Saudi Arabia’s Master Plan Against ISIS, Assad and Iran in
Syria


Last week, the spokesman for the Saudi military, General
Ahmed Asseri , announced that Saudi Arabia is “is ready to
participate in any ground operations that the coalition
(against Islamic State) may agree to carry out in Syria” and
that its decision to move into the war-torn country is
“irreversible." However, given that the Saudis and their
allies in the newly formed Islamic Coalition are conducting
massive joint operational military exercises—codenamed
Northern Thunder—in preparation for very possible
military interventions in the near future, it’s clear that the
Kingdom-led multinational coalition will not stop at ISIS.
Rather, its ultimate objective in Syria is to take on Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad and the Iran-created Shia
militias, which are the source of as much, if not more,
regional terror than ISIS and Al Qaeda. Should this Islamic
coalition move into Syria and become the nucleus of a
regional coordinated military approach toward ISIS, Assad
and the Shia militias, the Obama administration will be
called out on its narrow Syrian objectives and be forced to
support the coalition or further degrade an already
tenuous relationship with numerous core allies, foremost
among them Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The tactical blueprint for the coalition’s move into Syria
while also remaining in Yemen is based on the Schlieffen
Plan, Imperial Germany’s pre-World War I strategy for
conducting war on two fronts. However, the Saudis have
learned not to repeat the plan’s mistakes, in particular the
misled assessments of the time about what it would take
to defeat the enemy. In Yemen, the war is progressing
soundly, with the Houthi rebels suffering major losses and
the Saudi coalition armies within 20 miles of the capital of
Sana. But Yemen will need to be tended to militarily for a
long time to come if that country is to be fully secured,
which is why the Kingdom is taking a long-term approach
and is in the process of putting together the personnel,
material and joint command structure to carry out
simultaneous protracted battles against multiple enemies.

The joint training exercises being carried out by the Saudis
and their allies involves as many as 150,000 deployed
troops from 20 countries based at the sprawling Hafr Al
Batin Military City in the north of the Kingdom on its
border with Iraq. Most of the ground troops are from Saudi
Arabia’s armed forces, with the majority having been
deployed from the Royal Saudi Land Forces (RSLF) and
Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG). These troops are
joined by specialized forces from the armies of Pakistan,
Egypt, Malaysia, Morocco, UAE, Sudan and Jordan. In
addition, troops from Senegal, Tunisia, Comoros, Djibouti,
Mauritania, Mauritius, Maldives, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar,
Chad and Oman committed personnel to the joint
exercises. From the East, Indonesia, and Brunei (alongside
Malaysia) have formed a joint coordinating committee with
the Saudis. Finally, the Saudis and Turks recently set up a
coordination committee for military affairs to plan future
large-scale operations into Syria via the Turkish border,
and in laying the groundwork for such an eventuality, the
first batch of a squadron of Saudi F-15s will soon arrive at
the Turkish Incerlik airbase.
This increasing emphasis on training for a ground invasion
signals that the Saudis believe that air strikes alone will
not defeat ISIS. Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi
Defence Minister, made clear at the NATO Defence
Ministers summit in Brussels last week that although the
Kingdom fully supports the air campaign against ISIS as
part of the U.S.-led coalition, it has deep reservations
about its possible success. Moreover, contrary to what is
being claimed by some Obama administration officials, the
Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) has too rarely been called
upon to join in the strikes. Since the U.S.-led coalition
bombings began on September 23, 2014, RSAF has only
flown 119 sorties (compared to RSAF's ability to fly over
100 sorties a day in Yemen), with the most recent request
having been made on January 1, 2016. This reality has led
the Saudis to believe that the air strikes are not being
carried out to their fullest possible intensity and have thus
been less effective than they should have been.
The Obama Administration’s Syrian policy is shameful and
strategically a disaster. The Russian agenda of preventing
the fall of Assad is now, in effect, America’s policy,
primarily, it seems, because Obama in his last few months
in office lacks the political courage to get involved while
also hoping that perhaps Russia will deal with ISIS. But the
Saudi-led coalition has the opposite view. Assad created
ISIS, and as long as he is in power, the Middle East will
continue to be drenched with terrorists. Thus, once the
Saudis and their allies get going against ISIS and then
move onto Assad and his Iran-supported Shia militias, the
policy of the Obama Administration will be completely
contravened.
Northern Thunder thus represents not only the emergence
of a major military alliance in the Middle East, but also a
major political quandary for Washington. As mentioned,
the air strikes being carried out by the U.S.-led coalition
have been ineffective in tackling the human catastrophe
that has been unfolding for far too long in Syria. While the
world might be fixated on ISIS, the Saudis and their allies
know that much of the violence plaguing the Middle East is
rooted in Assad and the Iranian-created Shia militias. If
they decide to go after these terror nurseries, it will be
time for the White House to finally decide exactly whose
side it is on.




http://nationalinterest.org/feature/saudi-arabias-master-plan-against-isis-assad-iran-syria-15221?page=2

Chess.

world war 3

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