Iran announced in early November that it would start talks on the Iranian nuclear program with the Biden administration and other world leaders this coming week in Vienna.
In preparation for the talks, Iran and the Biden administration have been sending smoke signals.
These will be drive-bys only, but it’s time for an update, whether updates are polished and ready or not.
Being left for later treatment are such equally urgent matters as the Biden administration’s weird posture on Iranian sanctions violations, which seems to have involved a most peculiar encounter in late October.
Shootdown porn. (Image via rebel video on YouTube)
The war in Syria is metastasizing, as long predicted by this author and others. It’s perilously close to a direct confrontation of Turkey and Russia in combat — a situation that didn’t start with the warplane shootdown today, but rather seems to have culminated in it. The ground picture in the area of the shootdown is the key.
What we know for sure today is that Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 Fencer attack aircraft, which the Turks say was violating their air space. The Turks report that an F-16 fighter pair took out the Russian aircraft.
It also appears that Russian helicopters sent on a rescue mission for the Su-24 air crew were destroyed. If a video posted by Syrian rebels (below) is valid – assuming it shows something the rebels pulled off today (24 November) – it looks like the rebels used TOW missiles to attack the Russian helos while they were on the ground at the Su-24 crash site.
These rapid-fire events raise questions that will not be answered at a leisurely pace. The basic question is what Russia and Turkey will do now. But there is also the question of “why now?” Turkey has been closely tracking Russian air activity for weeks. The two air forces have interacted at dangerous levels before; the Aviationist has a good summary here. But today, instead of warnings and sword-rattling, the Turks shot the Russian aircraft down.Continue reading “War comes home: Russia v. Turkey; Jet shootdown; Rebels attack Russian helos with U.S. TOW missiles”
USAF F-15E Strike Eagle from the 48th Fighter Wing (RAF Lakenheath) arrives at Incirlik in Nov 2015. (Image: USAF, Tech Sgt. Taylor Worley)
It’s essential to have the big picture on this. The war in Syria is turning into something bigger, with substantially bigger implications than what happens to ISIS.
But ISIS remains the handy pretext for Russia’s and Iran’s growing intervention in both Syria and Iraq. That intervention is changing their posture, and the correlation of both military and political forces across the region, almost by the day. They are not there for ISIS, and they’re not there for Assad. They’re there – putting down stakes from the Caspian and the Caucasus to the Horn of Africa – because they intend to be in charge of carving up the rapidly fragmenting ruins of the post-World War I Middle East.
ISIS will get something of a vote in this conflict. But America won’t. The reason for these two realities is that Obama has limited the use of U.S. force – limited it to such an extent that ISIS is still a very viable entity. Obama’s “restraint” is also the reason Russia and Iran keep having ISIS as a handy, open-ended pretext for arranging to occupy Iraq and Syria. Which is what they’re actually doing.
Tu-95 Bear bomber, one of several types used in Russian strikes on Tuesday, 17 Nov. (Image: UK MOD, SAC Robyn Stewart via Guardian, Oct 2014)
If you’re not convinced we are now in a “post-American” (and hence post-NATO) world, consider these events of the last 72 hours.
After the Paris attacks on Friday, the G20 leaders gathering in Turkey knew that both Syria and ISIS would top their agenda in Antalya. On Sunday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron expressed the standard position of the Western allies, since late summer, that Russia should stop prosecuting what is essentially a unilateral war in Syria.
How odd that that position should seem antique a mere 48 hours later. In the wake of the most recent events, one now has the sense that Cameron was speaking in another world and time.
The Optimistic Conservative 