LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
• The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings struck majority Shiite Muslim areas of Baghdad and two other Iraqi cities on Monday, killing at least four dozen people in an apparently worsening spiral of sectarian bloodletting. In the deadliest incident, a suicide bomber set off his explosives in a mosque, killing 11 people and wounding more than 30 in a poor, predominantly Shiite section of the capital known as New Baghdad. The Sunni militant group said the attack was in revenge for a mass shooting Friday of Sunni worshippers at a mosque in Diyala province, east of Baghdad, that left 73 people dead.
• Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that once he determines the Islamic State militants in Iraq have become a direct threat to the U.S. homeland, he will recommend the U.S. military move directly against the group in Syria. He that right now, he still believes the insurgent group is still more a regional threat and is not plotting or planning attacks against either the U.S. or Europe. Dempsey did not rule out strikes for any other critical reasons, but listed a homeland threat as one of the key triggers for any military action in Syria.
• The family of James Foley, the U.S. journalist beheaded last week by Islamic State militants, released the last letter they received from the hostage. Believed to be from this year, it said he and other hostages “try to encourage each other and share strength,” and added that “dreams of family and friends take me away and happiness fills my heart. I pray for you to stay strong and to believe. I really feel I can touch you even in this darkness when I pray.”
— From news services
TWO VIEWS
“It makes no sense for the West to support a war against Assad as well as a war against the Islamic State. (Syrian President Bashar) Assad is evil, but in this case, he is certainly the lesser evil.”
— Former U.S. ambassadors Ryan Crocker, Thomas Pickering and William Luers in a recent op-ed article
“The Americans might find themselves forced to cooperate under the table with the Syrians. But I don’t think Arab countries will accept Syria as a member of the club fighting the Islamic State.”
— Mustafa Alani, security and defense department director, Gulf Research Center
Syria said Monday it was ready to help confront the rising threat from the Islamic State group, but warned the United States against carrying out airstrikes without Damascus’ consent, saying any such attack would be considered an aggression.
In seeking to portray itself as a partner for the international community, Syria seemed intent on capitalizing on the growing clamor among some U.S. officials, including military leaders, to expand the current American air campaign against the Islamic extremists in Iraq and to hit them in Syria as well.
President Barack Obama has long been wary of getting dragged into the bloody and complex Syrian civil war that the United Nations says has killed more than 190,000 people. But the extremist group’s rampage across wide swaths of Iraq, declaration of a state governed by their harsh interpretation of Islamic law in territory spanning the Iraq-Syria border, and grisly beheading of an American journalist, have injected a new dynamic into those calculations.
Now, Obama faces pressure from his own military leaders to go after the extremists inside Syria, including Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said at a news conference last Thursday that the Islamic State has an “apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision” for the Middle East and cannot be defeated unless confronted head-on in Syria.
Speaking in Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem appeared acutely aware of how much has changed since last August, when the U.S. was threatening to carry out punitive airstrikes against Assad’s government in the wake of a chemical attack. Since then, global disapproval has shifted away from Assad and toward the Islamic extremists who are fighting him and spreading destruction across Syria and Iraq.
Al-Moallem told reporters his government is ready “to cooperate and coordinate” with any side, including the U.S., against the Islamic State group. But he said any military action inside Syria should be coordinated with the Syrian government.
“Any strike which is not coordinated with the government will be considered as aggression,” he said.
He said Damascus has warned repeatedly of the threat of terrorism and the need to cut off resources and funding, but “no one listened to us.” Syria’s government has long described the rebels fighting to topple Assad as “terrorists” in a foreign conspiracy.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said Western nations that long refused to condemn Assad’s enemies were now coming to realize the threat posed by the Islamic State group.
The West, he said, will “have to choose what is more important: to change the regime and satisfy personal antipathies with the risk that the situation will crumble, or find pragmatic ways to join efforts against the common threat, which is the same for all of us — terrorism.”
But the Abbas regime’s warnings about the Islamic State group ring hollow to many in the opposition, who have watched Damascus turn a blind eye to the militants’ expansion in Syria for more than a year. Many even accuse the government of facilitating the group’s rise at the expense of more mainstream rebel factions.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday that Obama has not made a decision on whether to take military action inside Syria, but noted that the president has demonstrated his willingness to take military action to protect American citizens.
Earnest tried to tamp down the notion that strikes against the Islamic State could have the unintended consequence of bolstering the Syrian government, saying: “We’re not interested in trying to help the Assad regime.” However, he noted that there are “a lot of cross-pressures here in this situation.”
Al-Moallem’s news conference came a day after jihadis captured a major military air base in northeastern Syria, eliminating the last government-held outpost in a province otherwise dominated by the Islamic State group. After several failed attempts, Islamic State fighters stormed the Tabqa air base Sunday, killing dozens of troops inside.
At least one-third of Syrian territory is said to be in the hands of the radical Islamic State, and the loss of the airbase put the entire east Syrian province of Raqqa in the militant’s hands, a severe setback for Assad.
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