Saudi Arabia too involved in Yemen to go to Syria: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, a political analyst, about the recent developments regarding Syria.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What the Iranian foreign minister is saying about the fact that operations should continue against the terrorists despite a ceasefire seems logical. Why would anyone oppose such a proposal?

Dean: Well, those that have been backing the ceasefire, that’s the only card they have. The play is to keep their people fighting so they can gain more ground, because at the end of the day whoever controls the most territories is going to be in the strongest negotiating position.

But... and we see with the Saudi group that came in, one of the first things they asked for is they wanted to be included, immediate ceasefire, release of all prisoners. And these are things that... but they included terrorist groups inside their group. So, they joined this coalition group to try to come in under their umbrella. And once you let one terrorist group in or two, you have a situation well why not bring them all in?

And the key to this is there are some groups that have gone over, a lot of people have surrendered and taking advantage of amnesties with the Syrians. So, people have crossed over. But those that still want to continue to fight, if they don’t to want to be involved in the peace process or then that just makes the continued fight by the Russians, the Iranians that are there, Hezbollah and the Syrian army, they have a smaller group of people to deal with and they’ll be defeated quickly if they want to carry on the fight.

Press TV: And what about the Western coalition, I mean, how serious are they in fighting the ISIL menace?

Dean: Well, they’re kind of quite in a pickle here. The ISIS is the... that now is totally exposed. We know the CIA has been involved in this up to their eyeballs from the beginning. There’s no way that they can pretend that hasn’t happened. But they’ve got new problems now, they’ve got a Turkey that’s a rogue elephant that basically looks... ‘if we can get what we wanted, which was the pipeline route from the Saudi oil and then the Qatar gas fields through northern Syria so that we could supply Europe, if we don’t get what we want, we don’t want anybody else to get anything. So, we’ll try to keep the war going.’

So, Turkey is already staging troops on the border possibly to go in and take territory. And Saudi Arabia is saying that they’re entertaining going in themselves. But I think that’s a bluff, because with their hands involved with Yemen now, which has turned into a mess, I can’t see the Saudis going in. But I will be the first to say it would not surprise me if retreating jihadis coming out of Syria end up in Saudi Arabian uniforms and go back in to fight under some kind of make-believe Saudi Arabia units where they say they’re fighting for a coalition.

I think they’re going to try to disguise the terrorists by having them join approved groups and this is going to be a very tricky thing to work on.

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