melissa: how much do we give on that front? other people have said that. that putin s real concern and russia s real concern is keeping a foot hold in the region, and that we are united by the idea that we are both threatened by radical islam. beyond that, we don t have much common ground. it is dangerous to make a deal and see power there. how do you balance that? that s why you put down the nonnegotiables first. you say we are not going to budge any on article 5 in the new nato members. we re not going to open up any type of sanction lifting discussion until the provinces, according to the agreement with ukraine that the russian troops leave and the russian separatists that are there. same way with georgia. so you lay down the nonnegotiables immediately. here s the common ground. look. russia has had a presence in the mediterranean for decades and decades. they ve had a warm water port at
the syrian troops from defeat at the hands of terrorists/opposition/isil, a variety of different troops. so that s number one. number two is that russia is there at the table as an indispensable part of whatever comes next, that its voice is heard, and that it has a role there. and that would be if there is some sort of political settlement, which everyone says they want, that russia would have a significant voice in that. obviously, it s had a long-term, 40-year relationship with the assad family. but they re not necessarily saying that this is because of the assads. in fact, the assads per se are not really the issue. it s russia s influence, and also the port it has now of course and has for a number of years, the warm water port of tartous for its navy. and it also has been working out
nato fellow nato country turkey is all calculated by vladimir putin. we need to change that calculus or we re going to get ourselves in some trouble. assad has massacred, slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent syrians. is the end game here for russian president vladimir putin really to have assad safely ensconced in power? the end game for putin in syria is to maintain influence there. and i have to say he s doing pretty well. so he needs to keep that warm water port in tartus that was a navy base established in the 70s. he needs to continue his arm sales both in syria and iran. and now he s done something pretty clever, jake. he s coordinated tehran, damascus and syria and baghdad in iraq in intelligence sharing operation. and many believe now there s even a possibility of russian troops in south iraq to deal with the syrian issue, invited
homs, on the other hand, is on the west side of the country near where the russians have their warm water port. it s over where they have a large military build-up. and it is over closer to damascus where, of course, bashar al assad is maintaining his seat of power. so to give you a sense of why the u.s. military officials and defense officials i m speaking to don t believe that this was actually a strike against isis, there s really no isis in that area. the u.s. coalition is not conducting strikes there. the russians, on the other hand, since they put in their military facilities there and brought in their aircraft, their drones and whatnot, they have been flying with the u.s. military calls fam flights in this exact same area where the air strikes took place. so it is really not a huge surprise to people who have been watching this that this is where the russians would carry out some of their first strikes in this homs area. but there s no isis there.
editor, and mike rogers and cnn political correspondent, dan pfeiffer. if i might just go to mike rogers, who was the chairman of the house intelligence committee first, given the importance of intelligence matters, war and peace, and particularly syria, wonder if we could get your perspective on what we think the result of these two major speeches from president obama and president putin on the way forward in syria. what do you think is going to happen? well, two things happened that are fairly interesting. we have to remember what russia really wants out of this. they ve always said they want to get the tartis port in, a warm water port in syria, leased from the syrians to russians. they have a naval presence there. they to want keep that. they want to continue military sales in syria, so they re preserving that. they just did something interest to set the table for this speech, they cut a deal between