Why the U.S. has escalated the war

Asharq al-Awsat

(U.K.)

America has a new tool in its proxy war against Iran in Syria, said Abdulrahman Al-Rashed. The U.S. is recruiting, arming, and training another 30,000 Syrian Kurds to join the rebel Syrian Democratic Forces, ostensibly to fight ISIS but also to oppose the Iranian-backed militias that support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Ultimately, this American policy is aimed at pressuring Russia, Assad’s main backer, to kick out the Iranians. By ramping up its support for the Kurds, the U.S. is effectively telling Moscow that there will be no end to the civil war, no allowing of Assad to govern the country,

unless Russia “gets the Iranians and their militias out of Syria.” It’s not an idle threat. The Americans, through the Syrian Democratic Forces, now control Syria east of the Euphrates, “from Iraq’s borders in the south to Turkey’s border in the north.” Moscow pretends it has no influence on Iran, but in fact it has been protecting the Iranian presence in Syria with its air force and its deployment of S-300 Russian surface-to-air missiles to ward off Israeli strikes. Thanks to the new U.S. policy, Russia must now choose “between victory without the Iranians or resuming the war through them.”