The biggest loser of the Ukraine war
As I thought last summer, Ukraine, having mounted its last major offensive, left both sides exhausted into stalemate, and now we see there will be peace talks of some kind. Mr. Zelensky seems to accept this reality and is lobbying for Mr. Trump to make a deal with Putin while he still can.
That’s smart, as Ukraine cannot counter in the long term the human meat-grinder attacks, often with foreign mercenaries, the ruthless Putin regime has been conducting. The question is, what kind of deal will Putin make? Probably unfavorable to Ukraine, but sad to say, that’s where we are. The whole country was nearly lost in 2022. Now, at least, Russia will gain only some major chunks in the east and southeast.
For his part, once the Ukraine shooting stops, I don’t see Putin in a position to start a major conflict ever again. He has simply lost too many trained men and valuable weapons to threaten NATO. It isn’t even clear he can do much to help the pro-Putin regime now in Georgia. This is also why Putin is unable to lend a hand to his allies in Syria.
That brings us to the Middle East, which is linked in many surprising ways to Russia and Putin.
HTS, a one-time al-Qaeda offshoot, now claiming to be Sunni moderates, have taken Aleppo, threatening Damascus. They are wisely avoiding the coastal strip, home of the Assad family’s power base among the Alawites and where the Russian air force and navy are stationed.
The Syrian Army is a joke and has hung on this long only with help from Russia and Iran’s proxy army, Hezb’allah. As you might have heard, though, Israel has nearly destroyed Hezb’allah leadership the last few months. HTS and its allies likely think they can unite the Sunni middle of the country, which could leave the east for the Kurds (where there are still American troops) and the coast for the Alawites.
Iran has its own problems. The supreme leader is not long for this world. Potential successors are no doubt jockeying for the post, while the regime is deeply unpopular — so much so that Islam itself is dying in Iran. The regime reported last year closing 50,000 of its 75,000 mosques, and there has long been a massive underground Christian movement.
Whereas the phony experts like Barbara Slavin demand we redouble the Obama/Blinken appeasement policy, I suspect that Mr. Trump is all ears if Israel really has a plan for regime change in Iran. Recent Israeli air raids have shown the weakness of Iran’s defenses. A joint American-Israeli (and friendly but quiet Arab) military effort might be enough to finally end Islamist rule.
And if Iran is no longer in the terror funding business, along with its ally, the two-faced Qatari regime, Islamic extremism is dead broke.
Keep in mind that Iran is no Islamist backwater, like Afghanistan. Most people there are educated and modern. They are rightfully proud (like Egypt) of being heirs to one of history’s great civilizations. Like Japan, Italy, and Germany in the 1930s, history for them just took a terrible wrong turn in the late 1970s. If you remove the tyrants, it could again be a fine country.
And that’s no exception. For every extremist Muslim regime like the Taliban, there are plenty of moderate, tolerant ones, starting with the largest Muslim nation of all, Indonesia, and America’s constant friend in the Arab world, Morocco.
The sultans there have spent decades bravely promoting peaceful Islam to counter the ayatollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. If Iran were to do the same, what a great thing for the world.
It will be an amazing twist of history if Russia, in winning a costly war with Ukraine, causes a revolution for the good in the Middle East.
Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, Ky.
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Image: Chickenonline via <a data-cke-saved-href=" captext="Image: Chickenonline via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
