Latest in Syria
Early Sunday evening, a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet shot down a Syrian Air Force Su-22 that had just completed a bombing run targeting US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Raqqa region. The episode raises important questions under the U.N. Charter (see Adil Ahmad Haque’s analysis here). But what about U.S. domestic law?
The U.S. military shot down a Syrian bomber on Sunday, Qatar is reconsidering its support for Hamas while continuing to fight it out in the editorial pages, and the United States is supplying the Saudi air campaign in Yemen again.
Countering Iran requires gains “on the ground” from tangible measures such as sanctions and, where necessary, the use of force, and also requires gaining the moral high ground of legitimacy in the war of ideas.
Qatar looks for ways to circumvent the Saudi blockade, the Syrian Democratic Forces approach Raqqa’s Old City, and the Islamic State hits two targets in Tehran.
Saudi Arabia escalates its renewed spat with Qatar, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces coalition is pushing into the Islamic State’s de facto capital, and Germany and Turkey can’t resolve their diplomatic feud.
The U.S. endgame in eastern Syria looks difficult to defend, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are fighting again after a two-year detente, and Egypt and Britain are watching Libya warily.
There is an opportunity to resolve some of the rivalry's thorniest issues if the two sides are just willing to sit down and talk.
At an April 27 hearing at the House Foreign Affairs Committee on policy options in Syria titled “After the Missile Strikes,” Charles Lister, a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, cautioned the dais on the need to “not rush Raqqa.” On May 9, the Pentagon announced that indeed U.S. President Donald Trump intends to do just that.
Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia over the weekend on his first foreign trip as president, while U.S. coalition forces in Syria bombed pro-Assad forces.
A Brief Review of Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World, by Paul Collier and Alexander Betts (Oxford UP, forthcoming September 2017)