SyriaRussia will soon begin to pay a steep price for Syrian campaign: Ash Carter
Moscow will soon begin to pay a steep price – in the form of reprisal attacks and casualties — for its escalating military intervention on behalf of the Assad regime in Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has warned. Earlier this week, fifty-five leading Muslim clerics, including prominent Islamists, urged “true Muslims” to “give all moral, material, political and military” support to the fight against Assad’s army as well as Iranian and Russian forces. “Russia has created a Frankenstein in the region which it will not be able to control,” warned a senior Qatari diplomat. “With the call to jihad things will change. Everyone will go to fight. Even Muslims who sit in bars. There are 1.5 billion Muslims. Imagine what will happen if 1 percent of them join.”
Moscow will soon begin to pay a steep price – in the form of reprisal attacks and casualties — for its escalating military intervention on behalf of the Assad regime in Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has warned.
Carter was talking at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday, in which the ministers agreed to increase a NATO response force intended to be deployed quickly to flashpoints in different parts of the world.
Reports from Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies say that the oil-rich rich Sunni countries are setting in motion a broad strategy to counter the Russian moves in the region.
The NATO defense ministers said there were no current plans to deploy the response force to Turkey, but NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, suggested that to formation of such a response force should deter future Russian or Syrian incursions into Turkish territory.
“We don’t have to deploy the NATO response force or the spearhead force to deliver deterrence,” Stoltenberg said. “The important thing is that any adversary of NATO will know that we are able to deploy.”
Yahoo News reports that Middle East diplomats say that Saudi Arabia, an old foe of the Assad family and a leading supporter of the anti-regime Syrian rebels, was preparing to step up its support, having given up on the United States stepping up its own efforts to support the rebels.
One indication of the seriousness of the Saudi intentions is the fact that ministers from Qatar and Turkey, the Saudis’ partners in the fight against Assad, are holding talks on planning and implementing their next moves in Syria. Turkey and Qatar were among the most ardent supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its offshoot, the Palestinian Hamas. Both movements have been an anathema to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have used their billions to fund the Sisi government in Egypt – in July 2013, General Sisi led the Egyptian military in removing the Muslim Brotherhood from power, which the Brotherhood had gained in June 2012 – and then led other Gulf states to break diplomatic relations with Qatar over the latter’s support for the Brotherhood.
Diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Qatar were patched up earlier this year.
