Russia and syria, assads regime, firing off criticism at the United States after the president s decision to unleash a wave of military air strikes overnight. [ explosion ] russia, which has helped syrias president Bashar Al Assad calling americas military action an act of aggression and warning that the risk of a u. S. russia collision in syria has significantly increased. Now, overnight, u. S. Warships in the mediterranean launched 59 tomahawk cruise missiles against the same Syrian Air Base that the United States says president assad used to launch that deadly chemical attack that killed dozens, including children. The strikes targeted syrian aircraft, fuel, ammunition storage, and this was the first direct military action by the United States against the assad regime during that countrys sixyear civil war. In that time, the United Nations estimates that 400,000 syrians have been killed. Its also notable that in that time, donald trump, then citizen trump, then candidate trump, he s
arabia, it is this weird freakish obsess with her, they actually call donald trump abu ivanka, which is father of ivan ka. this is a nod to how popular she is there. thanks to both of you. appreciate it. i also want to bring in cnn s nic robertson. he s our international diplomatic editor. so nic, perhaps you can expound a bit more on exactly what happened, why is it that ivanka trump stepped in for the expectation of donald trump s message to this younger audience? you know, through the whole afternoon here, fred, the events have been running later and later and ultimately well over an hour late. by the time president trump got to the opening of the counterterrorism center, which is a big deal for the saudis, sort of an explanation with a
behind his revolution. i am not seeing any indication or rhetoric coming out. my fear is that these rebels will start writing checks expecting america comes all of this hassan as you are seeing now, naming restaurants after donald trump referring to the president as abu-ivanka of a sign of respect and admiration, that s going to go to dust, and the rebels are going to go through another cycle. we are talking about rebels and not isis. we have the rebels who are fighting that government. we have some of them fighting isis and other terror group in that region. now, when it comes to the battle against isis and terror in the region which is been what the u.s. had been wagering for so long now is the strike that we saw by the u.s. this week, a game changer in the war on terror in any way? not at all.
just how complex a scenario it is. it s incredibly complex. i mean i have spent six years studying this and spending so much time inside rebel held syria, i can barely get my head around all the different groups operating on the ground with all these different proxies. i certainly didn t think that we would see president trump kind of is that abu ivanka we ve also seen them posting as their avtars on twitter and social media pictures of president donald trump, so this is a very unusual situation. i do think, though, if we just