Amir Taheri
Gatestone Institute, Feb. 12, 2023
“The idea this time was to let the “main players,” that is to say Russia, Turkey and Iran, involved in the Syrian psycho-drama, write a new constitution for the failed state and persuade everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet.”
Since 2019 when the Syrian tragedy appeared to have reached its denouement, a succession of erroneous analyses, mainly by the powers involved, has prevented the development of a strategy to restore the war-torn nation to a semblance of normality. The first error was the belief that the war had ended.
Russian propaganda spoke of “another triumph” for President Vladimir Putin, with a supposed rerun of his success in “defeating the Chechen Islamic terrorists.” In Syria, Putin was re-fighting the war in Chechnya, as he is now re-fighting the Second World War in Ukraine. But since defeat is an orphan and victory has a thousand fathers, despite President Barack Obama’s decision to do nothing, the US, too, claimed victory in having brought Syria “back from the brink”.
The leadership in the Islamic Republic of Iran, too, boasted to have won in Syria. The mullahs designated Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani as the “greatest military commander in Islamic history” and claimed he saved Syria from Sunni terrorists and helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad avoid the fate of Libyan leader Muammar al-Kaddafi. … [To read the full article, click here]