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Middle East and North Africa 19


Eyron

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Well, yes, but bringing Iran into the West-friendly fold is also a chance to actually eliminate a threat without having to fight them in the first place. 

 

If that were ever to happen it won't be anytime soon, and Israeli policymakers having opposed this deal won't matter either way.

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Axes,


The Daesh have more staying power than I'd have oroginally anticipated. While they aren't as strong as a full Nation-State they aren't weak as I'd have anticipated. They've been pretty resiliant under sustained attack. I don't think they should be lightly dismissed.

They have only been engaged in conventional war for a little over a year. That they still have troops left isn't evidence for some great staying power, especially not considering how incompetent many of their enemies have been. 

 

Lets see how nice they look after another 1-2 years of conflict or so. American airstrikes have probably killed something like 15000 men by now, and likely crippled many thousands more. This in addition to significant losses from the Syrian and Iraqi air forces, and perhaps most importantly of all from the ground war against the Iraqi government, Syrian government, YPG, PKK  Peshmerga, Iraqi Shia militias, and a plethora of hostile Syrian rebel groups. Considering that at the end of the day the majority of ISIS consist of native Iraqis and Syrians rather than foreign terrorists, losses like these must be completely unsustainable in the long run. 

 

Edit: Typo. 

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I agree with Meir Dagan (and many others in the Israeli defence/intelligence world) that Iran isn't an irrational actor and isn't an imminent threat to Israel. Netanyahu and most of the Israeli political class are talking rubbish when they say otherwise. But that's not neccesarily incompatible with Iran being the country most likely to imperil Israeli security in the near and longer future. At the most basic level Iran is 1) a regional power that 2) doesn't like Israel and 3) isn't a strategic partner or otherwise dependent on the US, making it automatically a larger threat relative to any other country, even if the scale and likelyhood of such a threat is low.

 

Indeed. It's important to not forget that Bibi is a politician. He's bloviating to maintain his coalition and project his brand.

 

 

 

In Europe does not mean in every part of europe. But what do you think will happen in France for example? Sure it does not need a to become a full blown civil war, but just imagine the secondary consequences if for example marie le pen becomes president of france and the pegida or whatever the name would be then gets into the parliament in germany in the double digits. Sweden is also a candidate that might be in trouble.

And do not forget Great Britain. ISIS more or less threatens the political powers to be in europe. Sure, europe probably won't become a califat, but a strong shift to the right threatens those powers in the same way.

 

:rofl:

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KdnW,

I hope you are correct. The Daesh are pretty abominable.

It's hard to imagine something else being the final outcome really, when you look past the ISIS propaganda and all the hysteria surrounding them. 

 

Their absurd casualty rate is also important in another way than just manpower shortages, which is the loss of skills and experience. 

 

When ISIS went on the offensive last year it was full of former military officers and soldiers from the old Saddam regime, war veterans from Chechnya and the Caucasus, and Iraqi insurgents that had been fighting against Coalition forces ever since the occupation began. Many of these are probably gone now, or will be soon. To be replaced by new recruits (to some degree consisting of teenagers and children judging from their videos) with at best a few weeks of training or so, probably not consisting of much more than how to fire an AK from the hip while screaming Allahu Akbar. 

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Well, considering the CIA estimated IS's strength at 25-30,000 fighters, and the Pentagon is now claiming to have killed 25,000 in airstrikes alone, and yet they're still advancing, I'll take both claims with a massive bucket of salt. 

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KdnW,

Again, I really hope you are correct. But I would have thought, given those losses, the airstrikes, and the pressure from the Peshmurga that the Daesh would have folded by now. But as Hereward points out they are still in the field, still winning battles, and still holding territory.
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KdnW,

Again, I really hope you are correct. But I would have thought, given those losses, the airstrikes, and the pressure from the Peshmurga that the Daesh would have folded by now. But as Hereward points out they are still in the field, still winning battles, and still holding territory.

One year is not particularly long as wars go. 

 

 

They're going to be around in one form or another for as long as Iraqi and Syrian civil wars rage, it's that simple.

Pretty obvious in the Iraqi case, considering that the civil war there is a war between ISIS and the rest of the country... 

 

As for Syria it is hard to imagine that one of the other actors in that conflict that seeks to control all of the country (i.e. Assad or one of the rebel groups) would actually go and occupy the ISIS territory before they finished with their main enemies; each other. So yes ISIS will probably remain in some form there as well. This does not mean that they will be a viable military force that is capable of seriously threatening its neighbors until then, however. 

 

A real problem with ISIS though is all the copycat organizations that are springing up across the MENA region and elsewhere that refer to themselves as also belonging to ISIS, and starting their own wars against their respective enemies. Such as in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. How things will go for them is a completely different topic. 

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Axes,


The Daesh have more staying power than I'd have oroginally anticipated. While they aren't as strong as a full Nation-State they aren't weak as I'd have anticipated. They've been pretty resiliant under sustained attack. I don't think they should be lightly dismissed.

 

 

Im not dismissing them. But they have not faced a western army on the ground before. There's a huge difference between dealing with under equipped militias or badly trained on the verge of collapse Iraqi forces, to the IDF or other western armies. They have staying power, but they are not as strategic a threat as they seem. 

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Im not dismissing them. But they have not faced a western army on the ground before. There's a huge difference between dealing with under equipped militias or badly trained on the verge of collapse Iraqi forces, to the IDF or other western armies. They have staying power, but they are not as strategic a threat as they seem. 

A lot of the Iraqi members might have fought against the US in one capacity or another. The ones in Syria are holding their own against Hebollah and the Syrian armed forces. So they do have members who have experience facing competent adversaries. 

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A lot of the Iraqi members might have fought against the US in one capacity or another. The ones in Syria are holding their own against Hebollah and the Syrian armed forces. So they do have members who have experience facing competent adversaries. 

 

 

There's a difference between experience in facing competent adversaries and beating them. Even the 'expert' Iraqi ex-officers leading ISIS were a complete joke when facing western armies in the field. What's saving ISIS is the (understandable) unwillingness of the west to put boots on the ground again in that region.

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There's a difference between experience in facing competent adversaries and beating them. Even the 'expert' Iraqi ex-officers leading ISIS were a complete joke when facing western armies in the field. What's saving ISIS is the (understandable) unwillingness of the west to put boots on the ground again in that region.

 

Well yeah. And that's why ISIS has staying power. That and an understanding built from long-experience now (like, more then a decade) of asymmetric warfare against western armies.

 

The US et all won't drop a full scale ground invasion on their heads. And even if they did, ISIS have experience fighting that fight and would probably love it because it would drive up recruitment.

 

But overall, it's just not gonna happen. No one wants to do it.

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While I am suspicious/skeptical of the Iranian deal, it seems like it could be a step in the right direction.

 

Iran apparently has to give up quite a deal of fissile fuel and engines before the sanctions are lifted. Its not like we're giving them a bunch of goodies in hopes that they will stop building a bomb.

 

The Iranian people seem excited, and I can't blame them. I think there is a large segment of them that are fairly secular, and want more contact with the wider world.

 

Although the Iranian government is a theocratic state sponsor of terror.. idk they seem somewhat reasonable. They certainly seem different than say, Saddam Hussein, and with a much lower body count.

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Well, it seems Obama has quite a great run lately. Cuba, Iran and now turkey is opening the airbases. Hell, if he keeps this up he ends ISIS as a christmas present, World hunger for easter and probably HIV and Cancer by the end of august 2016.

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Regarding that whole region in a nutshell, I really do believe that radical Islam is there to stay, whether you can blame outside interference or just local conditions for this is a whole other debate entirely, but even if the pan-Levantine civil war where to stop the second after I post this message, it would still take decades for the region to experience anything along the lines of the Pre-2000's stability , nevermind the Pre-1918 one

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A cursory glance at the last decade of the Ottoman Empire should be enough to disabuse people of the idea that its rule was stable.

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Erdogan has ended his policy of indirectly supporting IS against the PKK and its Syrian affiliates in favour of direct attacks on both. This looks like the end of the PKK-Turkey ceasefire talks and must have been part of the quid pro quo to open up Incirlik to the Coaliition. If so, with talk of a potential Turkish-patrolled buffer zone between the two Syrian Kurdish border cantons we're now at a situation where US airpower assistance to the Syrian Kurdish PYD and its Peoples Defence Units (YPG/J) will operate side by side with Turkish attacks on their affiliate party and further moves to prevent them gaining territory inside Syria. What a mess.

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