A pro-Russian Syrian regime and U.S. backed Iraqi forces will cooperate to defeat ISIS in the Middle East. This comes after tactical situations in both countries are gaining the upper hand against the terror group that occupied large swathes of land in Eastern Syria and Northern Iran. American and Russia military surprisingly approve the cooperation, the Middle East Eye reports.
How will the cooperation affect U.S. plans in the Middle East?
The United States is actively supplying and training Syrian rebels in their fight against Assad a few years after the ArabSpring protests of 2011.
However, now that ISIS came into the picture, U.S. Policy now changes from supporting Anti-Assad forces to defeating ISIS at all costs. The Kurdish forces incorporated into the SDF (Syrian Democracy Force) is currently being supported by the Pentagon. However, this military support is only to help defeat ISIS and not topple Assad's government, which is what the SDF is aiming to accomplish.
Because of this restriction, Assad's Syrian forces managed to take large swathes of land from ISIS without any difficulty. This is especially so given that Assad's army is heavily supported by the Russian military, which provided tactical airstrikes to weaken ISIS positions in Syria. Earlier last week, Syria managed to take the entire Southern Syrian Desert up to the Iraqi border.
Due to this, High-level Syrian officials went to Iraq to form a mutual agreement to cooperate in destroying ISIS.
What will be the strategy now that Iraq and Syria are cooperating?
According to reports from the Iraq defense ministry, the Syrian and Iraqi military will cooperate on maintaining pressure on ISIS and conduct joint operations from both sides of the border.
Both Iraq and Syria are also willing to share Intel about ISIS positions, strategy, and military installations. The Iraqi Air Force will also work in tandem with Syrian bombers to hunt and destroy ISIS insurgents that are retreating from the rapidly advancing Syrian army.
The possibility of thousands of Islamic State fighters crossing the Iraqi border in full retreat is a very likely eventuality.
It is therefore important for Syria to cooperate with Iraq in controlling border crossings of ISIS militants and to expedite their capture or extermination. Though most of the meetings of the two military officials of both countries were done confidentially, all of these meetings are condoned by both the Russia and America.
