ISIS: A Russian-Iranian weapon that does not provoke the US

Russian warplanes target civilians in Aleppo and Idlib, but they tend to miss targeting that organization which Arabs and the west are so concerned about its actions, namely ISIS, Ali al-Ameen commences his article, published in Al-Arab daily, about ISIS and how Russia and Iran use it as a pretext to eliminate moderate Syrian opposition.

Al-Ameen starts by saying that Russians stress that their battle in Syria is against terrorism. However, terrorism, according to Russian targets on the ground, is any real opposing side to Assad regime.

Russia and Iran’s goal is to eliminate the replacement of Assad regime, says al-Ameen. This replacement, according to him, cannot be ISIS for reasons related to international circumstances and to the definition of terrorism.

The author goes on to suggest that Iranian and Russian efforts are focused on putting an end to the internationally-accepted Syrian opposition, which is either Arab- or Turkey-supported. 

That is why Aleppo’s siege-breaking battle was a tough message to Russia and Iran that tolerance in weakening the opposition does not mean marginalizing it, the author thinks.

The writer then suggests that Americans want to re-shape the regional situation according to new conditions to allow the parties of the regional conflict to have bigger roles, irrespective if they were Washington’s traditional allies or new players under the US’s umbrella.

Al-Ameen then says that ISIS not only has an ability to survive, but also to expand, and that it is an attractive idea for all who think that the Islamic Sunni world has been facing a western occupation attack represented by the US administration, and another sectarian attack led by Iran.

The US is indifferent to the expanding Iranian influence because it knows that regional states, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, will act as a deterrence power, exempting the US from direct response, according to al-Ameen.

“The Syrian war has not witnessed, since the beginning and until this day, any actual encounter between the Iranian official organizations or militias, including Hezbollah, with ISIS in the whole Syrian geography because ISIS was a weapon drawn at the face of any civil and moderate Syrian opposition,” al-Ameen concludes.