Saturday, November 21, 2015

Christoph Reuter — Rational Monster: How Terror Fits into Islamic State's Plan


Another view, including "Assad must go" as a precondition for opposing ISIS. May as well be reading the NYT.

2 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Tom he has had like 10+ years to get rid of Hezbollah... put a clock on it already...

Lets watch what Russia now does in light of the fact that their civil aviation was attacked leaving Suez they now have taken a direct hit ... if they take broader opposition to terror in general, then they will have to think Hezbollah has to go now too... so they then either have to help Assad get rid of them or join the bandwagon to replace him with someone who can...

Ignacio said...

They are at opposite sides of the "terror" machine which are very useful to the different regimes involved so I don't think Russia will actually go against Hezbollah, for now.

And anyway Hezbollah has become an institutionalized part of the territory (the risk would be ISIS stabilizing to the same point), it forms part of the state and social structure now, so it cannot be destroyed without a full invasion, and we saw how "well" that ended with the last Israel intervention.

No one in the Northern hemisphere is going to get involved in something similar, there is zero to gain there. Hezbollah war is local, they do not target the West (as neither does Iran), and there is no oil there.