{"id":17752,"date":"2016-02-13T12:34:41","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T17:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17752"},"modified":"2016-02-13T12:34:41","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T17:34:41","slug":"turkey-shells-aleppo-says-massive-escalation-in-syria-imminent-as-saudis-ready-airstrikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17752","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Shells Aleppo, Says “Massive Escalation” In Syria Imminent As Saudis Ready Airstrikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turkey Shells Aleppo, Says “Massive Escalation” In Syria Imminent As Saudis Ready Airstrikes<\/a><\/h3>\n

Even as all sides – including the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and select rebel groups – pretend to be working towards a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution to the five year conflict in Syria, actions speak louder than words, and to put it as succinctly as possible, everyone is still fighting.<\/p>\n

In fact, the fighting is more intense than ever. Russia and Hezbollah are closing in on Aleppo, the country\u2019s largest city and a key urban center where rebels are dug in for what amounts to a last stand. If the city is liberated by the government (and yes, \u201cliberated\u201d is more accurate than \u201cfalls\u201d because occupied territory belongs to the Syrian government, not to Sunni extremists), Assad will have regained control of the country\u2019s backbone in the west.<\/p>\n

That would effectively mean the end of the rebellion and the Gulf monarchies, not to mention Turkey, are not happy about it. \u201cThe main battle is about cutting the road between Aleppo and Turkey, for Turkey is the main conduit of supplies for the terrorists,\u201d Assad said in an interview with AFP on Friday.<\/p>\n

That supply line has been severed and now, it\u2019s do or die time for the rebels\u2019 Sunni benefactors in Ankara, Riyadh, and Doha. Either intervene or watch as Hezbollah rolls up the opposition under cover of Russian airstrikes, restoring the Assad government and securing the Shiite crescent for the Iranians.<\/p>\n

As we documented extensively this week, the Saudis and the Turks are now set to invade. Assad has promised to \u201cconfront them\u201d, which of course means that the IRGC and Hassan Nasrallah’s army are set to come into direct contact with Turkish and Saudi troops, setting the stage for an all-out sectarian war that will almost invariably end up pitting NATO against the Russians.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey Shells Aleppo, Says “Massive Escalation” In Syria Imminent As Saudis Ready Airstrikes Even as all sides – including the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and select rebel groups – pretend to be working towards a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution to the five year conflict in Syria, actions speak louder than words, and to put […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1607,35,1979,3039,12324,553,6793,694,701,1899,776,818,827],"class_list":["post-17752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-aleppo","tag-assad","tag-ceasefire","tag-hezbollah","tag-irgc","tag-nato","tag-newspaper","tag-russia","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-sunni","tag-syria","tag-turkey","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17753,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17752\/revisions\/17753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}