Democrats warned that President Trump will need to seek their approval if he strikes Assad again or tries to escalate American involvement in the war.
“Unilateral military action by the U.S. in a Middle East conflict causes grave concern given the lack of any Authorization for Use of Military Force from Congress and the absence of any long-term plan or strategy,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
.. The strikes approved by Trump did not target the Syrian regime leadership or seek to significantly weaken its capabilities to wage war. Instead they focused exclusively on the remote and relatively spartan air base that was used to launch the chemical attack on Tuesday.
.. Nikki Haley had tough words criticizing both Russia and Iran for their actions and their failure to stop the Assad regime from killing Syrian civilians. “Every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency,” Haley said, “Russia has stood beside him.”
.. Russian forces in Syria did not attempt to use their advanced air defense systems to shoot down the U.S. missiles or harass U.S. planes operating in Syrian airspace as part of the larger fight against the Islamic State.
.. Russians, who are growing weary of the Syrian conflict and Assad, might not entirely object to the strikes. “Russia has had a very hard time getting Assad to come to the negotiating table in any meaningful way,
.. the Syrian government called the attack on Shayrat airfield an “unjust and arrogant aggression” that killed nine civilians, including four children.
.. Iran is also backing Shiite rebels in Yemen, where the United States is stepping up its own military activities.
.. “Iran has the luxury of choice because they have a number of theaters in which to act and proxies willing to do so,”
Bashir Assad and the Syrian Air Force Had a Blast Thursday Night
Trump’s foreign-policy comments could be contradictory, boasting that he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning one moment and insisting “we should take the oil” the next. Sometimes he would argue, “Let Russia take care of ISIS,” and sometimes he would pledge to “bomb the s*** out of them.”
.. There is now a consequence to using chemical weapons. Not an all-out war, not an invasion, not even a full effort at regime change, just… consequences.
Oh, and we ended up getting much closer to a Marco Rubio foreign policy than anyone ever expected.
.. Poor John Kerry was left to bring about [Bashir Assad’s exit] in the last years of the administration with very few carrots and no sticks at his disposal. President Obama did not want to strike the regime
.. We initially offered up carrots—such as increased military and intelligence cooperation with the Russians against Islamist extremists—if they would help us remove Bashar al-Assad from power, but by the end, we were practically begging the Russians to just let humanitarian aid shipments into East Aleppo.
.. The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that it plans to bolster and increase the effectiveness of the air defense system in Syria following the attack.
.. The Russians and Iranians are furious, and our traditional allies are cheery. It’s a good day for America.
.. It must have been a shock when Mr. McConnell took that bet and waited for the results of the 2016 election to decide the future direction of the Supreme Court. He won. Mr. McConnell deserves great credit both for holding his ground then and for holding his caucus together on breaking the filibuster Thursday in the face of a cynical Democratic narrative about their “stolen” Supreme Court seat.
The Dangerous Reality of an Iran War
Washington has rejected a Turkish role in the liberation of Raqqa, knowing that Ankara will not tolerate the ISIS capital falling into Kurdish hands either. It’s becoming increasingly likely that the winning formula will see the city and its environs ceded to an authority friendly to the Syrian government, under a Russian umbrella ..
.. Just last week, the UAE reportedly upped the ante by demanding the Saudis abandon their puppet president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi—ostensibly the “legitimate” Yemeni authority the western-backed Saudi coalition was fighting to reinstate.
.. What’s notable is that all of these developments, at face value, serve Iran’s interests in the region and undermine those of U.S. allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
.. Iran will also be a useful tool to provoke or cajole traditional U.S. allies like Israel, Turkey, and various Arab monarchies into taking positions favored by Trump.
.. There are whispers of a Saudi-led “Arab NATO” that could partner with Israel to target Iran.
.. Trump’s choices are actually fairly limited.
.. Subversive activities—such as color revolution plots, propaganda, or cyberwarfare—have proven futile given Iran’s historic vigilance on and within its borders. Conventional war would require a substantial Iranian provocation and isn’t likely to be sanctioned by the UN Security Council.
.. James Mattis, a committed Iran hawk, almost did so several weeks ago when he considered letting U.S. forces board an Iranian ship in Arabian Sea international waters, according to a passing mention of the incident in the New York Times.
.. It has endured an eight-year war with Iraq, which was encouraged, financed, and armed by great powers and regional states alike. The Islamic Republic performed a remarkable claw-back from the assault and went on to amass conventional and asymmetrical capabilities to deter future attacks.
.. When the U.S. is there, Iran’s focus and discipline is better. They’re useful that way. It brings us together, creates support for our security forces, our army, our borders.”
.. because of Wikileaks’ 2010 State Department cables cache, we now know that—in private at least—U.S. officials are also skeptical of their own public charges.
.. “the U.S. military rarely beats Iran in asymmetrical war games unless it cheats or rigs it.”
.. the “Millennium Challenge,” a 2002 U.S. armed forces war game in the Persian Gulf between the U.S. (blue team) and an unnamed Mideast adversary (red team), believed to be Iran.
.. Why are U.S. armed forces in the Persian Gulf anyway?
.. between 1976 and 2010, Washington has spent an eye-popping $8 trillion protecting the oil flow in the Persian Gulf. As of 2010, the U.S. only received 10 percent of those oil shipments. The largest recipients were Japan (20 percent), followed by China, India, and South Korea.
Trump May Turn to Arab Allies for Help With Israeli-Palestinian Relations
The emerging approach mirrors the thinking of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who will visit the United States next week, and would build on his de facto alignment with Sunni Muslim countries in trying to counter the rise of Shiite-led Iran.
.. The difference is that in the last eight years, Israel has grown closer to Sunni Arab nations because of their shared concern about Iranian hegemony in the region, opening the possibility that this newfound, if not always public, affiliation could change the dynamics.
.. “The logic of outside-in is that because the Palestinians are so weak and divided — and because there’s a new, tacit relationship between the Sunni Arabs and Israel — there’s the hope the Arabs would be prepared to do more,” said Dennis B. Ross
.. That is a departure from the countervailing assumption that if Israel first made peace with the Palestinians, it would lead to peace with the larger Arab world — the “inside-out” approach.
.. Jordan’s King Abdullah II seems to have played a particularly pivotal role. Concerned that an embassy move would anger the many Palestinians living in his country, the king rushed to Washington without an invitation
.. The king appealed to the administration’s fixation with the Islamic State, arguing that it should not alienate Arab allies who could help.
.. The statement was worded in a way that let different parties focus on different parts. The “may not be helpful” phrase was the first time Mr. Trump had warned against new housing in the West Bank.
But the “beyond their current borders” phrase suggested a return to George W. Bush’s policy of essentially acquiescing to additional construction within existing settlement blocs as long as Israel did not expand their geographical reach or build entirely new settlements.
.. undeterred, Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition pushed through Parliament a bill to retroactively authorize thousands of homes in the West Bank that even under Israeli law had been built illegally on Palestinian-owned land.
.. The challenge now is whether Mr. Trump can use this ambiguity to his benefit.