U S Embassy in Syria usembassy.gov - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from usembassy.gov Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The following are excerpts from Ayman Abd Al-Nour s article: Let us imagine Syria not as a war-torn country but as a train careening on ruined tracks [directly] into an inferno. According to the UN, the officially-recognized driver of that train is still Bashar Al-Assad. Each of the cars wobbling behind him is laden with its own large complement of problems… Syria cannot be viewed through a single prism, and its situation cannot be reduced [to the phase] one big mess , for each of the cars [of the Syrian train] requires a particular approach to bring it back on track. Therefore, the required solution is a collection of very different solutions, for the situation in Syria is deeply [layered]. It does not only involve a proxy war between external forces with competing agendas, but also a war between local and regional players vying for control and profits. To this we can add the worsening economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic… [Therefore,] Syria s problems cannot
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Containment, rather than breakthrough, may be the theme of the talks being held in Vienna between Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council member states plus Germany. The purpose of the negotiations is to revive the nuclear deal signed by the same group of countries in 2015. In parallel, Iranian escalation against the US – a member of the so-called “P5” alongside Britain, China, France and Russia – cannot be ruled out, as such a scenario would serve Tehran’s interests ahead of its presidential election in June.
China and Russia, both allied to Iran, seem to have approached these talks slightly differently.
Sunday, 7 March, 2021 - 09:30
In this July 16, 2018, file photo, then US President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland. (AP) London – Ibrahim Hamidi
The United States only gave Russia four- or five-minutes advance warning before it carried out raids against Iranian positions on the Syrian-Iraqi border on February 26. In the past, this interval was longer, extending to hours before Washington struck locations in Syria in April 2017 and 2018.
A new chapter in relations between Washington and Moscow began with the election of Joe Biden as president. He openly declared it during his inauguration: “American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy.