{"id":35751,"date":"2018-07-06T07:44:12","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T12:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35751"},"modified":"2018-07-06T07:44:12","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T12:44:12","slug":"eagle-meets-bear-and-the-syria-tug-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35751","title":{"rendered":"Eagle-meets-Bear and the Syria tug-of-war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eagle-meets-Bear and the Syria tug-of-war<\/a><\/h3>\n

Trump and Putin are likely to discuss the tricky situation in southern Syria when they meet; while the US president says he wants US forces back home, the CIA, Pentagon and Israel may be happier to see them stay so the war-torn state remains unstable<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Syrian<\/p>\n
Syrian government tanks and soldiers take positions in the town of Western Ghariyah, about 15km east of the southern embattled city of Daraa. Photo: AFP\/ SANA handout released on June 30, 2018.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ahead of the Eagle-meets-Bear Trump-Putin summit on July 16 in Helsinki, Syria-centered spin has gone into overdrive.\u00a0<\/span>Unknown sources have leaked what is billed as President Trump\u2019s alleged Syria deal discussed with Jordan\u2019s King Abdullah. <\/span><\/p>\n

Trump would \u201callow\u201d Damascus, supported by Russian air power, to regain its territory along the borders of Jordan, Israel and Iraq. In return, President Putin and Bashar al-Assad would agree <\/span>to establish an extended demilitarized zone (DMZ) along these same borders, off-limits to any Iranian forces. <\/span><\/p>\n

That would set the scene for Trump\u2019s already announced desire to extract US forces out of Syria before October and the US mid-term elections. The president would be able to declare the proverbial \u201cMission Accomplished\u201d in defeating Daesh or Islamic State.<\/span><\/p>\n

The CIA and the Pentagon are not exactly enthusiastic with Trump\u2019s alleged Syria gambit, to say the least. For assorted neocons and powerful factions of the industrial-military-surveillance complex, \u201cAssad must go\u201d Syria simply cannot be traded off. <\/span><\/p>\n

And yet there\u2019s nothing to trade. Syria cannot be \u201coffered\u201d to Russia because Russia is already the major player in deciding what happens in Syria, not only militarily but via the ongoing Astana format alongside Iran and Turkey. <\/span>No wonder the alleged Trump \u201cdeal\u201d was duly dismissed<\/span><\/a> by the Kremlin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What will be negotiated in the Trump-Putin summit, as Asia Times has learned, is something completely different.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eagle-meets-Bear and the Syria tug-of-war Trump and Putin are likely to discuss the tricky situation in southern Syria when they meet; while the US president says he wants US forces back home, the CIA, Pentagon and Israel may be happier to see them stay so the war-torn state remains unstable Syrian government tanks and soldiers […]<\/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":[15907,135,7844,1049,620,4076,694,776,827,857],"class_list":["post-35751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-asia-times","tag-cia","tag-donald-trump","tag-israel","tag-pentagon","tag-pepe-escobar","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35751","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=35751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35752,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35751\/revisions\/35752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}