Thus Team Obama's inability/incompetence in smashing those oil tanker convoys; Ankara's feathers could not be possibly ruffled.
Team Obama always neglected how Riyadh and Doha, directly, and then via private donors -- coordinated by the notorious Bandar Bush in person -- financed both al-Nusra and Daesh.
Instead, Team Obama rode the merry weaponizing of al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham, via the CIA's supplies to the Free Syrian Army (FSA); all those weapons were captured by al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham. Team Obama, never surrendering to their own myopia, duly branded al-Nusra & co. "moderate rebels."
Team Obama always derided Iran as a hostile nation, a threat to the GCC vassals and Israel. So everyone allied or supported by Tehran was also hostile or a threat: the government in Damascus, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shi'ite militias trained by Iran, even the Houthis in Yemen.
And to top it off, there's Russian aggression, manifested in Ukraine, and then with Moscow interfering in Syria, via what was interpreted by Team Obama as a crude power play in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Amidst all the current shadow play, the true test of the Obama administration's intentions is whether the US coalition will really fight Daesh, al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham (which harbors a lot of jihadists from Chechnya, Dagestan and Uzbekistan), with no reservations.
This would imply Team Obama telling both Ankara and Riyadh, in no uncertain terms, to back off. No more Jihad Express. And no more weaponizing. Without these red lines, the Syrian peace process juggling between Vienna and New York does not even qualify as a joke.
No one should be holding their breath. As no one should be reasonably expecting that an astonishing mediocre, lame duck Team Obama would have the balls to confront Wahhabism as the true ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi jihadism, moderate rebels included.
Which brings us back to all that angst simmering across the Beltway. With or without Team Obama, the fact remains: no conquered -- or at least balkanized -- Syria, no Full Spectrum Dominance.
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