Monday, February 15, 2016
Will We See A Ground Force Invasion Of Syria Soon? 'A Dramatic Escalation Appears Imminent'
350,000 soldiers, 20,000 tanks, 2,450 warplanes and 460 military
helicopters are massing in northern Saudi Arabia for a military exercise
that is being called “Northern Thunder”. According to the official announcement,
forces are being contributed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia,
Oman, Qatar, Malaysia and several other nations. This exercise will
reportedly last for 18 days,
and during that time the airspace over northern Saudi Arabia will be
closed to air traffic. This will be the largest military exercise in
the history of the region, and it comes amid rumors that Saudi Arabia
and Turkey are preparing for a massive ground invasion of Syria.
If you were going to gather forces for an invasion, this is precisely
how you would do it. Governments never come out and publicly admit
that forces are moving into position for an invasion ahead of time, so
“military exercises” are a common excuse that gets used for this sort of
thing.
If these exercises are actually being used as an excuse to mass forces
near the northern Saudi border, then we should expect an invasion to
begin within the next couple of weeks. If it happens, we should expect
to see the Saudi coalition storm through western Iraq and into Syria
from the south, and it is likely that Turkey will come in from the
north.
The goal would be to take out the Assad regime before Russia, Iran
and Hezbollah could react. For the past couple of years, Saudi Arabia,
Turkey and their allies have been funding the Sunni insurgency in Syria, and they were counting on those insurgents to be able to take down the Assad regime by themselves.
You see, the truth is that ISIS was never supposed to lose in Syria.
Saudi Arabia and her allies have been funneling massive amounts of
money to ISIS, and hundreds of millions of dollars of ISIS oil has been shipped into Turkey where it is sold to the rest of the world.
The major Sunni nations wanted ISIS and the other Sunni insurgent groups
to take down Assad. In the aftermath, Saudi Arabia and her allies
intended to transform Syria into a full-blown Sunni nation.
But then Russia, Iran and Hezbollah stepped forward to assist the Assad
regime. Russian air support completely turned the tide of the war, and
now the Sunni insurgents are on the brink of losing.
Aleppo was once the largest city in Syria, and Sunni insurgents have
controlled it since 2012. But now relentless Russian airstrikes have
made it possible for Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah ground forces to
surround the city, and it is about to fall back into the hands of the
Syrian government.
If this happens, the war will essentially be over.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies have invested massive amounts of
time, money and effort into overthrowing Assad, and they aren’t about to
walk away now.
If the war was to end right at this moment, a weakened Assad regime
would remain in power, and Iran and Hezbollah would be the dominant
powers in the country for years to come. And once Assad died, it would
be inevitable that Iran and Hezbollah would attempt to transform Syria
into a full-blown Shiite nation. This is something that Saudi Arabia
and Turkey want to avoid at all costs.
So they are actually considering what was once absolutely unthinkable – a massive ground invasion of Syria.
But if Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies go in, they run the risk of
a full-blown war with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Just consider some
of the comments that we have seen in recent days…
Reacting to a potential troop deployment, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said Saturday, “Let
no one think they can attack Syria or violate its sovereignty because I
assure you any aggressor will return to their country in a wooden
coffin.”
Pavel Krasheninnikov, a deputy of Russia’s State Duma, has warned Saudi
Arabia that any military ground operation in Syria without Damascus’
consent would amount to a declaration of war, Press TV reported.
We could literally be looking at the spark that sets off World War 3. I
can’t believe that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are actually considering
this.
And if it does happen, you can rest assured that Barack Obama gave them the green light to go in.
Unfortunately, it sounds like the decision may have already been made.
Just consider what Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is saying…
Earlier, Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE voiced their readiness to contribute troops
for a ground operation in Syria on the condition that the US would lead
the intervention. Damascus and its key regional ally, Iran, warned that such a foreign force would face strong resistance.
And in addition to all of the forces massing in northern Saudi Arabia, the London Independent is reporting that the Saudis have sent troops and aircraft to a military base in Turkey…
Saudi Arabia is sending troops and fighter jets to Turkey’s Incirlik military base ahead of a possible ground invasion of Syria.
The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, confirmed the deployment in a statement to the Yeni Şafak newspaper on Saturday, days before a temporary ceasefire is due to come into force.
There are reports that Saudi officials are saying that the decision to send in ground troops is “irreversible”, and Reuters is reporting that the Syrian government claims that some Turkish troops have already entered the country…
The Syrian government says Turkish forces were believed to be among 100
gunmen it said entered Syria on Saturday accompanied by 12 pick-up
trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, in an ongoing supply operation
to insurgents fighting Damascus.
“The operation of supplying ammunition and weapons is continuing via the
Bab al-Salama crossing to the Syrian area of Azaz,” the Syrian foreign
ministry said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council published by
state news agency SANA.
Needless to say, the Russians are quite alarmed by all of this.
In fact, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is warning about what could happen if things spiral out of control…
In the wake of Saudi Arabia’s proposal to send in ground troops on Thursday, the Russian Prime Minister claimed the move could spark a new world war.
“A ground operation draws everyone taking part in it into a war,” he told the Handelsblatt newspaper.
“The Americans and our Arab partners must consider whether or not they want a permanent war.”
If Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies launch an invasion and make a
mad dash to take out the Assad regime in Damascus, the Russians will
inevitably respond.
And if tactical nuclear weapons are necessary to keep the invading
forces out of Damascus, the Russians will not be shy about using them.
I don’t know if I have ever seen a scenario which was more likely to
initiate World War 3 than the one that we are watching unfold right now.
So what has the mainstream media been saying about all of this?
Incredibly, they have been almost entirely silent. When he went looking for news about these events, James Bailey could find almost nothing on either Fox News or CNN…
I just visited the home page for Foxnews.com and found not one single
mention of the insane events now unfolding in the Middle East. I could
not believe it, so I used my Find tool to search for Syria and Saudi
Arabia. Not one mention!
Of course that could change at any moment, but nothing there when I
checked. Their stories were all about the meaningless Presidential
election, which has already been decided regardless of what we think
about it, and other stories about entertainment, sports, Congressional
political theater, etc.
So I went to CNN and found just about the same thing with one news story
about the Syrian cease fire, but when I read it there was no mention of
any of the big events that have developed this week. This is truly an
amazing media blackout!
But Fox News does have space to run headlines like these…
And CNN apparently thinks that these news stories are more important than the potential beginning of World War 3…
If Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies are going to conduct an
invasion of Syria, the most likely time for this to happen will be by
the end of this month during these military exercises.
If we can get to March 1st and no invasion has happened yet, perhaps we can breathe a little sigh of relief.
But if it does happen, and the Russians and the Iranians decide to shoot back, it really could be the start of World War 3.
If you have not been paying attention up until now, you need to start, because this could literally change everything.
The
situation in Syria has reached a watershed moment and a dramatic
escalation of the war appears imminent. Let’s look again at how we
reached this point.
Russians unleashed a fantastically intense firepower on Daesh along crucial sectors of the front. In northern Homs, the Russians bombed a sector for 36 hours in a row. According to the latest briefing of the Russian Defense Ministry, just between February 4th and February 11th,
the Russian aviation group in the Syrian Arab Republic performed 510
combat sorties and engaged 1’888 terrorists targets. That kind of
ferocious pounding did produce the expected effect and the Syrian
military began slowly moving along the Turkish-Syrian border while, at
the same time, threatening the Daesh forces still deployed inside the
northern part of Aleppo. In doing so, the Russians and Syrian threatened
to cut off the vital resupply route linking Daesh to Turkey. According
to Russian sources, Daesh forces were so demoralized that they forced
the local people to flee towards the Turkish border and attempted to
hide inside this movement of internally displaced civilians.
This
strategic Russian and Syrian victory meant that all the nations
supporting Daesh, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the USA were facing
a complete collapse of their efforts to overthrow Assad and to break-up
Syria and turn part of it into a “Jihadistan”. The Americans could not
admit this, of course, as for the Saudis, their threats to invade Syria
were rather laughable. Which left the main role to Erdogan who was more
than happy to provide the West with yet another maniacal ally willing to
act in a completely irresponsible way just to deny the “other side”
anything looking like a victory.
Erdogan
seems to be contemplating two options. The first one is a ground
operation into Syria aimed at restoring the supply lines of Daesh and at
preventing the Syrian military from controlling the border. Here is a
good illustration (taken from a SouthFront video) of what this would look like:
According to various reports, Erdogan has 18’000 soldiers supported by
aircraft, armor and artillery poised along the border to execute such an
invasion.
The second plan is even simpler, at least in theory: to create a no-fly
zone over all of Syria. Erdogan personally mentioned this option several
times, the latest one on Thursday the 11th.
Needless to say, both plans are absolutely illegal under international law and would constitute an act of aggression, the “supreme international crime” according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, because “it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Not that this would deter a megalomaniac like Erdogan.
In
purely military terms, Russia has taken a number of crucial steps: she
declared a large scale “verification” of the “combat readiness” of the
Southern and Central military districts. In practical terms, this means
that all the Russian forces are on high alert, especially the AeroSpace
forces, the Airborne Forces, the Military Transportation Aviation forces
and, of course, all the Russian forces in Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet.
The first practical effect of such “exercises” is not only to make a
lot of forces immediately available, but it is also to make them very
difficult to track. This not only protects the mobilized forces, but
also makes it very hard for the enemy to figure out what exactly they
are doing. There are also report that Russian Airborne Warning and
Control (AWACS) aircraft – A-50M – are now regularly flying over Syria.
In other words, Russia has taken the preparations needed to go to war with Turkey.
Needless to say, the Turks and the Saudis have also announced joint military exercises. They have even announced that Saudi aircraft will conduct airstrikes from the Incirlik air base in support of an invasion of Syria.
At the same time, the Russians have also launched a peace initiative centered around a general ceasefire starting on March 1st or even, according to the latest leaks, on February 15th. The goal is is transparent: to break the Turkish momentum towards an invasion of Syria. It is obvious that Russian diplomats are doing everything they can to avert a war with Turkey.
Here again I have to repeat what I have said already a million times in
the past: the small Russian contingent in Syria is in a very precarious
position: far away from Russia and very close (45km) to Turkey. Not only
that, but the Turks have over 200 combat aircraft ready to attack,
whereas the Russians probably has less than 20 SU-30/35/34s in total.
Yes, these are very advanced aircraft, of the 4++ generation, and they
will be supported by S-400 systems, but the force ratio remains a
terrible 1:10.
Russia does, however, have one big advantage over Turkey: Russia has
plenty of long-range bombers, armed with gravity bombs and cruise
missiles, capable of striking the Turks anywhere, in Syria and in Turkey
proper. In fact, Russia even has the capability to strike at Turkish airfields,
something which the Turks cannot prevent and something which they
cannot retaliate in kind for. The big risk for Russia, at this point,
would be that NATO would interpret this as a Russian “aggression”
against a member-state, especially if the (in)famous Incirlik air base is hit.
What
is clear is that in any war between Russia and Turkey NATO will have to
make a key decision: is the alliance prepared to go to war with a
nuclear power like Russia to protect a lunatic like Erdogan? It is hard
to imagine the US/NATO doing something so crazy but, unfortunately, wars
always have the potential to very rapidly get out of control. Modern
military theory has developed many excellent models of escalation but,
unfortunately, no good model of how de-escalation could happen (at least
not that I am aware of). How does one de-escalate without appearing to
be surrendering or at least admitting to being the weaker side?
The
current situation is full of dangerous and unstable asymmetries: the
Russian task force in Syria is small and isolated and it cannot protect
Syria from NATO or even from Turkey, but in the case of a full-scale war
between Russia and Turkey, Turkey has no chance of winning, none at
all.
In
a conventional war opposing NATO and Russia I personally don’t see
either side losing (whatever ‘losing’ and ‘winning’ mean in this
context) without engaging nuclear weapons first. This suggests to me
that the US cannot allow Erdogan to attack the Russian task force in
Syria, not during a ground invasion and, even less so, during an attempt
to establish a no-fly zone.
The
latest news strongly suggests to me that the White House has taken the
decision to let Turkey and Saudi Arabia invade Syria. Turkish officials are openly saying that an invasion is imminent and that the goal of such an invasion would be to reverse the Syrian army gains along the boder and near Aleppo.The latest reports are also suggesting that the Turks have begun shelling Aleppo. None of that could be happening without the full support of CENTCOM and the White House.
The
Russian task force in Syria is about to be very seriously challenged
and I don’t see how it could deal with this new threat by itself. I very
much hope that I am wrong here, but I have do admit that a *real* Russian intervention in Syria might happen after all, with MiG-31s and all. In fact, in the next few days, we are probably going to witness a dramatic escalation of the conflict in Syria.
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