- Hof, Lister, and Cooper, Stein + Taylor on next steps in Syria
- Hawijah will be the next battle against ISIS in Iraq
- Dubowitz, Fixler: US is helping Iran fund chaos in the Mideast
Mark Dubowitz and Annie Fixler writes: The White House refuses to acknowledge the obvious: The nuclear deal has already led the United States to fund terrorists, sectarian warfare, and chaos in the Middle East. – Foreign Policy’s Shadow Government
- Syria rebels draw closer to al Qaeda-linked group
- Senate Democrats losing patience with Obama’s Syria policy
A year after Russia waded into the war in Syria, aiming to flex its national security muscles and prop up beleaguered Syrian President Bashar Assad, Moscow appears no closer to one of its military goals: getting the U.S. to coordinate combat operations in the civil war. And prospects of a diplomatic resolution seem dim. – Associated Press
Russia has reinforced its air base in Syria with several bombers and is ready to send ground attack aircraft as it intensifies support for Syrian government troops after the collapse of a ceasefire plan, Russia's Izvestia daily reported on Friday. - Reuters
Relying on a Kurdish militia in a U.S.-backed offensive to take the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State could trigger prolonged ethnic conflict and Arab fighters should instead form the core of the operation, a senior Turkish official said. - Reuters
Eli Lake writes: There was a time when you could count on hard-core Sunni Islamists in the Middle East to be reliably opposed to the existence of the Jewish state. Organizations ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda disagreed on everything from jurisprudence to short-term strategy, but when it came to Israel there was consensus. The slaughter in Syria is changing that. – Bloomberg View
Editorial: President Obama bears ultimate responsibility for doing so little to stop the five-year Guernica that is Syria, and we don’t know what Ms. Power’s private policy advice has been. But in public she has become an echo of the officials she once denounced for justifying American inaction in the face of mass slaughter. The honorable decision would be to resign. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Frederic Hof writes: Protecting civilians, beating the Islamic State and organizing decent governance for eastern Syria should be the pillars of a strategy to stabilize Syria, to set the stage for real peace talks and to stop the hemorrhaging of terrified humanity from a country ravaged mercilessly by two sides of the same terrorist coin: the Islamic State and Assad. – Washington Post
Scott Cooper, Aaron Stein, and Andrea Taylor write: [I]f the President were to conduct such an assessment as mandated by the Caesar bill, or if the incoming Administration were to see such an assessment as due diligence in evaluating policy options in response to an issue displacing millions, destabilizing continents, and fueling terrorist propaganda—he or she would see that the United States has recent experience with no-fly zones, and the greatest challenges come not during the tactical execution but while building a coalition for sustained flight operations. – The American Interest
Charles Lister writes: We are already five years too late and our chances of success diminish every week, but the killing machine in Syria must be stopped. The price for doing so today will almost certainly fade in comparison to what we may face five more years from now. Contrary to Obama administration loyalists, there are other options available to us today – it is up to us whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. – War on the Rocks