Good luck:
Raqqa will be part of a decentralized federal Syria now the city has been freed from Islamic State, the U.S.-backed militias that captured it said on Friday, tying its future to Kurdish-led plans to set up autonomous regions in the north.
Will Assad and his Iranian (which supplies Hezbollah and Shia foreign legion shock troops) and Russian partners go along?
Russia might to distance themselves from Iran and in recognition of the need only to protect Russian bases in western Syria.
But Iran wants a land corridor from Lebanon to Iran through eastern Syria and Iraq.
And is Hezbollah, which has already lost 1,500 dead in what the leaders justified to their war weary public as an effort in western Syria to shield their own Lebanon base, really willing to bleed some more for eastern Syria?
The war is heating up in the Syrian region of Deir ez-Zor, where the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and forces loyal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad are competing for Islamic State (IS) territory with threats of clashes increasing. There in the Badia region, which connects Syria with Iraq, Hezbollah is playing a prominent role alongside regime forces, according to a Hezbollah commander who spoke to Al-Monitor.
The US-backed SDF doesn't seem like it is going to stand aside as Syria seeks to extend control east:
U.S.-backed militias said they captured Syria's largest [al-Omar] oil field on Sunday, pressing their assault against Islamic State in the east of the country.
Is Assad tired of the bloodshed and willing to call it a day with what he has already?
Will Assad's base of support which has suffered enormous casualties and financial losses to hang on in western Syria really support more war and more sacrifice for that objective?
And will America and our anti-ISIL coalition support such a federal Syria in the northeast that defends its border as the SDF militias pledged to do? Was that pledge made with knowledge of American support?
If we do, it will help us regain influence in Iraq which will have an excuse to resist Iranian pressure to allow supplies through Iraq to reach Lebanon. If the route is blocked in Syria, the line of supply through Iraq is pointless.
The end of one problem is always the entry ticket to the next problem.
But we seem to have failed to plan for the next fourth phase, which I had hoped we would accept when President Obama launched the (overly cautious) war on ISIL.
