It is always good to follow up what happens in the Middle East, as you do not know when the next issue will come up.
In Syria – we have an increasingly worrying scenario.
The battleground everybody against Islamic State / PKK against IS and Turkey proxy/ Syria and Russia against Islamic State and Free Syrian Army and US is mutating.
There have been several accidents (2 bombings and one airplane downing) on behalf of the US against Syrian near Al-Tanf (which is the cross road Iran-Iraq-Syria). Lucky enough no Russians or Iranians got involved, yet.
The issue is that the US says is protecting the “good” Free Syrian Army – while for the Syrians are close to impossible to distinguish one from another.
You can debate how much you want – but last year some of the trained rebel groups under the US command switched over to IS just a month after entering Syria.
This conflict is slowly morphing into the new war US/Iran. Hopefully they will keep on fighting via proxies.
Iran, not to be left behind, shot several medium range ballistic missile into Syria against the Islamic State positions in Syria (first use since the Iran/iraq war) in retaliation of the Parliament terror attack. I presume it works also as a warning.
Not to be content, the Iranian navy had military training with China last week.
Qatar is still isolated and two blocs are appearing the Qatar bloc – Turkey, Iran (allied with Russia and China) and Iraq, versus the Saudi bloc (Israel (allied with the US), UAE and Egypt).
Also here the issue is the definition of good and bad terrorists. Qatar defines good terrorist the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in Palestine – while the Saudi have other definition of good terrorist (more Islamic State like)
The US is in the Saudi bloc, but, as its main Middle East base is in Qatar, is maintaining a low profile.
Russia, as it needs the Saudi for the oil price, is also maintaining a low profile. China, as usual, very smart, is there – but pretty much invisible to the media (China is also “invisibly” supporting Syria).
Unfortunately terrorist are useful, so no one agrees that all terrorists are bad.
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