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On December 26, the Tiger Forces and their allies liberated Aswad Hill, Mazraat Qahirah, Ras al-Ain, Qubaybat Abu al-Huda and the Abandoned Air Defense Base in southern Idlib from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda).
Some pro-government sources speculate that this advance is a part of a large-scale operation to re-capture the entire area west of Khanasir from the militants. On December 27, fighting continued in the area with government troops attempting to further develop momentum.
On December 26, militants shot down a L-39 warplane of the Syrian Air Force with a man-portable air-defense system. The warplane crashed between the villages of Hamdaniyah and Haraytan. According to reports, the pilot was captured and executed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The chief of the Russian General Staff, Army Gen. Valery Gerasimov announced plans to eliminate the remaining members of HTS in 2018.
“Some members of this terrorist organization operate in de-escalation zones,” Gerasimov said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily. “Jabhat al-Nusra fiercely opposes [the ceasefire]. Therefore, they must be eliminated.”
He added that political settlement in the country, including preparations for the upcoming Congress of the Syrian National Dialogue, is among other important tasks for the next year.
Israel is surrounded by dangerous enemies and may face a war on several fronts, Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said during the annual Chief of Staff Award ceremony honoring outstanding units at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
“The IDF is clearly superior to its enemies, but we are aware of the real danger of proliferation on several fronts which are explosive and require us to act judiciously and creatively, to initiate and to dare,” Eisenkot said hinting that his country is preparing for the escalation of the situation in the region.
eliminating all zio satanic terrorists esp illegal occupiers like ameritards/sdf is inevitable – scumbags on earth – forever losers
Thank god some of us are woke?
Then end of Isreahell is near.
Sorry, but Israel cannot fall without the US and EURO fall.
Keep dreaming, and screaming, but let not ones own voices be the cause of insanity, when what it promises fails to appear.
Lol you’re clearly butthurt. Russian/Iran alliance can’t be stopped. Your Nato bullshit is coming to an end as well.
Lot of hot air, pie in sky bull, there is no change in US and it’s Euro allies agenda of ridding Assad of life, galvanizing Syria into quizzing protectorates, eventual destruction of Iran and most importantly destruction of Hezbollah and expansions of Israeli land mass and energy economic base, at Syrian and Hezbollahs expence.
There is coming soon a time when Russia will have to militarily defend itself from internal terrorism, and outside conventional warfare,
A conventional war Russia cannot win, and one where Russia may lose minute areas of landmass but not at a level that would make nuclear retaliation necessary.
Syria is no more than a tiny per hole in a snow blizzard when it compares to the far larger picture of ongoing world events.
Today US and Israel/ allies. Are far ahead of where they were when first they dived their terrorist war dogs on Syria.
Unlike a few years ago they now own a large chunk of old Syria, and along with own permanent military presence have a couple million Kurds resevoirs of Iraq, Turkey and Syrian , but several thosands of very well trained and equipped Kurd and Syrian peopled military force as a base to build upon
Euro and ME nations have already commuted billions and are contributing billions more to destruction of Syria now and Iran later.
Just as US has done in past it will post millions of USD to anyone that kills Assad and some of his supporters, Supporters no matter where they live, in Syria, Iran, or Lebanon
I don’t think the US can be driven out of the Middle East any time soon, barring major strategic developments like the collapse of the US petrodollar as trade in yuan and other substitutes increases, or a major decline in demand for fossil fuels as transition to renewables accelerates. But your scenario is ridiculously rosy for the US.
It’s fairly clear that the Syrian conflict is in its late stages. Basically, Syria is going to clean out all the pockets including Idlib, piece by piece. Terrorism doesn’t seem to be significantly reasserting itself in retaken areas. So what will be left is main Syria, with all the major cities and a clear land route to Iraq and Iran, and the Kurdish-held region (with US backing). But the Kurds have more turf than they can, or probably intend to, hold. Whatever US intentions might be, I’d lay odds that the Kurds think of the non-Kurd-inhabited pieces they took from ISIS as bargaining chips which they will sell off to main Syria at the negotiating table–and the fact that the US wants them to stay will be basically just a reason to increase the price. End game, probably Syria whole again with Kurds having strong regional autonomy.
Israel probably can’t beat Hezbollah. Far as I can tell the Israeli military hasn’t changed much since last time around when Hezbollah beat them, while Hezbollah has improved in both experience and materiel. And nobody’s going to attack Iran unless the most idiotic people in the US establishment prevail. If they do, however, the price of oil will suddenly spike to $300+ a barrel as Iran closes the Persian Gulf, blocking Iraqi and Saudi oil from going anywhere. The Persian Gulf is really narrow, they can close it from the shore easily. Every player in the region knows that.
Russia may face terrorism, but it will be marginal, not a game changer; there’s too little unrest in Russia for anyone to put together a real insurgency, even with outside money. That kind of thing if anything helps increase unity; it would just strengthen Putin’s hand. Why do you think the West spends so much more time warning the public about terrorism and pointing at enemies, than actually trying to stop it from happening in any serious way?
As to Russia defending itself from conventional warfare, that is just moronic. And again, everyone knows it. Conventional wars for territory are either on or off; you can’t do a “limited” war for “minute areas of landmass”. If you’ve attacked, you’ve attacked, and the defender will not stop until they have everything back. So then you have to commit more forces, and they have to commit more forces, and then all your forces are committed and it’s a major war, World War III, and in today’s world at that point somebody goes nuclear. Moreover at the conventional level, while there’s no way Russia could win an aggressive war against NATO, it’s very unlikely they could lose a defensive one. Nobody is going to just nibble off any “minute areas of landmass”.
Those Euro billions? Don’t think so. Europe doesn’t care that much about US obsessions with violence in the Middle East. Sure, they’ll kowtow to the US and wave the NATO flag on demand, but they do their best to avoid spending any of their own money, and they’ve had it up to here with refugee crises, and they’re annoyed by the US insistence on coming out in public as firmly on the Israeli side when Europe would rather play it cool and pretend to be neutral so everyone keeps on playing the fake peace game.
The broader Middle East situation is as usual volatile and unpredictable, but:
–Iraq is far closer to Iran than it was before the US made enemies with Saddam
–Iraq is also stronger than it has been lately; Iraqi Kurds lost a bunch of power recently overplaying their hand, and Iraq asserted itself against ISIS.
–Qatar has been pushed closer to Iran and Russia by Saudi machinations backfiring
–Saudi Arabia is de facto allied with Israel and firmly with the US, and dominates the UAE and Bahrain and Kuwait.
–But Saudi Arabia’s energetic Crown Prince keeps on biting off more than he can chew. Bogged down in Yemen at enormous expense, pissed off Qatar and Lebanon, what will he screw up next? There are signs the Saudis are actually managing to run out of money–and the only way to change that will be to co-operate with Russia to raise oil prices.
–Egypt is broadly on US side and sort of co-operating with Israel, but Egypt is IMO more unstable than most people have noticed.
About Egypt… They lost the US grants because of some dubious issue and now they signed an agreement with Russia to re-establish trade and tourism. Also they will be allowing Russia to use their military ports. Egypt switched sides about a year and a half ago but just obviously a few months ago.
Interesting.
Yes, you are right – Egipt wants to be included in new order with China being new center (removed from US) of world governing.
PSSST: Take a look at division within Russia, Iran and Turkey by latest Erdogan statements.
“ASSAD IS A TERRORIST AND MUST GO, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK WITH HIM”
Ah what a crooked web we weave. And the whole F’n world is their t use and feed.
I’m not sure Erdogan himself knows which way he’s going to jump five minutes ahead of time. The man schemes and double-deals so much he’s lost track of whether any of his plans are the real ones.
(Er-DOG-an)Turkey is a member of NATO and USA puppet, independently of the theater they are mounting. Turkey gave, is give, and will give support to terrorists with the goal of keeping Syria destroyed, and with the next fight with Iran. If one has in mind this, there is not way to be confuse about Er-dog-an behavior.
Not news. Turkey is the weakest link in any alliance, whether be it NATO or Russia-Iran-Turkey.
Really unreliable. Maybe he should get some restful sleep. This guy is not doing any favor to his country. His word as of now means nothing.
Good, about time, it was in the pipeline anyways. It’s just they needed a good timing for it and voila, HTS gave it to them.