https://southfront.org/syrian-war-report-june-23-2017-army-regaining-more-ground-near-palmyra/
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The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the National Defense Forces (NDF) and other pro-government factions have further advanced against ISIS and US-backed militants in the province of Homs. On Thursday, government troops captured Tal Ghurab northwest of the US garrison of Zquf near the Syrian-Iraqi border. With the liberation of Tal Ghurab, the SAA and its allies increased pressure on US-backed militants operating in the area and strengthened the Syrian military position at the border with Iraq.
Separately, the SAA and the NDF captured Zahar Abah and clashes with ISIS at the Arak gas fields area. ISIS militants fiercely defend their positions east of Palmyra.
In the province of Raqqah, the SAA and the NDF have resumed attempts to re-take the Ithriyah-Resafa road from ISIS terrorists. An intense fighting is ongoing.
Earlier this week, the SAA seized a large ISIS workshop in Resafa, capturing a notable number of battle tanks and other equipment.
Turkey, Russia and Iran have been working on a plan to deploy their troops in de-escalation areas in Syria, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told media on Thursday.
“We will probably be most prominent in the Idlib region with the Russians; mostly Russia and Iran around Damascus, and a mechanism involving the Americans and Jordan in the south in the Daraa region is being worked on,” Ibrahim Kalin said, adding that the sides will further discuss the de-escalation agreement during talks in the Kazakh capital Astana in early July.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Shamanov, head of the defense committee at Russia’s State Duma said that Moscow has been negotiating with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan suggesting them to deploy some forces into the recently established de-escalation zones.
Russia, Turkey and Iran signed a deal in Astana on May 4 to establish four de-escalation zones in order to minimize violence in the war-torn country.
On Thursday, reports appeared that the government and militants operating in Daraa have reached comprehensive reconciliation agreement and the SAA may re-establish control over the border with Jordan in the area. However, these reports were not confirmed by government officials. Clashes in the area continued.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued an advance south of Raqqah, capturing Al-Kamb from ISIS. If the SDF seizes Mustajid Naqib, ISIS units will be fully encircled inside the city. ISIS launched a series of counter-attacks in Raqqah but didn’t regain any large areas.
Media black-out on Syria alliance’s current operations continues. A few tidbits from Canthama:
Partitioning Syria.
“… Any serious attempt to partition Syria will not be peaceful, it will be war. Syria will be involved, Iraq will involved, Iran will involved and finally the Turkish regime, the latter is fully responsible to support terrorism to Syria that back fired with the turkish century old kurdish dilemma.
The US will find very difficult to fight arabs in Raqqa and Hasaka that do not tolerate the US hypocritical democracy and regime changes. It will be war for a long run, but by then Syria will be much stronger as a country and can face it heads on, always together with its many allies.
Lets no forget that the US is isolated on this, and the US is prime to hit weak countries. This time Syria has backing from strong countries, so the US will either face the strong countries heads on or simply negotiate, time will tell the way the US, a terrorism supporting country, will elect as its best path forward.
T2.
“… The situation of the Syrian desert looks really promising, soon we will hear the liberation of T2 and Humaymah village, the recent advances close to the Iraq border has been steady and most of the water sources are already under the SAA and allies.
http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=34.324725&lon=39.182739&z=9&m=b&gz=0;386691284;339205715;1977539;6029585;0;4580076;1318359;3150761;11535644;0;15957641;2128334;15078735;4081227;3598022;4330688
Further near to T3, there is only one dent with very fierce ISIS resistance, it is the Bir Al Jafeef area, SE of T3. Once ISIS is defeat at this area, the whole T3-T2 will be very safe for all the Syrian forces.
Very important days ahead. The media black out continues, and info is shared and confirmed with a certain delay.
Jobar.
“… Same media black out is on for Jobar and Ain Terma in East Damascus, the nusrats are taking a serious beating and a lot of urban ground was gained recently, some of them are near check mates to the terrorists, it seems this time Jobar is in the right direction to be recaptured.
One key info related to the failed SAA attack in the air defense SW Daraa city. It seems there are enough evidence that Israel used surveillance apparatus (sats) plus sleeper cells in the area, that alerted the terrorists about the attack with specific details, so in fact it was a trap, and 15 SAA soldiers were KIA. This was a hard lesson for the SAA in Daraa, they are fighting against the terrorists, Israel, Jordan, UK and the US all the time. Lessons learnt, more offensives ahead.”
yes i agree. there won’t be a partitioned Syria.
till now, I restrained myself to comment on agitprop claims* that Russia sold out Syria and made a deal with USA to break up Syria. Nothing of that happened. Russia just letting USA play its hand and reveal her true intentions:
if USA backs Kurdistan, Erdogan will finally have a strong raison d’Être to leave NATO – a huge loss for USA, but if they don’t support it, its game-over for the US in all of MENA . hard choices!
but i think resolution will come from an unexpected direction: on Sept 25th the Kurds will vote
against independence. LOL that will be the ultimate blow to the AngloZionists. all their efforts have been in vain. btw, this is a reason why the SAA is avoiding a direct confrontation with the SDF – in order to avoid “bad blood” and keep open the possibility for a unified Syria (the Kurds get wide autonomy of course). this outcome explains why some agitprop commenters* called for retaliation on SDF troops for the downed Su-22. you scammers are transparent!
anyways, Kurdistan will never be, because all surrounding countries – Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria – are against it. and USA can’t bully them like they did with Montenegro & Macedonia to recognize the illegal NATO statelet Kosovo.
the future is bright.
(Removed,attacking other posters violates the blog rules.MOD)
it is a mistake not to publish the paid agitprop handles.
putting the spotlight on agitprop psyops would surely make them quit or at least try harder.
we should all make their job more difficult. they deserve it for messing with peoples minds
and stirring up troubles.
I do hope you are right but the ever increasing US military presence in Syria pretty well confirms that the Americans do intend to militarily occupy a large part of the country.
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960403001130
I do not think there should be any “deal” with this outrageous and totally illegal occupation but the reality is the US will have air superiority over this part of Syria as Russia is tracking intruding aircraft in the west only.
I also worry that without Russia, the SAA will have a very difficult time holding on to what they have gained and the setting up of a US occupation zone can only mean the creation of a Kufrdistan or Israel 2.0 statelet posing even greater risk to Syria and of course Iran
Let’s face it – Syria is being carved up.
I do not feel this is receiving as much attention yet as it should – it is going ahead right under our noses.
After all this time, and after massive amounts of work by Russian and Iranian forces, ISIS is still able to fight effectively in the Palmyra region. What does this tell you about Syria’s future the moment Russia scales back its forces there, and Iran is no longer willing to commit extraordinary numbers of its citizens’ lives to the ’cause’?
For sure Russia can wipe out most of the current ISIS cannon fodder in Syria today. But for every ISIS chump who dies, dozens of replacements are being bred in wahhabi hell-holes across our planet (just check the birth rate figures, and the ‘education’ these kids get). The wahhabi indoctrination machine grows massively each year- and is actually ***supported*** by Russia with Russia’s UN voting pattern always giving essential support to Saudi Arabia and allies.
Putin now admits it only sees Syria as a training ground for Russian forces, and an opportunity for Russia to refine its battlefield weapon systems. Syria ***could*** be made part of the Russian Federation, in which case the West and its wahhabi tools would have to permanently back off- but hell will freeze over before that happens.
But it gets worse. Syria is just a ‘domino’ whose fall is intended to be part of the chain leading to war with Iran. The zionist mainstream media is now full of propaganda accepting Russia will end this generation of ISIS in Syria, triggering the West’s war with Iran. The idea goes like this- once ISIS is “conquered”, the West will demand Iran formally removes all mechanisms of influence in Syria. When Iran doesn’t, the West declares it has the right to attack Iranian forces there- you know like how the West shot down that Syrian plane with Putin doing nothing (yet again).
And the Qatar ‘pawn sacrifice’ is about to happen. Saudi invading Qatar, discovering ‘evidence’ of Iranian backing of all the world’s islamic terrorists. It is a pathetic lie to claim America ever ‘provokes’ Russia, for if the USA wanted direct conflict with Russia it would just declare a no-fly zone over Syria tomorrow and use the zionist mainstream media to sell it as a “save the civilians” humanitarian decision. But Saudi Arabia most definitely provokes Iran.
Empire powers never provoke one another- by definition that would be moronic. Instead Empire powers attempt to back one another down. But the proxies of Empire powers are provoking one another all the time. A weak empire, by definition, never effectively stands up for its allies. Oh, for sure it may offer hopeless military support- support that brings even more devestating war to the people. But it never works to bring lasting peace.
The allies of the West don’t fear war. Why? Because the West guarantees this. What does Russia guarantee its allies? That it’ll never protect them politically in the UN- and then when the lack of UN action allows the West to start wars, Russia ***might*** throw more fuel on the fire by providing military assistance that keeps the conflict going indefinitely. And for this Russia is praised by people whose families live well outside the war zones.
If the West wasn’t warmongering just as fast as it can, Russia’s response might be justifiable. But since Blair first rose to power, the anti-war sentiment of the people of the USA has been reversed, and the US war machine has exterminated nation after nation after nation while Russia has consistently failed to use its veto power in the UN to stop or slow this. Putin has made Russia much stronger in response- and ensured Russia’s military has more than kept pace with the West. But Russia has done nothing to slow down the West’s warmongering- and has actually worked to accelerate it instead with political choices of the worst kind.
Russia couldn’t even keep hold of Palmyra – a momentary slip and Palmyra was lost again and had to be painfully retaken. Almost every part of Syria is like this- and who here is foolish enough to think Russia’s military presence all over syria is even a mid-term thing?
But like I said, it doesn’t even matter cos Syria is but a stepping stone to Iran, and even if the Qatar pawn sacrifice doesn’t work (and we’ll find out one way or another within a month), the West will find another strategy and another and another until Iran is attacked. Only Russia ***could*** prevent this, but Russia is actually doing more to set Iran up than to protect Iran.
The biggest fools are those who say that because it hasn’t happened yet it can’t happen. Such fools gave us WW1 and WW2 (yes, just like now, people like myself warned that preparations were being made for global war- but the professional propaganda naysayers denied this by saying “these people keep predicting a war that never happens so stop worrying, and congratulate your military for regional ‘successes'””).
The people that gave us WW1 and WW2 actually stated in the clearest terms for decades that this was their intention. America and Britain state in the clearest terms their intentions toward Iran and Russia. The forces that could have prevented WW1 and WW2 just refused to listen- just as Putin refuses to listen today. Yes, Russia prepares for war perfectly- but it should act to prevent war- and this it never does.
Only strong military action prevents greater conflict when an opponent is currently using military means to create the circumstances for greater wars. Appeasement- Russia’s only current ‘strategy’- guarantees greater war. And it is always true that the main (secret) funders of appeasement sentiment are the bad guys themselves. True most appeasers have no idea they are being manipulated, thinking instead that appeasement is ‘loyalty’ to the leaders of ‘their’ side, and pro-‘peace’ to boot. A horribly naive optimism true evil find perfectly delicious.
Just remember the phrase “fight fire with fire” comes from the tactic of burning away a strip of once combustible material in the path of a raging fire so the fire will hit a ‘dead zone’ and burn out. The same logic applies to fighting the West, but instead Russia simply ensures the new targets of the West are even more ‘combustable’ – Iran’s military strength as a regional power ensures a most perfect war against Iran because America will be able to justify using nukes against Iran using the same arguement it used to justify using nukes against Japan.
@twilight (real choice name)
First of all it is not up to Russia to pay with blood for the benefit of Syria. I do not understand why everyone is yelling: Russia this Russia that. Russia is only helping, while testing it’s own weapons. Russia comes in takes territory, leaves it to Syrians and they run at first sight of daesh. Then Russia comes in again takes Palmyra and sort of hands it back to Syria, but this time leaves it’s people on post to protect it. Then Russia starts to train Syrian Army, and now we are seeing the results.
So leave the twilight and come down to earth.
The reason why Syria is facing it’s division is only because of a very slow progress in the field, and not because Russia makes secret pacts with usofa. It takes a serious commitment and sacrifice on behalf of Syrians to protect their territory and they can only be thankful for whatever help they get from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, but the job has to be done by then. This was should have been finished five years ago.
Some may think that you would have written differently if you knew more about the material…I know this is always true for everyone, Comrade.
“Empire powers never provoke one another – by definition that would be moronic”
Not so fast.
Financing, orchestrating, infiltrating, scripting, guiding, commandeering the Right and the Left (and all parties in between), the Neocons and the Trumpers, the Bolshevik and the Nazis, both sides of the American civil war, is the MO of all of Zions Intel operations since way back to the Roman Empire.
Hint:
To be able to do this successfully, it is advisable to have world-wide money creation powers and complete global media control.
Hmmm….some thoughtful thoughts in this……
Meh, just another blame Russia post.
Partition of Syria and the manufacturing of a Kurdistan / Israel 2.0 has long been a notion the west desires in the event they don’t manage to smash Syria completely.
And given that they most certainly have not managed to smash Syria completely – and now can’t – the “statelet” plan is bound to seem more realistic and definitely attainable for the Anglo Zionist hegemon.
Certainly, no such announcement has been officially forthcoming and at this stage there are only rumours – and a few facts however.
We have to accept that It is obvious that if the US decides to occupy a part of Syria in a determined fashion with lots of soldiers and planes and missiles etc there is nothing anybody can do to get them out.
In other words it would become impossible for the SAA or Russians to regain territory “east of the Euphrates” because the huge US military machine would stop them.
I cannot possibly know if this will happen but can say it will happen if the US wants it to.
This is where Russia might get accused of betrayal by idiots because if this happens the border between Syria and occupied Syria will not be decided by military action but in the form of a “deal”.
Russia will have to sell that deal as the best that can be achieved at this time. With Syria and Iran wanting to fight on who knows what could happen especially to Iran . . .
Anyone criticising Russia for this partition deal, if it happens, should be invited to submit their own propsals for getting the US out. of Syria. Perhaps they’d like to have a try.
Anyway, so the US – and it’s allies in the region – can easily achieve their statelet if the US is willing to garrison and protect it.
Are the US massively increasing their forces in Syria? You bet.
Then I saw the Sputnik article ;
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201706221054867138-us-coalition-syria-plan/
in which a Turkish professor of politics says the following and note he says the US coalition want to implement this plan “. . . at any cost”
“However now it becomes clear that such behavior of the US and the coalition forces means only one thing: instead of preserving the territorial integrity of the Arab Republic, the US tries to split Syria, break it down.
In Raqqa, the expert said, the US is trying to set up if not a separate state, but at least an autonomy with wide-ranging powers. If there were no such a plan, would the US attack the Syrian forces, putting at risk their relationship with Russia, he questioned.
It is only too evident that the US’ plan for Syria is to break it down, partition it. However the Syrian government forces are trying to prevent it. And in Raqqa we are witnessing the attempt of the coalition to implement this plan at any cost,” Celalettin Yavuz stated. ”
Done deal, or just speculation?
“…there is nothing anybody can do to get them out”
sure there is. when the dollar collapses, the Americans will leave on their own.
will it take some time? most likely, but it will be so.
Israeli airforce attacks Syrian military including tanks, after shells fall on Israeli “controlled” part of Golan Heights sputnik news is reporting at this moment……funny I was wondering about this situation recently…
Reminder than when ISIS hit Israel, they used a back channel and apologized, and Israel did not retaliate
https://www.sott.net/article/349005-Former-Defense-Minister-Moshe-Ya-alon-confirms-Israels-collaboration-with-ISIS-in-Syria
Now that Israel has to watch uncomfortably how SAA & party are quite effectively and ruthlessly eliminating the Zionist-Islamist invaders from Syrian soil, it fears for the Golan heights it stole and that have grown closer and dearer to its heart than the fabled Temple of Solomon itself.
Nobody knows how the Solomon’s Temple actually looked, the drawings and plans that have survived are all of dubious pedigree and probably all sketched by Jews, and the Israeli above all know to treat such sources with a great deal of caution.
Tho Golan heights and a generous perimeter reaching deep into Syrian territory are Israel’s red line. That is what the IDF’s war crimes of recent days are all about.
For the time being the SAA’s priorities are elsewhere. But the Golan heights won’t be forgotten, that is for sure.
Extensive article by Gareth Porter 22 June on information clearing house….just how usa Saudi Quatar supplied al nusrah, sdf etc in Syria…….
Classical example of non-direct Strategy to defeat invading forces includes “forcing” the invader out by:
1) leaving him a way out that does not unnecessary burden this invader
And
2) feeding discord within his forces, harrying the invader, war of flea, limiting his supply system.
And
3) making the best of feeding discord in the invader’s home. “Propaganda” in this time only works if one says true things, but Propaganda works if it’s true stuff, and relevant. Economic upsets can be critical too.
If these are done in concert with law and custom, with proportionality, invading forces will be called to defend the invader’s home government, or sometimes State itself.
RT is doing this pretty well…and avoiding many errors.
However, it is possible to make a transnational army… I forget the name of that…
Then the business gets complicated… It must be starting to work, as 4thReich is increasing assaults in the several world theaters of W3, ie Barbarossa 2.0, or the pre-emptive action against it, must be proximate in time, weeks? I too have note many odd airplane crashes in US on mil inst.
Most unusual..huummm.
The nazis cannot do anything but be nazis, and so they cannot understand this logic. This is a fatal fissure in body of nazi gang. But this also means that Strategy can not work against nazis.
This leaves a material question.
Pax
When RT “discovers” and tells the straight stuff on the 911 job, and gets bombed, then the sitzkrieg phase will have past…well, maybe when they get back on the air after being bombed, then they will discover the new stuff on 911 (gasp! Shock!)
Actually it looks like the affairs of 1914….about to get real hot, I am sorry to say…
I am satisfied that things are rolling…on a knife edge…toward abyss.
Hope dies last.
LZ
One senses everything is boiling up relentlessly…..terrifyingly……catastrophically…….eg usin thinking about withdrawing from intermediate misile agreement……Norwegian troops staying on I Trondheim….asymmetric responses….Golan heights…..state sponsors of terrorism isis themselves being terrorised….foreign policies subversively sponsoring terorism eg white helmets but unable to deal with backlash cos maybe it promulgates their own interests political or mic selling arms to Saudi….is this now how we measure economic success in the world? The boiling pan one day is gonna burn dry and go off with one big pop one day……..
https://deutsch.rt.com/meinung/52996-in-syrien-und-am-golf/
pretty interesting analysis…in German, obviously…
LZ
Perhaps this female Arab reporter would be willing to contribute an article here, she has a very interesting twitter account sent from the front lines in Syria.
Jenan MoussaVerified account @jenanmoussa Jun 23
Replying to @jenanmoussa
3/ We met Kurdish fighter in Raqqa who spots ISIS targets, finds location on google maps &sends coordinates to US army via Whatsapp. @akhbar