 4 percent this year. They're isolated in the world community," Obama said, noting that Russia is under international sanctions for its military intervention in Ukraine.
"Russia's not strong as a consequence of what they've been doing. They get attention," he said. "Mr. Putin's action have been successful only insofar as it's boosted his poll ratings inside Russia, which may be why the Beltway is so impressed because that tends to be the measure of the success."
Still, Russia's airstrikes have forced the Pentagon to grapple with whether the US should use military force to protect American-trained and -equipped Syrian rebels now that they may be the targets of Russian airstrikes. Senior military leaders and others are working through the thorny legal and foreign policy issues surrounding that subject and are weighing the risks of using force in response to a Russian attack, US officials said Thursday. Pentagon leaders have consistently said the US must take steps to protect the US-trained rebels because it would be far more difficult to recruit fighters without those assurances.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters in March that the US has an obligation to support them, "and we're working through what kinds of support and under what conditions we would do so."
US officials later made it clear that rebels trained by the US would receive air support in the event they were attacked by either Islamic State militants or Syrian government troops. Currently, that protection would apply only to about 80 US-trained Syrian rebels who are back in Syria fighting with their units.
The US policy so far is very specific. It doesn't address a potential attack by Russian planes and does not include Syrian rebels who have not been through the US military training. A key concern is the prospect of US getting drawn into a proxy war with Russia in the event that Russian warplanes hit moderate Syrian rebels who have been trained and equipped by the US military.
US considers rethinking strategy
Meanwhile, a report on Friday said that according to officials, the US is considering extending support to thousands of Syrian rebel fighters, possibly with arms and air strikes, to help them push Islamic State from a strategic pocket of Syrian territory along the Turkish border. A decision, the officials said, would likely be made as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the US military's support for rebels to fight Islamic State following setbacks that have all but killed a "train-and-equip" program. The proposal under consideration is for the United States and Turkey to support an amalgamation of largely Arab fighters and would include members of multiple ethnic groups, US officials say. Turkey, wary of Kurdish aspirations to create an independent state, does not want to see Kurdish forces control more of the Syrian side of their border. The fighters, who were proposed by Turkey, include some who have received U.S. vetting, the officials say. It's unclear how many Syrian fighters have received US vetting, although the military acknowledges reviewing upwards of 8,000 potential recruits, many of whom were deemed ineligible for training. "We don't have a problem with that (Turkish selection)," said one US military official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, and cautioning that the matter was still under review by the Obama administration.

Misanalysis Makes a Mess
Robert Satloff and James F. Jeffrey/American Interest/October 03/15
U.S. policy in Syria is failing because the Obama administration is prioritizing the urgent (rolling back ISIS) over the truly important (preventing Iran and Russia from rearranging Middle East security to their benefit).
Does the Obama administration support or oppose Russia's brazen deployment of military force in Syria? Amazingly, it is tough to tell.
On the one hand, in his United Nations speech, President Obama offered a thinly veiled denunciation of Russia when he pointedly stated that "some major powers assert themselves in ways that contravene international law." But on the other hand, Secretary of State Kerry lauded the "fundamental principles" Washington shares with Moscow in Syria and even stood next to his Russian counterpart at a press conference just hours after Russian warplanes attacked rebels -- anti-Bashar al-Assad but not pro-ISIS -- in an in-your-face display of Moscow's true priorities. After Washington lamely called for Assad's departure for four years, one cannot fault America's regional allies for interpreting President Obama's cynical acceptance of Assad's continued and open-ended rule as a blessing of sorts for the muscular defense of the embattled Syrian leader by the new Russia-Iran axis.
How did we get caught in this muddle? How did the perfectly natural American outrage at the brutal nihilists of ISIS shape-shift into a supine response to the most direct and serious Russian challenge to America's global position in four decades, a nonchalant acceptance of Iran's deployment of troops and materiel to the Mediterranean littoral, and a willingness to legitimize the continued rule of a maniacal despot responsible for more than a quarter million killed and the depopulation of nearly half his entire country?
The answer is that this policy is the logical extension of a principle that has been at the heart of President Obama's approach to the Middle East for the past seven years. This is the idea that the world had consigned to history "20th-century threats" to global peace -- especially, the appetites for power, prestige, and wealth of voracious states -- leaving in its wake only the still serious but very different "21st-century challenges" of failed states, climate change, and so on.
As applied by the Obama administration, this idea has had three corollaries. The first, following the Bush administration and public opinion in the wake of the September 11 attacks, is that Sunni jihadist terrorism -- represented first by al-Qaeda and now by ISIS, a threat fueled by the blinding corruption, ideological extremism, and gross mismanagement of Sunni-led states -- represents an existential threat to the West, akin to the thousands of Soviet warheads once aimed at American cities. Against this threat, it is legitimate to deploy American military assets, but only in targeted and limited ways, such as dispatching Seal Team Six to kill Osama bin Laden.
That is because of the second corollary, which holds that America cannot and should not wield power to navigate the threats of disorder the way it wielded power to confront traditional aggressors; indeed, wielding such power (so the argument goes) only aggravates some of the most dangerous threats we face and diverts us from the alleged real job of "fixing" the root social and political causes of disorder. But the 21st-century world is also one of opportunities, not just limitations. One such opportunity was the third corollary -- the opportunity to bring Iran in from the cold, where it could be transformed from a radical, nuclear-proliferating, renegade state into a rule-abiding, status quo partner in the fight against the jihadists.
Each of these ideas is wrong. Some are obviously wrong; clearly, for instance, rapacious states have survived into the postmodern era, and old-fashioned force must sometimes be used to protect our allies and interests against them. As for Iran, whatever the wisdom of a narrow arrangement to postpone its nuclear weapons ambitions, it is farcical to believe that the Supreme Leader can be a true partner of the United States in any common enterprise. The spectacle of American diplomats chasing after the Iranians at the United Nations last week to engage their help in an array of regional concerns, only to be rebuffed, was both sad and revealing.
The most difficult of these wrong ideas for Americans to internalize is the real scope of the terrorist threat. The enormity of 9/11 made "Never Again" the motto of two administrations, with "Again" defined so broadly as to include everything from cataclysmic attack to lone-wolf incidents in Times Square, Chattanooga, and Fort Hood. The result is to blur the distinction between terrorism that can threaten the fiber of a nation, against which successive presidents rightly unleashed the full power of our military, intelligence, and law enforcement capabilities, and terrorism that -- however horrific -- may be the unacceptable but perhaps inevitable price of leading the world's liberal democracies.
Where does ISIS fit in this? Its potential to execute or certainly inspire terrorism short of a 9/11 mass casualty attack is significant, given the allegiance to it by many Muslims, its resources, and the total war it preaches against the rest of the world. But that threat still remains largely potential, with the likelihood of a catastrophic ISIS attack on the homeland not substantially greater today as a result of its success in creating a caliphate in western Iraq and eastern Syria.
To be sure, even if ISIS is not now a threat to the homeland, destroying it is justifiably an urgent priority for international action. ISIS has enslaved as many as ten million people, threatens to seize even more of Iraq and Syria, and is a major contributor to the downward spiral of dysfunction not only destroying the Middle East but sending hundreds of thousands of refugees looking for shelter in Europe. But urgent is not the same as important. The important priority is preventing the Russian-Iranian alliance from demolishing the regional security system by establishing a substantial security presence inside Syria, from which the two could -- separately and together -- project power throughout the Levant, cynically exacerbate the refugee crisis, and advance security, diplomatic, and possibly even energy policies to protect their friends and interests.
Taken together, the administration's wrong assumptions led it to an analysis that misreads the Middle East situation, and to a set of policies that misprioritizes the urgent (rolling back ISIS) over the important (preventing anti-American, anti-Western powers from rearranging Middle East security to their benefit). But it's not too late. If the Russian-Iranian power-play in Syria, like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a generation ago, compels the president to reassess his policy, he will find that has realistic options. The smartest of those options fall far short of launching another ill-fated Iraq-style massive military operation, which is the usual "alternative" option asserted by the president's advisers. Specifically, the president should operate on the basis that, while defeating ISIS cannot be the highest priority, hitting it hard can also checkmate both Vladimir Putin and Iran's chief strategist, the Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Suleimani. This includes rapidly increasing operations against ISIS -- with more U.S. ground forces deployed as advisers, forward controllers, raiders, and in some cases armored spearheads -- with the goal of retaking terrain. We should reach out to Turkey to create a safe-zone in northern Syria, get as serious about a CIA-led anti-Assad/anti-ISIS rebel-training program as we were with the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, and reinforce local allies (including Israel) with the military assets to counter the best the Russians can put into the field. Whatever relations we have with the Russian-Iranian coalition should be limited to safety-oriented mission de-confliction.
For President Obama, playing by "Putin/Suleimani rules" won't be easy, but it may be just what it takes to restore a sense of balance and proportion to our Middle East policy and counter the very real Russian-Iranian threats to our allies and interests.
**Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute. James Jeffrey is the Institute's Philip Solondz Distinguished Fellow.

Pentagon Overhauls Anti-ISIL War Plans
Middle East Briefing/October 03/15
The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Command have revamped the US war plans against the Islamic State, in the face of scandals, resignations and major personnel changes. The overhaul plan is being finalized and will be presented to the President and the National Security Council in the coming days.
Last week, Gen. John Allen, President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Iraq and Syria abruptly resigned, accusing the White House of failing to put adequate resources into the battle against ISIL. His departure came at the same time that Gen. Martin Dempsey was completing his term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as investigators for the Pentagon’s Inspector General were intensifying their investigation into the allegations by Centcom and DIA analysts, that they were pressured to alter their assessments to paint a more positive picture of progress against ISIL than the reality.
The Pentagon reassessment has concluded that the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq is stalled, as the result of a combination of factors. The Iraq Army has proven ineffective in combat operations against ISIL, and the American training program is moving ahead slower than anticipated. Iraqi Army field commanders are performing poorly, and are further stymied by micro-managing from Baghdad and from the actions of Shi’ite militias, backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Al Quds Brigade.
While the Pentagon reassessment is that the Iraqi Army will eventually improve, in the near-term, the JCS calls for American combat “advisors” to be assigned to key Iraqi Army units in the field, to improve their tactical operations.
Critics of the proposal to “embed” American combat officers into Iraqi fighting units argue that such advisory roles always evolve into actual combat. That argument was ultimately rejected in the Pentagon review.
The plan also calls for the US to deploy Apache helicopters into select combat situations, to provide critical close air support. This is a controversial recommendation, given the vulnerability of Apache helicopters to enemy anti-aircraft fire, including from RPGs.
The reassessment puts greater emphasis on the Syrian front, where some significant gains have been made in the north, primarily by Kurdish fighters. The proposal, soon to be under review at the White House, would have a number of US Special Operations Force (SOF) troops join with the Kurds and other select non-Salafist rebel units. In addition, the modified plan would increase the flow of light arms and trainers, particularly to the Kurdish units.
The shift of near-term focus to the Syrian front is tied to a windfall of intelligence, coming from US drone reconnaissance operations out of bases in Turkey. The intelligence has focused on cross-border logistical lines from Turkish territory into Raqqa and other ISIL strongholds in northern Syria, which have resulted in a significant cut back in the flow of new combat recruits to ISIL. The US goal is to greatly reduce the supply lines and black market smuggling routes between northern Syria and Turkey.
Under the revised Pentagon plan, the US aims to cut off Raqqa from the north.
The challenge for the Pentagon/Centcom planners is to resolve the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, which remains one of the crucial obstacles to success in the north of Syria. The Obama Administration will be urged by the Pentagon to put greater pressure on Turkey to fully cooperate in shutting down the ISIL pipeline from the north into Syria, and to allow US-Kurdish joint operations to increase.
Pentagon SOF fighters will be joining the CIA teams already on the ground with Kurdish fighting units, including YPK.
The Pentagon review and modified combat plans against the Islamic State do not ignore the expanded Russian military presence on the ground in Syria. While spokesmen for Defense Secretary Ashton Carter have denied that the US is or will engage in “deconfliction” talks with Russian counterpart, it is said at the Defense Department that there are already talks underway, and US and Russian surveillance drones are operating in the same theaters of operation, making it essential for the two militaries to engage. “The Russia-US military-to-military platform is up and running,” the source reported. “It will grow or stall, depending on how transparent the Russian are about their actual intentions.”
The mil-mil cooperation will be framed by the diplomatic talks between Washington and Moscow. If Russia is prepared to discuss the “post-Assad transition,” the door will be open for serious cooperation, even if Assad remains during a prescribed transitional period.
In the meantime, the revamped US plans for Iraq and Syria can accommodate to whatever the outcome of the new US-Russian negotiations. The JCS and Centcom will proceed with the plan, once approved by President Obama, with or without Russian collaboration.

Putin and Obama Summit: More Progress Than Expected
Middle East Briefing/October 03/15
Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin met, along with top aides, for more than 90 minutes on Monday, following their speeches before the United Nations General Assembly. While the meeting did not break any new ground in terms of specifics about the Syria crisis, the United States accepted, in principle, that Russia has a critical role to play if there is to be a solution to the four-and-a-half year Syrian conflict. In return, President Putin acknowledged that there must be a role for the Syrian Sunni majority in any durable solution.
Both the US and Russia have agreed that there will be further coordination, collaboration and communication going forward, with Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter handling the ongoing work with their Russian counterparts.
According to what has been leaked about the session, Putin did the majority of the talking, proposing a new United Nations Security Council resolution on the war against the Islamic State, and suggesting that Russia would join the existing US-led coalition if it were under a United Nations mandate.
In the bilateral discussions, Putin also made specific reference to the role of Kurdish militias, as well as the Syrian Army, in effectively fighting against ISIL. Previously, including during his speech earlier Monday before the General Assembly, Putin singularly focused on the Syrian Army as the backbone of the anti-ISIL fight.
At the close of the discussion, both sides recognized that they had more areas of common interest than disagreement, and that the Russian presence, under the right circumstances, could be productive.
Washington military planners remain worried that the Russian military presence can be disruptive and can actually strengthen the hand of the Islamic State. They are concerned about Russian military operations in US-led coalition theaters of operation, and worry that the Assad armed forces continue to focus on non-Islamic State rebel forces.
Despite this, Washington information explained that the bilateral meeting “transcended expectations.” After the meeting, Russian President Putin told Lavrov that he was satisfied that the United States was now willing to work with Russia on the Syria crisis.
Both the State Department and Defense Department will immediately increase talks with Russia on both the deconfliction and diplomatic agendas.
One of the areas of agreement between Putin and Obama was on the need for Syria to remain a unified, non-extremists state. This poses serious diplomatic challenges for Washington. Washington’s key regional allies in Syria, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey, are all committed to a post-Assad Sunni-dominated state. Washington and Moscow now share the view that the extremist factor must be suppressed, but the pathway forward is not yet at all clear.
A viable solution to the Syria conflict must, at its core, achieve three objectives. First, there must be a leadership change at the top, with Assad removed from power. The timing and mode of transition can be developed, but Assad’s removal is a precondition for success, given the views of the majority of Syrian people. Washington and Moscow are looking at a possibility of a “Syrian strongman” who could remove Assad and prepare the transition to elections.
Second, the flow of financial and logistical support to foreign jihadists must be greatly reduced. Recent Russian estimates are that as many as 2,700 Chechens are now fighting for ISIS (US Intelligence Community estimates are actually much higher). Some are already returning to the Caucasus region of Russia and pose a growing security threat.
Third, the Islamic State must be defeated.
So far, the US and Russia clearly agree on the third requirement. A great deal of work will have to be done by American and Russian diplomats and military planners to bridge the gaps between the two nations on the other two priorities.
Prior to the convening of the Obama-Putin meeting, Russia established a joint information center in Baghdad, to share intelligence between Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia. The center will be fully operational in a matter of weeks. Lavrov made clear that the United States has been invited to participate.
A similar general staff-level separate bilateral information sharing agreement has also been worked out between Russia and Israel. And in a meeting of foreign ministers in Beijing recently, Russia, China and India agreed to co-sponsor a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT), which will be presented at the United Nations Security Council.
These measures may be all trumped by the US-Russia process that was set up on Monday in New York.

Obama Lost the Middle East While Putin is Building His Own Trap There
Middle East Briefing/October 03/15
What does President Putin has to offer in Syria? In the political track he can facilitate negotiations, and in the military track he has his military ties to Assad. But he has already been trying to facilitate negotiations and he always has his military ties to Assad. The answer therefore should be that Mr. Putin has nothing qualitative to offer in Syria. Was it then a mistake to engage him? The answer is not simple, because the question omits the fact that Putin is present because the US is absent. So long as President Obama wants to remain disengaged, accepting a Russia role seems to be a default path. Rejecting this role becomes unnecessary only because of the US disastrous policy in the Middle East.
When we disengage our minds from all the details and noise coming from the Middle East or New York, we find a very telling general picture. In the world of business, you should make yourself relevant in order to impose yourself as a partner. Mr. Putin moved substantial forces to Syria just before coming to New York in an act from the classical “How To?” in the political and business worlds. He moved into Baghdad as well. Then he came to New York. He made himself relevant, and very much so, to the extent that he might emerge as the main player, the one who decides how things should go. And all that without doing anything except coordinating with his allies in Tehran and Damascus.
But the real weight of Mr. Putin is not decided in vacuum. It depends on the real weight of the other players, and on what he can actually provide. The truth is that Mr. Putin cannot be a game changer inasmuch as Syria is concerned. It is just that the relative weight of the others gave him a golden opportunity to get what is actually much more than what he really deserves. It all looks as a master move from Putin facilitated only by the weakness of others. Yet, you might be very skillful in reaching something to find out at the end that what you actually reached is a hand grenade. You will be very clever tactically, but not so strategically. Therefore, Mr. Putin is indeed gambling. And he has a much bigger stake, more than many believe, in the game he just hooked himself into.
He invested very little but chose the proper moment. Can he obtain a payback before he even pays? This is precisely the name of the game. He bets on getting some gains before it is found out that he actually has very little to invest. And all this because of the very naïve heads behind the US strategy in the region. It was all obvious in New York.
Listening to President Obama giving his eloquent-as usual-speech in the UN, one can’t help but thinking about how could his foreign policy lead to such tragic failures as we see now? We do not contribute to the common categorization of idealism versus realism. In our view. But ultimately both perspectives, idealism and realism, have to search and find practical policies and strategies if they hope to see the light of the day in reality. The link between any ideas or “ways of thinking” on the one hand and reality on the other should in any way be “real”.
The great ideals the President talked about may be unquestionable, at least for us. There are indeed universal values as such, and there is a need for global cooperation to preserve peace. Dictators and tyrants could never build a strong country and even the notion of sovereignty is never totally complete if the people of the “sovereign” country are in chains.
But what should be understood is that we are long centuries past the debate about the validity of all these principles. The debate now is how to devise strategies and policies that turn these great notions into concrete reality. And in this area, the President offered nothing.
In Afghanistan, and after a war and tens of thousands killed and some billions spent, Taliban and Al Qaeda are still there, girls still do not go to school in most areas, and opium is grown and exported side by side with terrorists.
In Iraq, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, hundreds of billions spent, yet Iraq is not better off today. The surge of the last decade achieved some short term gains. Yet, the long term mission of making such gains sustainable was abandoned under the name of idealism, non-interventionism, pulling the forces out even prematurely, ending wars and the rest of the popular lexicon. Nuri Al Maliki, who put Baghdad on the lap of the Iranians and pushed the country back to further sectarian polarization (which brought ISIL) was hailed in Washington as a friend. All was done to “get it over with” and pull out as fast as possible.
In Syria the administration refused to back the moderate opposition early on because they were “doctors and teachers” as the President described them. Yet, he had to green light a costly (yet ineffective) air campaign just to contain the consequences of his earlier mistakes. Then he had to request 500 million dollars to train five, yes five, fighters. Now, he has the Russians in Syria marketing their role as the true knights of the war against the very terrorism the President refused to help fighting early on.
But how can you criticize the speech of the President in the UN? There is almost nothing in what he said that you can oppose. The problem lies in what he did not say. It is the “How” that is missing? Everyone knows that the lack of strategy in this administration is appalling.
Leadership does not mean interventionism. It simply means injecting the principles that the President eloquently explained with what has been missing all along: A coherent approach to bring these great notions to a hard and rigid terrain like that of the Middle East. Beautifully coined catch phrases do not do what should be done.
The tragic failure of the previous administration in Iraq is not an argument for zero leadership now in the Middle East. You can’t use a war waged in an absurd context, done badly, followed by a premature withdrawal and hence created chaos to say that any intervention or any role whatsoever is wrong. It is known, even to primitives, that using military force should be the last resort. But for the other resorts to be available, you got to be ready militarily, convince all parties that you are ready to use force then start twisting arms, diplomatically, in order to get a political and peaceful solution. Force and diplomacy are not two opposed poles. They are both mere faces of one single process. But this is basic.
But we know that the approaches tried by the Obama administration made Putin the “momentum maker” in the Middle East. All regional leaders look at him as a man who acts upon his beliefs, even if they do not agree with these beliefs. They see him as a man who stands by his allies, even if they hate these allies. As we predicted a couple of weeks ago, he found his way to Iraq (to fight terrorism of course!). He is filling the vacuum voluntarily left by Obama, and he does not waste a minute in doing that. The Obama administration has already managed to position itself on the current slide towards a total loss of the US regional influence built in long decades.
On the other hand, President Putin’s speech in the UN was in part a response to President Obama’s speech. Yet, he was as deceptive. If Obama tried to cover up for his foreign policy failures through repeating generalities that nobody can dispute, Putin disputed these principles in his blunt business-like familiar fashion.
Freedom is indeed a human-universal principle. No matter how loud President Putin asserts the contrary. This supreme organizing principle is indeed an intrinsic essence of human spirit, people in all societies and cultures will always struggle to reach this ideal. This will create convulsions, revolutions and tragedies, but that is our history as humans.
When it came to the Middle East, President Putin repeated the vulgar version of the story that is very popular already in the region: That the US fabricated all these revolutions somehow. If the US could make Tunisians, Libyan, Egyptians, Syrians, Yemenis and even recently Iraqis and Lebanese revolt against their regimes, it must be indeed a supernatural force.
There might have been an external push to achieve the ideas of freedom and accountability. But this push did not cause the revolutions in that region. You can’t push the idea of a revolution in Sweden or Norway for example. In other words, you cannot set fire in wet wood. This deceptive logic absolves the regimes of any responsibilities and puts it on the shoulders of this supernatural US, while the truth is that at least half the population in the most countries in the region are dreaming to immigrate away from their own countries.
So long as Mr. Putin sees the governments as “legitimate”, and the US conspiring to topple them, he would not be able to appreciate the magnitude of the problems we have in the Middle East.
And that is what the Russian President sees in Syria. He totally drops the fact that Bashar Al Assad is a criminal of war and instead sees him as a “legitimate” President. But above all, he emphatically repeated that he will support Assad but did not say a single word about a “solution” to the Syrian crisis. This betrays that what Mr. Putin thinks of is the military solution, the annihilation of Syrians opposing their dictator. Fine, try Mr. President. You did in Afghanistan to end up running like a terrified raccoon.
When one follows the debate inside the opposition groups after the Russian decision one would be able to predict the outcome of this tragic mistake Russia is making. No one will win, but the raccoon will run again, potentially faster this time as his weight is lighter now than the 80’s.
Mr. Putin describes the moderate opposition as terrorists “like ISIL”. Some of this opposition lost hundreds of men fighting ISIL, while the “legitimate” President of Syria was dealing with the terrorist organization and bombing those who fight it.
But of course President Putin knows that. It is only convenient to repeat lies in order to justify his intervention in Syria. Yet, the Russian President is paving the road towards his own quagmire. For the Russian forces have to confront now the Syrian people. And we know of no case where the people did not ultimately win.

How to Reach a Transitional Truce in Syria
Middle East Briefing/October 03/15
Globally, there are two opposed dynamics related to Syria after the Obama-Putin meeting. One is perused by the two powers to find a way forward for a transitional phase. The other is shaping up in the current debate between the opposition groups and between their regional backers.
In order to achieve the transitional phase hoped for, no one should underestimate the ups and downs of the road that will get us there. In other words, if the attempt to move forward erred, we may find ourselves at the end with a transitional period that is only transitional to more war and a deeper crisis. The nature of this transitional period, and whether it is really transitional towards a meaningful solution, will be defined by seeing the map of the opposition in its shades and different colors, not in the raw black and white picture offered by Mr. Putin in the UN. This opposition is the other hand without which we will hear no applause.
But this is not the only requirement. There are other requirements that need to be considered. First there is the need to start from where we actually are, and not from any subjective categorization of the opposition groups. Second we need a truce, not only for humanitarian reasons but because this is a precondition for any political solution to unfold.
Mr. Putin might have been hardening his announced views deliberately in order to get a deal in sanctions or Ukraine or any other issues in his mind. But he must know as clear as everyone does that if a political solution is not based on popular acceptance from the majority of Syrians it will end up being neither political nor solution. If you want to paint something and call it a different name do not try to convince others that you have changed anything.
Therefore, the issue now is where to start in order to reach a real transitional period that guarantees free elections, the return of the refugees and the beginning of meaningful talks between the direct parties of the crisis. We believe that to designate the final status (the transitional government) as the starting point will make the job more difficult and may lead to a false transition.
Syria’s opposition backers are determined to increase their support to their clients on the ground as a response to the substantial Russian military aid to Assad. Publicly, they may say something different, but it is inconceivable for them to see Assad bomb his way back to the pre-2011 situation. By the same token, the opposition groups seem to be determined as well to fight the Russians. They do not seem to be afraid of the Russian gunships or tanks. Preparations for attacks on Russian sites in Latakia have already started. The intention of the armed opposition is to get Putin to bleed enough in Syria until he orders pulling back his forces.
In general, we estimate that there is still quite some energy trapped in the regional and local crisis to guarantee yet another long round of war in Syria. But there might be a path that can take the Syrian crisis to a quieter spot where some time could be available for a better shot at a solution.
Putin says that Assad is important for preserving the state structure. Iran says the same. We have to admit that they have a point in this argument. Police states are built like reversed pyramids, the top down. The system of loyalties is personal not institutional. But two questions should be addressed to both the Russians and the Iranians: 1) if the objective would be to preserve Assad and the State, both were there before 2011, how can we solve the crisis? 2) Have you examined ways to soft land the regime into a platform where the State is preserved but without Assad?
In any case, neither Assad nor the State exist in any real meaning over the majority of the country at this actual moment. Starting from this fact which is accepted by all, even the Russians and the Iranians, let us see how we can move forward towards a solution that does not necessarily start with the departure of Assad but rather starts from the reality of the situation on the ground.
Roughly, we have ISIL and Nusra (hereafter “the Radicals”) in one side and the rest of the opposition in the other. We can explain the validity of this categorization in another occasion. But for now, let us accept it at face value for a moment. In this rest of the opposition (the non-ISIL, non-Nusra), we identify two major groups: Ahrar Al Sham in the North and Jaish Al Islam in the south. Each of these two groups control considerable territories already.
Whatever happens on the diplomatic front will have to be brought down to the ground and be implemented somehow. Otherwise, it will remain wishful thinking. And in order for any political solution that aims at unifying all firepower to fight the Radicals, in order for it to deserve its name, the rest of the opposition has to jump on the bandwagon of such a solution.
Therefore, the issue boils down to reaching a deal that can make the non-Radicals change their objective. Obviously, they want Assad to go. And obviously as well, the man should go as it is virtually impossible for him to preside over a national anything, not only a national State or a national fight against the Radicals. But even if the removal of Assad is pushed a little down the road, there are other things that should not.
In view of the current reality of the de facto partition, a reversed process should start from bottom up. That is to say that both Ahrar and Jaish Al Islam should be told that they are responsible for their areas of control and they will be recognized as such within a unified Syria ruled by a soft, weak and symbolic federal government. Minorities will remain wherever they are without any sectarian intervention in their affairs.
That means Alawi community will remain wherever it is and will be secure from any Sunni attacks. What goes for the Alawis will go for the Sunnis, no barrel bombs, no attacks from the militia called “the national army” and no pressures on trade routes. In return, these different “regions” will participate in a joint effort in which all other Syrians take part to fight the Radicals with assistance from the UN.
The “central” government will be composed of representatives from these different regions. Each region will have its distinct border lines. The central government will exist in each region as much as required by this region itself.
For those who understandably refuse Assad to be their president, they will enjoy a semi-autonomous status in their regions until Assad goes. If their rejection of Assad prevents the formation of that weak “central” government, be it. The government should be formed anyway without them. The main condition would be that no one attacks their regions in return for a clear commitment to fight the Radicals and not to expand their control beyond their designed regions. They should be invited later on to participate in the government when conditions allow.
If they oppose the fact that Assad is still in Damascus, the should be told that effectively he is the president of a “region” not of all of Syria as there is nothing called all of Syria standing right now before us. While he will remain in name the president of all of Syria, it is these groups that run their regions without any intervention from the imaginary center.
This concept allows to go around entrenched interests (and actually use them favorably). Foreign aid to each region could be used later to inject some muscle into the central government and to the anti-radicals campaign. This “central” government will preserve the powers of the Central Bank, the civil records, foreign policy, taxation, education and health services, a small “national” army and some other functions. These functions are already either non-existent or part of the central government actual responsibilities at present. Judiciary, security and civil administration will be left for these regions to perform.
Final status talks could start later, in a little more favorable circumstances, to rebuild the national army and centralize the judiciary and police structures. During that time civil administrations should be built in the different regions. These region must be informed that in all actuality, Assad is not their President and that they are the ones responsible for their regions.
All this should be introduced as a transitional phase. This fact should be emphatically repeated in order to pick the thread from where it is now and try to calm down the whole situation. If the Arabs accept this concept, it better be introduced by them. The commitments of the non-Radical fighting groups not to cross their areas should be guaranteed by their regional backers.
We understand that the current phase of international-regional talks about Syria is going through a critical phase. However, we wish that the able diplomats that are conducting these talks start from the point of fragmentized framework to reach, in a later phase, a cemented whole. By this we mean that if we push hard the issue of a global solution or a final status at this sensitive moment we will reach a dead end. Assad or anybody else could be the president of the Alawis if they want him. In fact he currently is. The illusion that he is the president of all Syria is bought only by the terminally naïve or the blind.
Will that bring us a unified Syria during the transitional period? No. It would not. But we do not have now anything close to a unified Syria anyway. The name of such a plan is a temporary and organized “Hudna” or truce. The organizing principles would be: Each party will fight ISIL and Nusra under supervision from international powers and each will commit to keeping their regions Radicals-free, each player will abstain from fighting any other player and all will respect civilians in general and minorities in particular, and each region will allow the refugees to return to their homes. The war will be waged against areas under the control of ISIL and Nusra and gradually be an integrated operation. If Russia and Iran are really sincere in saying they want to fight terrorists, they should not oppose this approach based on the simple fact that only Sunnis can really defeat the Radicals.
Non-ISIL and non-Nusra opposition may accept this temporary truce if they know its time limit and the endgame and if they are promised to receive help to be able to build regional administrative bodies to enable them to run their regions.
From that fragmentized Syria, we can later on provide facilitators to induce the process of gathering these pieces into a one Syria without Bashar Al Assad. The fact that there will be needs to fight the radicals and to normalize life in the non-Radicals controlled areas may help get Syrians back on the road to each other.

Sweden: 'No Apartments, No Jobs, No Shopping Without a Gun'
Ingrid Carlqvist/Gatestone institute/October 03/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6607/sweden-migrants-fear
The Swedes see the welfare systems failing them. Swedes have had to get used to the government prioritizing refugees and migrants above native Swedes.
"There are no apartments, no jobs, we don't dare go shopping anymore [without a gun], but we're supposed to think everything's great. ... Women and girls are raped by these non-European men, who come here claiming they are unaccompanied children, even though they are grown men. ... You Cabinet Ministers live in your fancy residential neighborhoods, with only Swedish neighbors. It should be obligatory for all politicians to live for at least three months in an area consisting mostly of immigrants... [and] have to use public transport." -- Laila, to the Prime Minister.
"Instead of torchlight processions against racism, we need a Prime Minister who speaks out against the violence... Unite everyone. ... Do not make it a racism thing." -- Anders, to the Prime Minister.
"In all honesty, I don't even feel they [government ministers] see the problems... There is no one in those meetings who can tell them what real life looks like." – Laila, on the response she received from the government.
The week after the double murder at IKEA in Västerås, where a man from Eritrea who had been denied asylum grabbed some knives and stabbed Carola and Emil Herlin to death, letters and emails poured into the offices of Swedish Prime Minister (PM) Stefan Löfven. Angry, despondent and desperate Swedes have pled with the Social Democratic PM to stop filling the country with criminal migrants from the Third World or, they write, there is a serious risk of hatred running rampant in Sweden. One woman suggested that because the Swedish media will not address these issues, Löfven should start reading foreign newspapers, and wake up to the fact that Sweden is sinking fast.
Carola Herlin, Director of the Moro Backe Health Center, was murdered on August 10, along with her son, in the IKEA store in Västerås, Sweden.
During the last few decades, Swedes have had to get used to the government (left and right wing parties alike) prioritizing refugees and migrants above native Swedes. The high tax level (the average worker pays 42% income tax) was been accepted in the past, because people knew that if they got sick, or when they retired or otherwise needed government aid, they would get it.
Now, Swedes see the welfare system failing them. More and more senior citizens fall into the "indigent" category; close to 800,000 of Sweden's 2.1 million retirees, despite having worked their whole lives, are forced to live on between 4,500 and 5,500 kronor ($545 - $665) a month. Meanwhile, seniors who immigrate to Sweden receive the so-called "elderly support subsidy" -- usually a higher amount -- even though they have never paid any taxes in Sweden.
Worse, in 2013 the government decided that people staying in the country illegally have a right to virtually free health and dental care. So while the destitute Swedish senior citizen must choose between paying 100,000 kronor ($12,000) to get new teeth or living toothless, a person who does not even have the right to stay in Sweden can get his teeth fixed for 50 kronor ($6).
The injustice, the housing shortage, the chaos surrounding refugee housing units and the sharp slide of Swedish students in PISA tests -- all these changes have caused the Swedes to become disillusioned. The last straw was that Prime Minister Löfven had nothing to say about the murders at IKEA.
Gatestone Institute contacted to the Swedish government, to obtain emails sent to the Prime Minister concerning the IKEA murders. According to the "principle of public access to official documents," all Swedes have the right to study public documents kept by authorities -- with no questions asked about one's identity or purpose. The government, however, was clearly less than enthusiastic about sharing the emails: It took a full month of reminders and phone calls before they complied with the request.
What follows are excerpts from emails sent from private citizens to Prime Minister Stefan Löfven:
From Mattias, a social worker and father of four, "a dad who wants my kids to grow up in Sweden the way I had the good fortune of doing, without explosions, hand grenades, car fires, violence, rape and murder at IKEA":
"Hi Stefan. I am a 43-year-old father of four, who is trying to explain to my children, ages 6-16, what is going on in Sweden. I am sad to say that you and your party close your eyes to what is happening in Sweden. All the things that are happening [are] due to the unchecked influx from abroad. You are creating a hidden hatred in Sweden. We are dissatisfied with the way immigration is handled in Sweden, from asylum housing to school issues. And it takes so long to get a job, many people give up before they even get close. Mattias"
Marcus, 21, wrote:
"Hi Stefan, I am one of the people who voted for you. I live in Helsingborg, still with my parents because there are no apartments available. I can see where I live that as soon as an old person moves out, eight foreigners immediately move in: they just bypass us young, Swedish people in line. With all that is going on in Sweden -- rapes, robberies, the IKEA murders and so on -- why aren't non-Swedes sent back to their countries when they commit crimes? Of course we should help refugees, but they should be the right kind of refugees. ... I'm sorry to say this, Stefan, but the Sweden Democrats should be allowed to rule for four years and remove the people who do not abide by the laws, and who murder or destroy young women's lives. It is horrible, I have a job that pays poorly because there are no jobs. Sweden has more people than jobs."
Peter wrote:
"Esteemed Prime Minister. I am writing to you because I am very worried about the development in Swedish society. I am met daily by news of shootings, exploding hand grenades/bombs, beatings, rapes and murders. This is our Sweden, the country that, when you and I grew up, was considered one of the safest in the world. "You, in your role as Prime Minister, have a responsibility to protect everyone in the land, regardless of whether they were born here or not. Unfortunately, I can see that you are not taking your responsibility seriously. I follow the news daily, and despite our now having suffered another act of madness, this time against a mother and son at IKEA, I do not see any commitment from you? ... "You should emphatically condemn the violent developments we see in this country, allocate resources to the police, customs and district attorneys to slow and fight back (not just build levees and overlook) criminal activity."
Sebastian wrote:
"Hi Stefan! After reading about the horrible deed at IKEA in Västerås, I am now wondering what you are going to do to make me feel safe going to stores and on the streets of Sweden. What changes will there be to make sure this never happens again? Will immigration really continue the same way?"
Benny wrote:
"Hi, I'm wondering, why is the government quiet about such an awful incident? The whole summer has been characterized by extreme violence, shootings, knifings and explosions. The government needs to take vigorous action so we can feel safe."
Laila's subject line reads: "Is it supposed to be like this?"
"Are we supposed to go outside without arming ourselves? Rape after rape occurs and no one is doing anything about it. I was born and raised in Vårby Gård, but seven years ago, we had to move because we couldn't take the dogs out in the evenings due to the non-Europeans driving on the sidewalks. If you didn't move out of the way, they would jump out of the car and hit you. If you called the police, they do nothing -- in a suburb of Stockholm. When my brother told some of these men off, a rocket (the kind you use at New Year's) appeared in his mailbox. You can imagine how loud the blast was. Women and girls are raped by these non-European men, who come here claiming they are unaccompanied children, even though they are grown men....
"It is easy to get weapons today, I wonder if that is what we Swedes need to do, arm ourselves to dare to go shopping. Well, now I am getting to what happened at a major department store: Two people were killed and not just killed, there is talk online of beheading.
"The Prime Minister will not say a word, but resources are allocated to asylum housings, a slap in the face for the relatives who just had two of their kin slain. Swedish newspapers will not say a word, but fortunately, there are foreign newspapers that tell the truth. We Swedes can't change apartments, we live five people in three bedrooms. Two of us are unemployed, looking, looking and looking for work. The only option is employment agencies. I'm 50 years old, on part-time sick leave because of two chronic illnesses, I cannot run around from one place to another. But more and more asylum seekers keep coming in. There are no apartments, no jobs, we don't dare go shopping anymore, but we're supposed to think everything's great.
"Unfortunately, I believe the Prime Minister needs to start reading foreign newspaper to find out that Sweden is going under. I found out that the mass immigration costs billions every year, and the only thing the immigrants do is smoke waterpipes in places like Vårby Gård. This is happening in other places too, of course. Now it's starting to spread; you will see that in the opinion polls, next time they are published. Soon, all Swedes will vote for the Sweden Democrats. They are getting more and more supporters every day.
"You Cabinet Ministers do not live in the exposed areas, you live in your fancy residential neighborhoods, with only Swedish neighbors. It should be obligatory for all politicians to live for at least three months in an area consisting mostly of immigrants, the car should be taken from you so you'd have to use public transport. ... After three months, you would see my point.
"I am scared stiff of what is happening in this country. What will the government do about this?"
Anders wrote:
"Hi Stefan, why don't you, as our Prime Minister, react more against all the violence that is escalating in our country? [Such as] the double murder at IKEA in Västerås. Add to that the bombings and other things happening in Malmö. Instead of torchlight processions against racism, we need a Prime Minister who speaks out against the violence, who says that it's wrong no matter which ethnic group is behind it or at the receiving end of it.
"Because all the people living in Sweden are Swedish, right? A torchlight procession against racism only highlights the fact that it's immigrants committing these crimes. What we need now is a clear signal from our popularly elected [officials] that violence needs to stop now. Sweden is supposed to be a haven away from violence.
"I'm asking you as our Prime Minister, take a stand against the violence. Unite everyone in Sweden into one group and do not make it a racism thing."
Some of the people received a reply from Carl-Johan Friman, of the Government Offices Communications Unit; others have not received any reply at all. A typical response goes:
"Thank you for your email to Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. I've been asked to reply and confirm that your email has reached the Prime Minister's Office and is now available for the Prime Minister and his staff. It is of course not acceptable that people should be exposed to violence and criminal activities in their everyday life. Many efforts are made to counteract violence, and quite correctly, this needs to be done without pitting groups against each other. Thank you for taking the time to write and share your views, they are important in shaping government policies."
Gatestone Institute contacted Laila, one of the people who emailed, and asked her if she was satisfied with the answer she got. Laila replied:
"No, I'm not satisfied with the answer, because they didn't even respond to what I was talking about. In all honesty, I don't even feel they see the problems. They're talking about what it looks like when they have their meetings, but there's no one in those meetings who can tell them what real life looks like. It feels like the answer I got was just a bunch of nonsense. They understand that people are scared. They talk about demonstrating against racism; they seem to be completely lost. The politicians do not understand how things work in Swedish society, because they live in their safe, snug neighborhoods where things are quiet. But a lot of Swedes are forced to live in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, because they cannot afford an apartment somewhere else."
The anger at the government's non-reaction to the IKEA-murders also led to a demonstration at Sergels Torg, Stockholm's main public square, on September 15. Hundreds of protesters demanded the government's resignation, and held a minute of silence for the slain mother and son, Carola and Emil Herlin. The organizers plan to hold similar protests every month throughout Sweden.
**Ingrid Carlqvist, a journalist and author based in Sweden, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone institute.

Will America provide new support for Syrian rebels against ISIS?
By Phil Stewart, Arshad Mohammed and Julia Edwards | Reuters
Saturday, 3 October 2015
The United States is considering extending support to thousands of Syrian rebel fighters, possibly with arms and air strikes, to help them push ISIS from a strategic pocket of Syrian territory along the Turkish border, U.S. officials say.
U.S. backing for the plan would come as moderate rebels in Syria, some trained and backed by the United States, say they have been targeted by Russian air strikes, raising tensions between Washington and Moscow.
A decision, the officials said, would likely be made as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. military's support for rebels to fight ISIS following setbacks that have all but killed a "train-and-equip" program.
The proposal under consideration is for the United States and Turkey to support an amalgamation of largely Arab fighters and would include members of multiple ethnic groups, U.S. officials say.
Turkey, wary of Kurdish aspirations to create an independent state, does not want to see Kurdish forces control more of the Syrian side of their border.
The fighters, who were proposed by Turkey, include some who have received U.S. vetting, the officials say. Its unclear how many Syrian fighters have received U.S. vetting, although the military acknowledges reviewing upwards of 8,000 potential recruits, many of whom were deemed ineligible for training.
"We don't have a problem with that (Turkish selection)," said one U.S. military official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, and cautioning that the matter was still under review by the Obama administration.
The official and others interviewed by Reuters declined to name the groups, which in Syria often have competing interests. Two U.S. officials said the fighters numbered in the thousands but declined to offer a precise figure.
The aim of the operation would be to push ISIS forces from a 90-km (56-mile) stretch of Syria's northern border running east toward the Syrian city of Jarabulus, about 130 km northwest of the ISIS's declared capital of Raqqa. The area is west of the Euphrates river that dissects the Syria-Turkey border.
Strategic value
Chris Kozak, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said the territory was strategically valuable to ISIS, serving as its last significant point of access to the northern border with Turkey.
U.S. assistance could include everything from air strikes, to offering equipment and even arms, if approved, the military official said, adding that the different levels of U.S. knowledge about the fighters has added complexity to the review.
Turkey and the United States agreed to take the territory in July as part of an agreement under which Ankara allowed the United States to use its bases for strikes against ISIS. Turkey also started carrying out air strikes on ISIS targets in Syria.
But U.S. officials acknowledged after the agreement was struck that they had not agreed on which Syrian rebels they would support in that zone. That issue has been resolved at a preliminary level, the officials said.
Obama has sought to limit direct U.S. military involvement in Syria's civil war to waging air strikes against ISIS, while training and supporting Syrian rebels fighting them.
The U.S. administration, which is seeking to avoid a proxy war with Russia, has so far signaled no intention to protect Syrian rebels from Russian bombing.
At a news conference on Friday, Obama acknowledged that the U.S. military's train and equip program had not achieved its goals but said he would continue to work with Syria's moderate opposition.
"We are going to continue to go after ISIL. We are going to continue to reach out to a moderate opposition. We reject Russia's theory that everybody opposed to Assad is a terrorist," Obama said.
U.S. officials have told Reuters that a review is underway that could also result in scaling back and reenvisioning Washington's struggling program to train and equip moderate rebels. About 80 graduates are deployed in Syria now and dozens are still in U.S. training, but the Pentagon has stopped drawing recruits from the Syrian battlefield during the review.
At the same time, the Obama administration is weighing the possibility of supporting another, separate rebel push east of the Euphrates river that includes largely Kurdish forces, the military official said.
That group, known as the Syrian Arab Coalition, would push south toward Raqqa, the official said.

‘Managed transition’ vs. ‘management of savagery’ in Syria
Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/October 03/15
The Russian military intervention in Syria on behalf of the beleaguered Assad regime has altered, for the time being at least, the military dynamics in that tortured land, It has has made Russia more indispensable than before for any outcome to Syria’s war and dealt the Obama administration another humiliating setback. Once again, the U.S. president was caught off guard by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brazen move, coming less than two days after their cold and failed encounter at the United Nations. That was the apogee of Putin’s contemptuous treatment of the American President. It was a week of jarring contrasts, between the two leaders, their views of each other and the world, their leadership styles and how they see history and by extension their place in it.
The lack of political resolve and clarity in Washington regarding the desired political outcome in Syria and Iraq, and the absence of a serious and sustainable program to train and equip the non-Jihadi extremist opposition groups in Syria, have created the vacuum that Putin is trying to fill, in part to break out of his international isolation, to divert Western attention from Ukraine, to the supposedly urgent threat that ISIS represents to Europe, along with the refugee crisis. Putin is presenting himself as the man to go to, to fight ISIS, stabilize Syria and staunch the flow of Syrian refugees to Europe. In an ominous and gratuitous move, the Russian Orthodox Church has blessed Putin’s military offensive calling it a ‘holy war’ against terrorism. Photos of priests blessing the Russian fighter jets are likely to become the new infamous tools in the hands of the extremist Islamists who will likely accuse the Russian Orthodox Church of waging a new Crusade against them to complement Western Islamophobia.
History is over…
In his speech at the U.N. President Obama obliquely criticized Russia when he said ‘we see some major powers assert themselves in ways that contravene international law’. He then bemoaned the erosion of democratic principles and restrictions on civil society. ‘We are told that such retrenchment is required to beat back disorder; that it’s the only way to stamp out terrorism…In accordance with this logic, we should support tyrants like Bashar al-Assad, who drops barrel bombs to massacre innocent children, because the alternative is surely worse’. Then the president went back to his comfort zone of expressing platitudes and noble sentiments. ‘But I stand before you today believing in my core that we, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion. We cannot look backwards. We live in an integrated world, one in which we all have a stake in each other’s success…And if we cannot work together more effectively, we will all suffer the consequences.’ President Obama spoke of a rational world as if we are at the cusp of the end of history, reflecting but not quoting Francis Fukuyama’s famous words in his 1992 book ‘The End of History, and the Last Man’ that we are at the ‘end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’.
No, not yet
President Putin however, spoke as a man still grounded in history and very conscious of its vicissitudes. He reminded President Obama of the painful history of the United States with Iraq and Libya, blaming the rise of the ‘Islamic State’ ISIS, on the invasion of Iraq and the military intervention in Libya. Putin, the man who has a history of violating international law, was lecturing the world about respecting the legitimacy of a murderous regime like Assad’s, claiming that it is an ‘enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces, who are valiantly fighting terrorism face to face’.
The reliance of both ISIS and the Assad regime on the ‘Management of Savagery’ to remain in power means that the destruction of ISIS and the dismantlement of the Assad regime should be pursued simultaneously
By claiming that only Assad’s armed forces and the Kurdish militias are fighting ISIS, Putin cavalierly dismissed the air campaign of the international coalition that the U.S. organized and has been leading for more than a year against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq. The Syrian intervention, particularly the deceptive propaganda that preceded it was similar to the pattern Putin used in the occupation of Crimea and the intervention in Eastern Ukraine. The real objectives of the military buildup are denied initially; the annexation of Crimea, and the denial of the presence of Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine, and in the case of Syria denying that the buildup is to conduct military operations, and when the operations began against Islamist and non-Islamist opposition groups fighting both the Assad regime and ISIS, came the claim that they are against ISIS and not to save the Assad regime.
Putin fights, Obama dithers
In Syria as in the Ukraine, Putin took Obama’s measure and was sure that the American President will not directly challenge him, or even provide serious support to Putin’s victims, as we have seen in his refusal to arm the Ukrainians to defend their country. In the last few weeks and days President Obama and his secretary of state found themselves in dealing with Russia, Syria and Iran reduced to pleading, beseeching or urging them to cooperate in search of a political resolution, and offering military coordination with Russia against ISIS. At other times, Obama and Kerry expressed their ‘grave concerns’ about the machinations of Russia and Iran or vented their frustration through condemnation and indignation. American officials, including President Obama have refused to say whether the U.S. will protect the rebel groups that they have trained and armed after it became clear that the Russians have bombed their areas.
When Putin met Obama last Monday he spoke in the name of a new ‘gang of four’ axis; Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Unlike the international coalition the U.S. is leading against ISIS, which is based on air power, the new axis can deploy ground troops. Iran’s influence in a dysfunctional Iraqi governing structure is so deep that Iraq is now hosting a center to coordinate intelligence data about ISIS with Russia, Iran and Syria.
Apparently, no one in Baghdad bothered to inform the United States, of the new arrangement. In a move that reflected America’s changing fortunes in Iraq, The Russians sent a General to the American embassy in Baghdad to inform the Americans that the air raids will commence within an hour and asking the U.S. to remove its air force from Syria’s crowded skies. Russia’s military intervention in Syria can only prolong the conflict and probably enlarge it. Not since the Spanish Civil War had many countries dispatched troops or volunteers to fight in someone else’s civil war. But since the conflict in Syria has become more than just a rebellion against a despotic regime, the regional and international warring parties are waging attacks against multiple targets, driven by conflicting priorities. The Russians are bombing the opposition groups that are threatening the Assad regime in areas such as Idlib and Homs, while the United States and its allies are bombing ISIS targets, though ISIS does not represent an immediate threat to the Assad regime. Meanwhile, Turkey is using its air force to bomb Kurdish forces, and Israel regularly sends its air force to bomb arms convoys in Syria to prevent their delivery to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A state of denial
Even in the face of the new facts on the ground that Russia has been creating in Syria and Iraq, President Obama and his senior advisors continue to live in denial and to reject the notion that Putin has outwitted them, calling his decision to use military force in Syria a sign of weakness and not strength, and telling Putin and anyone else willing to listen that Russia will find itself in a quagmire, and that its Syria offensive will inflame Muslim, particularly Sunni rage, against Russia. Clearly, Putin would like his forces to meet the Russian Islamists, particularly the Chechens and others from the Caucasus region on the battlefields of Syria rather than on Russian soil. But the Obama administration believes that Islamist violence will haunt Russia. ‘Ultimately, it’s the Russians who will pay the highest price’ said white House press secretary Josh Earnest. Defense secretary Ashton Carter said that Putin’s strategy is ‘doomed to failure’.
The President and his advisors went out of their way to say that Putin is not such a good strategist and that he miscalculated in Syria. Strikingly similar views were expressed after Putin’s annexation of Crimea. At his press conference on Friday President Obama shifted from being defensive to dismissive to even downright flippant during a very long and convoluted answer about his options in Syria. ‘Mr. Putin had to go into Syria not out of strength but out of weakness, because his client, Mr. Assad, was crumbling.’ But if Assad was truly crumbling, then why didn’t the President help hasten his total collapse?
The Obama returned to his stock description of the Syrian crisis as hugely, difficult and complex to justify his dithering. Then the President turned his ire against his critics, belittling their criticism and their propositions. ‘And when I hear people offering up half-baked ideas as if they are solutions, or trying to downplay the challenges involved in this situation -- what I’d like to see people ask is, specifically, precisely, what exactly would you do, and how would you fund it, and how would you sustain it? And typically, what you get is a bunch of mumbo jumbo.’ If Putin decides to use ground troops, Russia may find itself in a quagmire, and regardless of how long the Russians remain is Syria and under what conditions they will withdraw, the fact remains that their military involvement, will result in more agony, and more Syrian victims.
‘Managed transition’ vs. ‘Management of savagery’
Before the Russian offensive, President Obama and Secretary Kerry were contemplating reviving the negotiations for a ‘managed Transition’ with the participation of Assad for a period of time that will be determined in negotiations. The process was predicated on the collaboration of Moscow to ease out Assad at the end of the ‘managed’ transition. General John Allen, the outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, said in August that the Russians told Secretary Kerry that they are ‘tired’ of Assad. But, clearly that was not meant to be, and now Russia and Iran, which has dispatched hundreds of soldiers to Syria for potential ground offensives, are doubling down to maintain the Assad regime in power, effectively closing down any political window in the foreseeable future. It is not surprising that the initial press reports and eye witness accounts confirmed that the Russian jets were not using guided missiles or ‘smart’ ordnance, which meant that the bombs were killing people indiscriminately, precisely, the modus operandi of the Syrian air force.
The ultraviolence perpetrated and celebrated in ritualistic fashion by ISIS has its roots in the al-Qaeda franchise established in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who was killed in 2006. In 2004, this violence was given an ‘intellectual’ veneer when a certain J-jihadist using the pseudonym Abu Bakr al Naji posted on line a tract titled ‘The Management of Savagery’ أدارة التوحش which might be considered the Catechism of ISIS’s concept of absolute violence. The tract was translated to English by the American scholar William McCants. Al Naji stressed the centrality of violence in all its ‘crudeness and coarseness’ to intimidate the enemies and keep the followers of the Islamic State in line. He calls for the establishment of ‘regions of savagery’ under the control of the Jihadists where the ‘administration of savagery’ will be meted out.
Only through ‘violence, crudeness, terrorism, frightening others and massacre’ ISIS, then the Caliphate can be established. Watching the way the Assad regime has been conducting its savage war against the Syria people, one cannot but conclude that it is also being guided by the dictum of the ‘Management of Savagery’; the massacres, torture, and indiscriminate bombings, and the countless number of emaciated people who died in Assad’s prisons. The savagery of ISIS is only exceeded by the savagery of the Assad regime, which is now being propped up by Russian air power and more Iranian muscle, and ending any possibility of ‘managed transition’ any time soon.
The reliance of both ISIS and the Assad regime on the ‘Management of Savagery’ to remain in power means that the destruction of ISIS and the dismantlement of the Assad regime should be pursued simultaneously.

America invited Iran to the Arab world
Abdullah Hamidaddin/Al Arabiya/October 03/15
A few days ago, U.S. Secretary John Kerry said his country would discuss options for peace in Syria, Yemen and the wider Middle East. This was seen as a quick and surprising leap in U.S.-Iranian relations. The nuclear deal was only signed a few months ago, before which Washington and Tehran had been enemies for three and a half decades. Relations have not yet normalized, but Washington is openly acknowledging that Tehran will be a partner in solving the region’s many problems.This is not the first time that the two cooperate. Iran helped the United States in the initial phases of its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Washington informally acknowledged Iran’s role in Iraq, even if there was not direct cooperation. There has also been cooperation in the U.S.-led strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). However, this time is different, and it calls for concern in the Arab Gulf states. For one, this is being done in the open, with Washington not shying away from sitting with the Iranians to discuss Arab issues. More importantly, it is happening amid improvement bilateral relations. One cannot consider this a onetime event, but rather the start of a long-term security architecture in which Iran becomes a vital component.
GCC
Regional stability cannot be acquired without active Iranian participation. However, Iran is a main reason for much of the instability in the region, and the way Tehran was invited to solve its problems seems like rewarding it for creating instability. Moreover, inviting Iran to play a role in solving Arab problems should have been done in coordination with Arab countries, at least the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which is now in a cold war with Iran. Iran is a main reason for much of the instability in the region, and the way Tehran was invited to solve its problems seems like rewarding it for creating instability. Bypassing the GCC has raised as much alarm as the signing of the Iran nuclear deal. Russian intervention in Syria is amplifying GCC concerns. Kerry has also said his country will talk with Moscow on Syria. We have since seen Russian warplanes striking targets in Syria. So the GCC is now wondering about the limits of Iran’s regional role. It is has been clear for some time that the United States is changing its Middle East security strategy, delegating non-strategic security issues to the countries of the region. Inviting Iran seems to be part of that strategy, and can be seen as an American signal to the GCC about the U.S. perception of the council’s capacity to solve regional issues alone. There have been multiple reports in American media about the limited political and military capacity of the GCC countries, and about the integral relationship between ISIS and Salafism, the prevalent religious strand in those countries. Inviting Iran is like Washington saying those opinions in the media reflect - at least partially - its view of the GCC. This is something we need to discuss among ourselves, and with Western partners, journalists, think-tanks and politicians. Behind those glossy niceties by American leaders is a new perception of the GCC that is not in its interest. I support improving relations with Iran. I believe its leadership is rational, but it will not miss an opportunity to pull the rug from under us. We need to think and act fast.

Russia in Syria: Putin Fills Strategic Vacuum in the Middle East
Jonathan Spyer/The Australian/ October 03/15
http://www.meforum.org/5537/russia-in-syria
On Wednesday, Russian aircraft carried out the first bombings of rebel positions in Syria. The operation was not a surprise. It was the latest, most dramatic episode in a significant increase in Russian support for the beleaguered regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad that has been under way since the beginning of last month.
This sharp increase in Moscow's aid to Assad has brought the marines of Russia's 810th Independent Naval Infantry Brigade to the port of Latakia, Syria's principal port city.
At least 500 of these elite troops are assembled close to the Russian naval depot at Tartus, on Syria's west coast, having arrived from their base with the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, on the disputed Crimean Peninsula, in the past month.
Moscow is sending hardware as well as troops: 28 combat aircraft at the last count — four Sukhoi Su-30 fighters, 12 Su-25 strike aircraft, 12 Su-24 attack fighters — along with numerous attack helicopters, seven state-of-the-art T-90 tanks, surface-to-air missile systems and advanced artillery.
Satellite imagery published by IHS Jane's Intelligence Review shows infrastructure development and newly paved surfaces at the Istamo weapons storage complex.
Infrastructure work is under way, too. The focus is on the Bassel al-Assad air base outside Latakia city. But the naval depot at Tartus is also being expanded.
Satellite imagery recently published by IHS Jane's Intelligence Review (in an article co-written by this reporter) shows additional infrastructure development at the Istamo weapons storage complex near al-Sanobar, also in Latakia province. Newly paved surfaces at Istamo were apparent. Temporary housing for up to 2000 personnel, of a type used by the Russians, also was visible near al-Sanobar.
Russian intervention in Syria represents a strategic move of wide import and profound implications.
All this represents a strategic move by President Vladimir Putin, of wide import and profound implications. The Assad regime is a longstanding ally of Moscow. This alliance goes back to the 1960s, when radical and pro-Soviet Arab nationalists first took power in Damascus. Putin has been backing the regime in its war with the rebellion against it since 2011.
Russia's help has already proved invaluable. Moscow's veto power at the UN Security Council made sure that no coordinated international action against the regime could take place in the early, optimistic days of the uprising. The continued supply of Russian weapons made sure that Assad's armouries remained well-stocked.
Nevertheless, the present move is of an unprecedented scale. So why is it happening, why now, and what is Moscow seeking?
Saving an eroding regime
The most immediate reason for the sharp increase in Russian assistance to the Assad regime is that the dictator has been losing ground to the rebellion in recent months. Worse, from Moscow's point of view, the rebels' gains were bringing them close to the parts of Syria whose retention by the regime is essential for Russia.
Pro-regime forces have been losing ground to the rebellion in recent months.
Assad's main problem, throughout the civil war, has been the shortage of men willing to take a bullet for him. This shortage of manpower was a product of the regime's narrow support base. The Alawi sect, to which the Assads belong, comprises only about 12 per cent of the population of Syria.
The rebellion, meanwhile, was based among the country's Sunni Arabs, comprising about 60 per cent of the population. (Kurds, Christians, Druze and Shia make up the bulk of the remainder.)
The increasingly Islamist rebellion found its ranks further strengthened by foreign volunteers. Assad had no similar line of support from young ideologues committed to his cause. But he did have assets and a strategy. His main asset was the loyalty of his allies. In contrast to Western countries that ostensibly supported the rebellion but did little practically, Assad's Russian and Iranian allies did all in their power — diplomatically, politically and militarily — to keep their client in his seat.
The Iranians mobilised regional assets, including the capable Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, to join the fight and lessen the manpower problem. The Russians were there with weapons and diplomatic backing.
In terms of strategy, the dictator sought to lessen the problem of manpower by retreating from all areas not considered vital. The result of this strategy has been the emergence of the de facto partitioned Syria of today. Assad effectively has ceded huge swathes of eastern, northern and southern Syria to his enemies.
Today, Islamic State controls most of eastern Syria. The Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party) rules a large area in the northeast and a smaller enclave in the far northwest. Islamist rebels, including Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as al-Nusra Front, the local franchise of al-Qai'da, rule a swathe of the northwest. Western-backed rebels and al-Nusra control Quneitra province adjoining the Golan Heights and much of Dera'a province south of Damascus.
The erosion of regime enclaves was in danger of reaching a point where Assad's survival is longer viable.
The regime still holds Damascus, the western coastal area and the line of cities to the capital's north (Homs, Hama and part of contested Aleppo).
The problem with the regime's strategy of retreat and consolidation is that it can be carried only so far. At a certain point, the erosion of the regime enclave will reach a point that makes Assad's survival no longer viable. In recent months it has looked as if Assad was in danger of reaching this point. This is the immediate precipitating reason for the increased Russian intervention.
A new, more effective rebel coalition called the Jaysh al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) declared its foundation on March 24. Backed by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, this alliance achieved a string of battlefield successes against the regime in the vital northwest of the country this past northern spring and summer.
On April 25, this force took the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughur. This raised the possibility for the rebellion of moving the frontline into the populated areas of Latakia province. This would have brought the rebellion close to the Mediterranean, including to Russia's naval depot at Tartus. It also would have called into question Assad's ability to defend any of the remaining areas under his control.
This had to be stopped. The Russian deployment is part of a concerted effort to stop it. Moscow is set to shore up the regime's crumbling defences.
In his speech at the UN General Assembly this week, Putin spoke of Assad's armed forces as those who were fighting "terrorism face to face". But it should be understood that the immediate danger to Assad's regime in Syria's west is represented not by Islamic State but by the rebel Jaysh al-Fatah coalition. Since Russia's goal is the preservation of the regime, Moscow's efforts to protect Assad are set to be directed against the Syrian rebels rather than Islamic State, whose main forces are located farther east. This was reflected in the choice of targets in the bombing raids on Wednesday.
So Russia's intervention represents a sharp increase in the dimensions of a longstanding policy rather than a radically new departure for Moscow. Putin's intention throughout has been to demonstrate the value of alliance with Moscow by showing how he protects his friends (and, while he's doing it, to hold and expand Moscow's only naval base outside of the former Soviet Union).
How far will Putin go?
According to Kremlin chief of staff Sergey Ivanov, the goal of the Russian deployment is "strictly to provide air support for the government forces in their fight against Islamic State."
According to Sergey Ivanov, head of Russia's presidential administration, the goal of the Russian deployment is "strictly to provide air support for the (Syrian) government forces in their fight against Islamic State."
Putin undoubtedly is concerned about Islamic State's rise and what its proliferation could mean for the restive Caucasus region and central Asia. One of Islamic State's main military commanders, Abu Omar al-Shishani, is of Chechen-Georgian origin, and volunteers from the Caucasus are among the most brutal of the jihadi fighters in Syria.
But the deployment of the Russian forces in Syria indicates beyond doubt that the main concern of the Russians is to defend Assad against the rebels. The proclamations against Islamic State are a feint to add moral authority to the defence of the dictator.
In so far as Islamic State represents a threat to Assad, it does so in the Damascus area and in the Homs province. Islamic State forces are pushing across the desert, past Palmyra, nudging against Homs province and in some parts of Damascus, including Qadam and the Yarmouk camp.
But the Russians are not deploying in any strength in this area. Their deployment is on the western coast, a considerable distance from Islamic State but close to the lines of Jaysh al-Fatah (and taking in Russia's naval assets in Tartus). The Russians have begun flights of Pchela-1t unmanned reconnaissance vehicles out of Latakia. These UAVs are conducting patrols over rebel-held territory to the immediate east of Latakia, not over Islamic State-held areas.
Given the scale of the deployment, there are no indications that Russia is set to take part in a major campaign to reconquer areas lost to the Assad regime. Rather, as it appears, the Russian intention is to prevent the rebels from pushing further into regime-held areas.
This will enable Moscow to preserve its assets in western Syria (it has little interest in or need for land farther east). No less important, it will enable the Russians to keep the Syrian war going.
Putin sees the eastern Mediterranean as the back yard of the West. In strategic terms, maintaining assets in an ongoing conflict in the West's back yard is a natural goal as a means to offset the West's holding of assets in Russia's back yard: the former states of the western Soviet Union, most importantly Ukraine. So Russia's determination to keep Assad in the game has a logic far beyond Syria. But almost certainly it does not include the costly and probably unachievable goal of winning complete victory for Assad.
The bear is back
The intervention is the latest bold move by a Russian President who perceives a strategic vacuum in the eastern Mediterranean, deriving from the US desire to avoid major commitments in the area. The failure to act following the regime's use of chemical weapons in 2013 and half-hearted efforts by Western countries on behalf of the rebels reflect this Western determination to stay out as much as possible. In such a situation, Putin is likely to have calculated that a firm move on his part on the regime's behalf in Syria would be without negative international consequence for Russia.
Framing the intervention in terms of the joint opposition to Islamic State would further contribute to lessening any chance of Western objection. As of now, this assessment seems to have paid off. The West appears to be backing off from its previously stated goal of demanding Assad's departure. The result of Putin's move and Western acquiescence to it is to introduce a new and powerful strategic player into the Middle East.
Russia appears to be making additional moves to consolidate its cooperation with other forces aligned with Syria. This week, Iraq announced an agreement with Moscow for sharing intelligence on Islamic State. Supporters of the so-called resistance axis in the region (which includes Iran, Iraq, Assad's Syria, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) are depicting the Russian intervention as part of a larger process in which Moscow is concluding an overall alliance with this axis. One of these, Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of pro-Hezbollah newspaper al-Akhbar , has named the new alliance as the 4+1 bloc (Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria plus Hezbollah).
Russia has returned as a determined player in the Middle East for the first time since the collapse of the USSR.
Moscow certainly would deny the establishment of any such alliance. And it is notable that Russian diplomacy in the region has included an attempt to keep channels of communication and cooperation open with the enemies of Iran and Assad, including Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The precise contours and implications of Putin's intervention into Syria are not yet clear. Russia's economy is weak and this may well prevent Moscow doing much more than keeping its allies in the game. But what may be asserted with certainty is that Russia has returned as a determined and visible player on the ground in the Middle East for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Moscow looks poised to call the next round of shots in the contiguous area that once comprised the now collapsed states of Iraq and Syria. This represents a new strategic reality in the Middle East. For now, it's Moscow rules in the eastern Mediterranean.
**Jonathan Spyer is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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