Aaron Stein

Ans one last thing — IS was always going to live on as a rural and defuse insurgency. Let’s stop pretending anything different was/is possible. We’re in for another cycle independent of US action or any other party that wants to patrol the MERV.

Focus has (rightly) been on the shambolic process that led to the withdrawal, but it’s equally disturbing that the bureaucracy failed to deliver to POTUS a clear withdrawl plan. Quite the opposite. Trump’s staff moved the goal post to include Iran & pursued “strategic patience”

This approach could have placed conditions on Moscow for benchmarks. With the Trump order, best US can do now is to clearly message that Moscow owns Syria. All of it. The other players may institute some semblance of the play above, albeit w/out making any concessions to the US

The US could have placed conditions on withdrawal if it adopted a semi-coherent policy once the Raqqa assault began. The obvious trade of regime security for Russian assurances on US interests vis-a-vis the SDF and then building out CBMs w/ Ankara was there for the taking

If we were having a serious debate we’d be asking why SEAL Team 5 is in Iraq. Full stop.

News: Today is my last day @ACmideast. My colleagues are wonderful people and I will miss them. It has been a nice ride. I am taking the next two weeks off of social media (no matter what happens) for the holidays. Professional announcement to come in the new year. Cheers

This is excellenthttps://twitter.com/AbuJamajem/status/1072845520534671362 …

Amount of effort to do simple things in the US-TR relationship is tremendous. An op E Of the river isn’t simple. At times like these, I take great comfort knowing that diplomacy is in such good hands, and that the leaders in DC and Ankara are level headed & understand one another

I really hope the USG takes this very serious warning and learns to simply listen to RTE when he speaks, understand that his threats — while political — stem from a deep sense of insecurity that goes above politics, and won’t be solved unless the USG answers what it wants from TR

The US has never answered what it wants from TR, other than to frame it in terms of things that TR should not actually do to begin with, like shoot at American soldiers. So the default outcome is a fractured policy debate, leading to bifurcated policy of appeasement+deterrence

Amid these talks, beginning sometime in November, it became clear that TR was serious about E. of the river, leading to the OPs. Lesson: Even when you have fwd progress on roadmap, TR will keep up incredible pressure to do more.

The backdrop, of course, is quasi progress on the roadmap, starting with the start of the initial vetting process (good luck w/ that) & the Turkish written statement from the latest WG that references E. of the river.

One component of this is to put significant military/military pressure on the US to make concession to TR for a buffer zone, extending some 15-20km deep to push YPG off the border. This makes sense from a TR perspective.

Id even extend this to the lie we’ve told ourselves about Idlib & the (in)famous POTUS tweet that some think actually mattered. TR and RU made a political decision in Idlib. It may fail, but what TR wants is to work through RU to ensure no decentralization of Syria

And I really, truly hope that senior US officials can drop the mantra that the US presence in E. Syria is in Turkish interests and that USG issue is with how to message to the Turks. That spin on the house of cards we’ve built is just nonsense.

Id challenge assumptions about what the TR op E. of the river will look like. Obviously I have no real clue, but I don’t think it will look like OOB or OES. Id think smaller, given the US and Assad presence. But even a small op can then be turned into leverage w/ DC