The end of August 2016 is a critical date … so remember it

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Three years ago everything proved that the end of August 2016 will be a critical date in the war of Syria, I have written an article entitled “the holy August” from where this holiness came. From where the return to negotiations about the Iranian nuclear program which were disrupted since August 2012 after the negotiations of Bagdad, which is longer a secret that they were disrupted because Iran refused to put the situation of Syria as an item on its agenda, have come in November 2013 with the signing on the understanding on the political solution for the Syrian chemical weapon after the American admission of the impossibility to go to war, and the acceptance of the return of the fleets which came to wage a war but they did not, From where did the deadline of a year come for these negotiations? When the year ended in November 2014 everything suggested in Vienna that the agreement in its outlines has become concluded to the extent that Jeffry Feltman said at the spokesman of the Deputy Walid Jumblatt “we need this agreement and we want it as Iran needs and wants it and probably more, but we have extended the deadlines of the negotiation in order to grant our allies the necessary time to be adapted with the stage of the understandings”. Thus the question becomes from where did the deadline of seven months for the extension of the negotiation come, not three or six months for example according to the regularity of the measurement of a year and its equal parts. The deadline has ended in early of July 2015 and the signing on the agreement was in its mid after signing the framework of the agreement in the end of the past March. Therefore the deadline of a year from the mid of July 2015 to the mid of July 2016 was left for the maturity of the understanding on Syria. As practically the resolution of the Security Council 2254 which was issued in the early of 2016 stated that August will be a date for new constitution in Syria, it means surely the date of a crucial end with constitution or other, because the most important is August not the nature and the destination of the crucial transformation in it.

August 2016 was not mentioned in the calculation of the year and the seven months of the Iranian nuclear program to provide any Iranian entitlements or Iranian calendar, as well as it did not provide any Syrian entitlements or Syrian calendar for the Syrian scene, but it came from American entitlement and American calendar in order to enter all the issues which have the interest of Washington. The two issues of Iran and Syria in their organic interrelation are the central issues of Washington in the Middle East, and they are due to the position which the Middle East occupies since Washington has come out from the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq the pillar of  the birth of the new Middle East. As much as the Russian engagement is in them they will be the pillar of forming the Russian American relationships, and through them the pillar of the new global system. This has become clearer with the Russian military positioning in Syria in the phase after the understanding on the Iranian nuclear program and signing it. There are no opportunities for waiting the crucial steps for after August 2016 in stabilizing the rules of the new international and regional systems, otherwise the final exit from Afghanistan in the early of 2017 accompanied with the going out of the current president and his administration from the White House, and the taking over the responsibility of the rule by a new administration is an announcement for the first time since the wining of the revolution in Iran of giving the control of Asia to the Asian tripartite the Russian, Iranian, and the Chinese which is related by land across Afghanistan, , But Washington has prevented its occurrence for nearly four decades, moreover it has waged wars and wars in order to prevent its occurrence or disabling its impacts to reach the Mediterranean Sea, one of its most important, dangerous, largest and the most recently the war of Syria.  The end of August is the last opportunity to do something as important as the size of the understanding with Russia and Iran on the map of Syria in its two parts; the war on terrorism and the future of the Syrian state, after Washington which failed in overthrowing Syria by the knockout from the first round has been granted as it has did in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen the enough time for the successive rounds of multiple options to earn the result by points, where the accounts on which the understandings can depend have been allocated.

It is not a secret that what is going on around Syria during this month is so big, decisive, and fateful, and it is not a secret that this rashness in the major events, the concurrence, and the succession has not occurred by coincidence, where the entitlement of the end of August is pursuing the Americans in order to accelerate in doing what they have to do. And that Washington’ allies who have gained timeout to resolve their wars in Yemen and in the Northern and Southern of Syria in respect of  Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel in order to have control over the geography which reserves for them appropriate negotiating seat in the new regional system, have lost the ability to ask for more. Some of them is going on with  the American in employing what it has to anticipate the end of the last deadline as Turkey, satisfying with what it has to enter the train of settlements after it had realized that what it has reserved in the Syrian geography in the early of 2015, taking advantage of the deadline of the extended negotiations of the Iranian nuclear program has become a horrible burden for similar geographical appropriations carried out by the Kurds, and their barter became through entering in the comprehensive settlement in favor of the unified Syrian country knowing in advance that under the leadership of the Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is the best evils, as long as it will receive a support and help for its collapsing economy from Moscow and Iran, and saving for its political status in a way that compensates some losses of the crazy gambling in which it spent all its balance under the title of the dream of the Sultanate. While some of them is depending on his American balance to be within any settlement as the Israeli who has lost a round in the southern of Syria with the resistance since Al Quneitra process in the early of 2015 with the beginning of the extended deadline for the negotiations of the Iranian nuclear program, so it opened the platforms of the major settlements in accordance with the French initiative for Palestinian Israeli negotiations that are settled under the title of the Arab initiative for Peace and ends with a state in Gaza, as it opens on assumptions of limited wars that open the gate for comprehensive peace negotiations, while the Saudi remains moving from a failure to another, from an involvement into another, from obstinacy to another in order to assume alone paying the bills of the accumulative losses of the whole war’s alliance.

In the mid of August the events accelerate and the developments rash to show that as if an alliance that includes Russia, America, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq is in line on the arena of the Middle East, so America joins sticking to Russia in striking announcement by the two Ministers of Defense and the Foreign Affairs of Russia about imminent America Russian military cooperation in Aleppo. While Turkey announces its cooperation with Russia and Iran, in addition to near decisive developments in Syria. Iraq is preparing itself to receive the effects of this cooperation in the war of Mosul. Meantime the Russian strategic bombers are positioning in Iran. Despite all the tension Washington announces of an understanding with Turkey on the positioning of the fighters that it will need in the war against ISIS in Incirlik Base. The Secretary-General of Hezbollah Al Sayyed Hassan Nasrollah made an appeal to the groups of Al Nusra and ISIS that the decisive hour is approaching and there is crack in the door which may open if they want or if some of them want to get out of this war before the lava starts falling over their heads and the forces invade their strongholds.

The American Russian cooperation will witness many interactions in the remaining days of August, in the light of the confusion of the administration which ends its duties with the entry of the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her team which consists of the current Minister of Defense Ashton Carter and the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency  David Petaeus to postpone this cooperation, while Russia seems that it is going on with its allies towards the agreed deadline which is the end of August with Washington or without it. This is what Washington knew and through which it got a pressure. While Turkey has presented through its stood against America in the path of the cooperation an additional reason for the American confusion. Furthermore the US Secretary of State John Kerry will call repeatedly till the end of August his Russian and Turkish counterparts.

It is the moment which does not like but the American landings in Normandy with the Soviet crawling toward Berlin at the end of the Second World War. Only the group of Riyadh is in  “ political coma” that is similar to what was the group of the French Vichy which dealt with the Nazi occupation, waiting its black destiny while their leaders are foreshadowing of that “ they are confident that the upcoming developments from Washington and Ankara are in their favor, and that their Saudi sponsor is having control over the matter” but he is standing far telling them whispering that the game is over, the Turkish nationality is the best thing that will proposed to you so do not miss the opportunity  while you possess your luxurious apartments near Bosphorus.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,