Putin's Visit To Saudi Arabia - Hey, what's Going On Here?

Maher Assad controls the military and the police and he is ruthless.. In fact, most observers think he controls Bashar.

 

That incident was around the time when the war started - that incident however is not what started the war. You are spouting a nonsense Establishment MSM propaganda narrative as if that narrative has some basis in fact. The Jihadists don't give a hoot about Children - and chop heads of Children for fun... Would you like to see pictures of the child - and our FSA proxy Jihadists in action ?:

 

The Muslims have several sects which do not agree even when they are all Sunni or Shia, they have a degree of difference which doesn't allow them to unify but they can't fight each other unless they are practicing apostasy.

 

The parents cared.

Assad arrested the boys and wouldn't release them to the custody of their parents. 30 days later the bodies of some of the schoolboys were found (dead) on the street.

The country erupted in protests and Assad had the protesters shot.. 10,000 Sunni conscripts in the Syrian army deserted and took their weapons with them.

 

Heading to no growth in 2020.

 

Shia Sunni relations are not problematic in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States. At least not as you would be lead to believe. In Arabia there are Muslims from many countries.. Egyptians, Sudanese, Indonesian, Kenyan, Lebanese, Palestinian etc.. They are not single-minded by any means and they manage to work together.

 

Of course the parents cared .. and if you want to see child abuse - look no further than Saudi Arabia and numerous other countries. How does this justify arming radical Islamist Jihadist proxy army - including Al Qaeda and the groups that coalesced into ISIS - with tens of thousands of tons of sophisticated military equipment ? An action that led to the death of over 400,000 -and how many dead children.

Yet another joke of an argument in a desperate attempt to apologize for atrocity.

 

The axis of resistance is focused on resisting US/Israeli hegemony in the ME. It is not about religion per se. Hamas used to be a part of it, even though they are Sunni. But the Syrian civil war saw them side with their Sunni Muslim brotherhood groups opposite the axis of resistance. They have tried to mend fences with Iran and send a delegation to Tehran recently, which was received by Iran's Supreme Leader.

You can be Jewish, Christian, Russian and be allied with the axis of resistance. You can be Shia and be allied with its enemies. In Lebanon, the closest allies of Hezbollah is a Christian party represented by Lebanon's current president. In the Caucasus, a shia state (Azerbaijan) is seen as working with Israel, while Christian Armenia traditionally has warm relations with Iran. Hence, in the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Iran tilted towards Armenia. This despite the fact that Iran has a very large Azeri population comprising a third of Iran's population. And even though many more Iranians (such as myself and including Iran's Supreme Leader) have some Azeri lineage in their family tree.

I should add that one thing many outsiders seem to not understand is this: Shia Islam is, first and foremost, about not accepting the legitimacy of the actual Islamic rulers and caliphates that had conquered the Persian empire and ruled over the Islamic realm. Iranian Shia Muslims, for instance, are mostly devoted to certain Shia rituals which can easily fit the narrative of mourning for battles where the Arabs defeated the Persians, even if they are about later battles where another force of good was defeated by another force of evil in around the same locations (Imam Hussein, a Shia saint which Iranian Shia often claim had married a Persian Sassanid prince and whose offspring they claimed were the ones who had the rightful claim to rule over the Islamic realm, being defeated by the Ummayad Caliph Yazid is the theme of the Shia holiday "Ashura"). While throughout the Muslim world, the main religious holidays are ones like Eid Fetr, in Iran this is a one day holiday, whereas the ancient Zoroastrian holiday, Norouz, is still Iran's new year holiday where even under Iran's theocracy, practically everyone is on vacation for two weeks! Traditional Iranians are very devout, but they don't speak Arabic and aren't really even familiar with the Koran (which is written in Arabic) as they are with Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Book of Kings). What they are devout about is their idea of what Shia Islam is all about (mourning the corruption that has taken the affairs of the world ever since the usurpers took the rightful place of the legitimate rulers of the Islamic faith, who in Shia parables would be the the Shia Imams, and standing for justice and good against evil), not what you may imagine "Islam" really means.

 

United States-led support of Syrian opposition and the Federation of Northern Syria during the course of the Syrian Civil War and active military involvement led by the United States and its allies — the militaries of the United Kingdom, France, Jordan, Turkey, Canada, Australia and more — against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Nusra Front since 2014.

 

Oh, then the terrorists weren't killing people and there wasn't a genocide and ethnic cleansing of Christians in Syria? If it wasn't for Assad's protection, the Christians would all be dead. So tell me, why weren't there any reports in our media about the terrorist attacks on Christian areas in Damascus and Aleppo?

It's estimated that about 7 million Christians have fled Syria for Lebanon and other places, and who knows how many Christians have been killed.

Anyway it's a smart idea to look at where the information is coming from, after all the Syrian Observatory is a MI6 construct and supported by the British government - as is the Al Nusra affiliated White Helmets. If I recall there was even a time when the propaganda outlets were blasting about 7 non existent hospitals being bombed by Russia. Today the same ones are reporting that hundreds of hospitals are being bombed by Russia.

The lies never end now, do they? Then again we know who the father of lies is, which doesn't say much for our media now does it?

 

There were only 2.5 million Syrian Christians when the war started, Jeannette.

 

Well, perhaps I need a better source. Do you have one or three?

 

Just google it.. I'm off to bed.

 

What a joke. The head fluffer-in-chief Obongo armed terrorists and then fluffed 24/7 for years while Russia came in and cleaned up nearly all the mess. Then Trump was elected and finished it up. Obama created that 'civil war' AKA regime change for Hillary's resume and Russia bombed the **** out of Obama-armed ISIS.

 

You have to be ruthless when relatively large groups of radical Islamist hard-liners and Jihadists exist within the population. Zero Tolerence for mischief by this crowd .. hooligans on steroids these groups.

 

i think all this sophisticated diplomatic analysis misses two points

1. Trump wants to build a major hotel in Istanbul

2. Trump's butt buddy, Putin, stands to profit from this war.

Trump ****s his fellow AMERICANS if it's good for Trump. I wonder that he's waited this long to shaft the Kurds. Erdogan must have yelled REALLY loud in that phone call with America's Knight in Shining Armor

 

They'll have to share it with the Chinese.

 

Yeah, the proverbial elephant in the china shop.

 

What, can't believe your eyes? Here it goes the original for you.

 

They can share it with whoever they want. Withdraw from the region, scrap all agreements.

 

Learn to read,

 

They weren't hardliners.. They were Syrians.. sectarian and non sectarian alike asking for reforms. The hooligans were the Alawite who were above the law especially in smuggling, drugrunning and kidnapping.

 

Religion, as a dispute on theological differences between Sunnis and Shia, has nothing to do with the dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia. That is true. Religion as a cover for deep seated cultural, ethnic, geopolitical, along with modern politicized agendas, however, plays an important role in that dispute. Hatred of the Shia, who are viewed basically as 5th columnists for Iran and who are sometimes even today likened to Zoroastrian "fire worshipers" by Sunni extremists, is a serious issue in the Sunni Arab world. In Iran, as adherents of a minority sect in the larger Islamic world, the religious schism isn't itself significant, but the underlying cultural, historical and geopolitical issues represent an equally strong barrier to any comfortable rapprochement between the two sides.

At the end of the day, while Iran sometimes likes to pretend to be speaking on behalf of all Muslims, that is rare and basically Iran's real focus is on building up its geopolitical alliances in a way that allow it to survive and resist the US/Israel challenges it faces. So, for Iran, there is no real pretense or desire to take a position that would require Saudi Arabia to take a seat behind Iran in the larger Arab Sunni world. Instead, the main competition for Saudi Arabia and in any claim of leadership in that arena is found elsewhere, including in Turkey (which held the mantle of the Sunni Muslim world, including against Shia Iran, over many centuries which also involved many wars with Iran). When Turkey was focused on a purely secularist, Kemalist, westernized pseudo-nationalist posture, they were of course out of the running in any such competition for carrying the Sunni Muslim mantle, but under Erdogan, they tip toe in that direction quite a bit.

Iran lining up behind any Saudi 'leadership' is also out of the question. Nor, in fairness, is that what the Saudis really seek. The Saudis recognize Iran is a distinct nation with a distinct history and tradition. Their attitude towards Iran is born out of several different factors: first, Iran's revolutionary ideology at the time of the Iranian revolution was a challenge to a monarchical system like the one in Saudi Arabia. Second, the Saudis don't like to see Iran's influence in Arab states with large Shia populations because it also threatens their own hold over the oil rich regions of eastern Saudi Arabia which are inhabited by their Shia minority. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry is a product of and a reflection of the larger geopolitical rivalry and power struggle between the forces of US hegemony (with Saudi Arabia's leadership allied to it) and those which seek to resist it (with Iran seeing itself as the leader of such resistance).