Putin bogging down in Syria...like Obama said he would.

[Benton]

(12-14-2015, 12:48 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: All the groups there need Isis to help their current aspirations.   Russia needs Isis to justify the fight vs the FSA to help Assad.   Iran needs Isis to look like the good guys for once.   USA needs Isis to justify arming the FSA to remove Assad so they can cater to the Saudi's.  

Isis is the enemy that everyone needs and that no one wants to wipe out just yet until they do other things that help themselves.

And yes keep Assad .  We don't need another government falling into the hands of the Muslim brotherhood.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/syria-and-saudi-end-tariff-war

Quote:Still Saudi Arabia remained the largest single Arab investor in Syria, a position embodied by the huge US$100 million (Dh367m) Saudi-owned Four Seasons hotel that towers over Damascus. According to unofficial figures, the $750m of annual Saudi investment in Syria for 2007 grew to $1 billion in 2009.



...



However, some major Saudi investors either scaled back their involvement or decided not to follow through on expansion plans. A manager with a leading Saudi construction firm said, on condition of anonymity, that as a result of the feud dozens of companies froze investments or mothballed projects already underway in Syria. That meant the additional foreign capital so desperately needed by Damascus - billions of dollars over the coming decade if the economy is to remain afloat - did not materialise.

Ostensibly, this has now changed. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia met Bashar Assad, the president of Syria, last month, re-establishing diplomatic relations. In the latest step, Mahdi Dakhlallah was sworn in as the new Syrian ambassador to the kingdom on October 25. And the tax war over ceramics and olive oil has ended, the tariffs abolished - a small, yet concrete symbol of improved ties between Syria and Saudi.

It's an older link, but it's still the same. The Saudis don't care much about Assad one way or the other. What they care about is ending the fighting. Their investments in Syria don't pay off if they're gassing people. But I do agree as far as Russia goes, ISIS doesn't matter to them, they only need Syria's geography. And keeping Assad in power allows them to do that.