Will air assault against IS in Syria be used to effect regime change? [View all]

[another_liberal]

It would be tempting to use the pretext of attacking Islamic State targets to also degrade Assad's defenses, as well as his offensive assets. That could conceivably give the moderate faction anti-Assad forces a big boost. Nonetheless, it would be a dangerous proposition for our President to order such attacks on Syrian troops. They would very likely shoot back, and shoot back with some quite new and sophisticated AA capabilities. What if American planes are shot down, perhaps Americans captured? What then?

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov adresses to his Malian counterpart Abdoulaye Diop (not pictured) during their meeting in Moscow, September 9, 2014. (Reuters)

Lavrov: West may use ISIS as pretext to bomb Syrian govt forces

If the West bombs Islamic State militants in Syria without consulting Damascus, the anti-ISIS alliance may use the occasion to launch airstrikes against President Bashar Assad’s forces, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. “There are reasons to suspect that air strikes on Syrian territory may target not only areas controlled by Islamic State militants, but the government troops may also be attacked on the quiet to weaken the positions of Bashar Assad’s army,” Lavrov said Tuesday.

Such a development would lead to a huge escalation of conflict in the Middle East and North Africa, Lavrov told reporters in Moscow after a meeting with the foreign minister of Mali. Moscow is urging the West to respect international law and undertake such acts only with the approval of the legitimate government of a state, Lavrov said. “Not a single country should have its own plans on such issues. There can be only combined, collective, univocal actions. Only this way can a result be achieved,” he said.

His comments came shortly after Washington announced plans to go on the offensive against the Islamic State jihadist group. The US military has already launched over 100 airstrikes against militant targets in Iraq, including a new series that the military said killed an unusually large number of Islamic State fighters, AP reported.

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Moscow has repeatedly voiced its readiness to cooperate with Washington in countering terrorism, Lavrov said. Secretary of State John Kerry, in response, has proposed that the US, Russia and countries in the region cooperate to work out “a balance of interests so that they could eliminate terrorism threat,” he added, “However, this hasn’t got beyond words”.

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Read more at: http://rt.com/news/186356-lavrov-syria-bombing-west/