Thomas Wictor

Reader Aqeel Yousuf sent me a question: “Now that the foreign ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey met with the American Secretary of State in Vienna on October 23, does that mean a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war is possible?”

Well, yes and no.

Mr. Yousuf appears to be a very young man, so he may not have read the many quotations of one of the most brilliant people who ever lived, the humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935).

Will Rogers was a cowboy from Oklahoma. He was one-quarter Cherokee. As my brother Tim would say, “God did a little dance around him.” Rogers was gifted on too many levels for modern-day people to really comprehend. Besides being a Vaudevillian and newspaper columnist, he was a rodeo performer who was a master with the lasso.

Rogers was famous for his ability to express extremely complex issues in just a few homespun words. This is my favorite quote of his.

Diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie!” until you can find a rock.

The foreign ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, as well as the American secretary of state, are currently saying, “Nice doggie!” as they look for the rock that will end the war in Syria. This rock will be thrown at the mullahs of Iran. After the mullahs are gone, there will be a diplomatic solution for Syria. My guess is that Bashar al-Assad will go into exile, and the Syrians will stop fighting.

I believe that Assad has had enough, but the mullahs are preventing a genuine diplomatic solution.

Ali-Akbar Velayati, advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and head of the Center for Strategic Studies in the Iranian Expediency Council, told ISNA [the Iranian Students’ News Agency] that as far as Iran was concerned, Bashar Assad was considered by Iran as a “red line” and even the West could not suggest a replacement for him.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Iranian Expediency Council, said that for Iran there was no difference between the Iranian and Syrian borders [and] it was Iran’s duty to defend Islam and Muslims[.] He added that Iran’s security could not be ensured within its borders alone, because its security was linked to that of the entire region.

Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps], said that Syria was the front line of Islam against “global arrogance and the Zionist regime” in the Middle East and that the security of Western Asia depended on Syria and the resistance front.

The Iranians have imported Afghans and Iraqis to fight alongside Hezbollah, the Syrian Basij militia that Iran created, and the Iranian Quds Force and IRGC. An Iranian blogger noted the following.

The war in Syria is now essentially an Iranian regime war – not a proxy one but in the most direct sense of the word. The Syrian rebels are mainly fighting the Iranian regime, represented by Sepah Pasdaran [IRGC] and Basij and their foot soldiers, Hezbollah Lebanon and the Iraqi militias.

Syria (or the areas under regime control) is effectively a country occupied by Sepah Pasdaran. Bashar al-Assad is a just puppet who is no longer in charge, and his regime is just a facade. His real masters are the head of Sepah Pasdaran’s operations in Syria Hossein Hamedani and the head of Sepah Qods Qassim Soleimani. Both are the de facto military rulers of Syria. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has the final say in all important matters in Syria, just like in Iran.

Our readers may remember what Gen. Qassim Soleimani promised in his (mock) Syria election programme in June 2014:

“I will dismantle the Syrian army and replace it with a much better organised and fully loyal force, the Syrian Sepah Pasdaran. The Syrian army cannot be trusted with major battles, as we’ve seen since the start of the troubles in Syria in March 2011.

“We have already established in Syria the ‘National Defence Forces’, modeled on the Iranian Basij, and they have done a great job. A Syrian Sepah Pasdaran will be a culmination of these efforts to guarantee security for all Syrians.

“Like in Iran, Syria’s Sepah Pasdaran will have the final say. Power should be in the hands of strong military generals who know how to rule, not weak civilian presidents and ministers.”

Well, unfortunately for Iran, the Americans, Saudis, and Turks are capable of picking up gigantic rocks. The Saudi, Turkish, and Russian foreign ministers and American secretary of state met on October 23, 2015. This is what Saudi Arabia and the US announced on October 26.

John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, met King Salman of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh for talks over the weekend. Despite Russian leaders saying they had extracted promises of fresh elections from President Bashar al-Assad, Kerry and the Saudi ruler presented a common front in agreeing to hit the regime harder.

“They pledged to continue and intensify support to the moderate Syrian opposition while the political track is being pursued,” the State Department later said in a statement.

The statement was the first public acknowledgement of a surge in the number of anti-tank missiles that have been passed to specially-vetted rebel groups from the Free Syrian Army since Russian jets began operations at the end of September. The rebels’ use of American-made TOW missiles has increased nine-fold, slowing regime offensives across the country.

A nine-fold increase means 900 percent. The US and Saudi Arabia took the number of TOW antitank guided missiles (ATGMs) given the the rebels and multiplied it by nine.

Here’s a Free Syrian Army (FSA) TOW squad.

In the face of the unlimited firepower that the US and Saudi Arabia are capable of providing, the Iranians and their proxies can’t win. By using over twenty sources, I’ve compiled a partial list of the top Iranian and Iranian-backed commanders killed in Syria—and Iran

1. Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani – Quds Force architect of Iranian operations in Syria
2. Colonel Farshid Hasounizadeh – Quds Force, former commander of Saberin Brigade, the IRGC rapid-response border unit of special forces
3. Brigadier General Hamid Mukhtarband – Quds Force
4. General Mohammad Ali Allah-Dadi – Quds Force liaison to Hezbollah and Syrian intelligence
5. Hassan Hussein al-Hajj – chief of Hezbollah military operations
6. Mahdi Hassan Obeid – senior Hezbollah commander
7. Alaa Kasad Mahudar al-Musawi – commander of Harakat al-Nujaba in Aleppo
8. Imad Mughniyeh Mohammed Issa – chief of Hezbollah operations in Syria and Iraq
9. Jihad Mughniyeh – commander of Hezbollah in Golan Heights and son of Imad Mughniyeh
10. Abu Ali al-Tabatabai – commander of Quds Force in the Golan Heights
11. Ismail al-Ashab – Hezbollah liaison with Iran
12. General Jabar Drisawi – commander of Iranian Basij in Syria
13. Brigadier General Mohammad Jamali Paghalleh – Quds Force
14. General Abdollah Eskandari – Quds Force
15. General Hassan Shateri – Quds Force liaison to Lebanon
16. Ismail Ali Heydari – Quds Force commander
17. Musa Ali Shahimi – senior Hezbollah commander
18. Ali Hussein Nassif – chief of Hezbollah operations in Syria
19. General ——– Assadi – commander of Quds Force expeditionary units in Lebanon
2o. Ali Shabeeb – senior Hezbollah commander
21. Fadi al-Jazar – senior Hezbollah commander
22. Abbas Hussein Ridha – commander of Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigade in Syria
23. Khader Nasrallah – senior Hezbollah commander and brother of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
24. Ahmed Heyyari – commander of Quds Force Imam Hussein Battalion
25. General Hajj Nader Hamid – Quds Force
26. Brigadier General Reza Khavari – commander of Fatemiyoun Brigade, Afghans recruited to fight in Syria
27. Abdollah Bagheri Niaraki – Quds Force, former bodyguard of Iranian president Mahmoud Amadinejad
28. Moslem Khizab – commander of Iraqi Imam Hussein Brigades, killed in Isfahan, Iran.

The Iranians despise the Syrian Arab Army. Qassem Soleimani said so above, and so did the late Quds Force commander Ismail Ali Heydari.

Because the Iranians have nothing but contempt for Syrian Arabs, there’s no way that Tehran would entrust Assad with the whereabouts of all those Iranian, Hezbollah, Afghan, and Iraqi commanders. Outside of Iran, only one entity on earth knew where each man was when he was killed.

Russian military intelligence.

This is called “shaping the battlefield.” It’s not possible that the Islamic State, the al-Nusra Front, or the FSA killed all those high-ranking lackeys of the mullahs. The dead men were not combatants. They were planners and staff officers, not field commanders on the front lines. Little by little, somebody is reducing Iran and Hezbollah’s operational and organizational ability to fight a war.

It has to be Israel. Though you may think that’s far fetched, is it really? The Russians are allegedly bombing the FSA, right? But look at this.

The Western-backed Free Syrian Army said on Monday it had not refused an offer of military support from Russia and that Moscow needs to stop targeting its bases in Syria…

Also on Monday, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bodganov said that delegations from the FSA had visited Moscow several times, Russian news agencies reported.

Back to the original question: Is there a diplomatic solution to the Syrian war? Yes. After the mullahs are overthrown, Hezbollah is destroyed, and the Islamic State and al-Qaeda are defeated. The Arab League is quite capable of doing all of that on its own.

Forces belonging to the Saudi-led coalition targeting the Houthis and their allies in Yemen, aided by pro-government forces, are close to recapturing the presidential palace in the southwestern city of Taiz, according to sources.

Parts of the strategic city, which lies 109 miles (176 kilometers) northwest of the southern port city of Aden where the Yemeni government is now headquartered, have been under the control of the Houthis and their allies for months.

However, sources from the Popular Resistance, a coalition of volunteer forces loyal to the government and President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, told Asharq Al-Awsat on Sunday that the Joint Forces, which comprises the Popular Resistance and forces belonging to the Saudi-led coalition, have made progress in recapturing large parts of the city.

Take the Arab League and add Israel, Pakistani commandos, Turkish special forces, Azerbaijani special forces, Senegalese special forces, and Malaysian special forces. Those are just the ones we know about. Others? That’s anybody’s guess.

Some 800 former Colombian military troops will enter the city port of Aden in Yemen, switching the jungle terrain of their home country for the deserts of Arabia.

The former Colombian army troops will join a coalition of allied international troops fighting Shiite rebels. They will operate under the service of the UAE Armed Forces, donning a Saudi uniform in defense of the Yemeni government.

Good doggie. Nice doggie. Everything is going to be just fine.