Tag: Bashar al-Assad

Putin and Assad caught on video laughing as they mock Trump during Damascus meeting: ‘Invite him. He will come’

AlterNet logoVideo has emerged of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad having a laugh at President Trump’s expense during Putin’s visit to Damascus last week.

“If Trump arrives along this road [to Damascus], everything will become normal with him too,” Assad said, according to a translation of the conversation. Putin then quipped that Trump would jump at the offer and if not, he’ll convince him to visit the country’s capital. “It will be repaired… invite him. He will come.” Assad replied that he’s ready to invite Trump. Putin then smiles and says, “I will tell him.”

The inspiration for the joke was the biblical story of the Apostle Paul, who was struck blind by God while on a road to Damascus, only later to be transformed into a follower of Christ.

The U.S. Spoiled a Deal That Might Have Saved the Kurds, Former Top Official Says

Forsaken by the U.S. and under attack by Turkish troops, the Kurds are turning to Russia for help. The last time they tried to do so, the Americans worked to talk them out of it.

ABU DHABI—Abandoned by the Americans, their former allies, Syria’s Kurds reportedly are allowing troops from the Assad regime to enter territory they had under their control. The Kurds also are putting out feelers to Russia for support against an onslaught by Turkish troops and Turkish-supported militias.

A return of Bashar al-Assad’s forces to northeastern Syria for the first time in seven years would make visible the end to the bitter, controversial U.S. mission there against the so-called Islamic State. That’s not because of any concerted decision to withdraw by President Trump, whose antiwar rhetoric obscured his vacillation about leaving. It’s because Assad will deny his American adversary the room to operate that the Syrian Kurds had provided their deceitful American partners.

“We know that we would have to make painful compromises with Moscow and Bashar al-Assad if we go down the road of working with them,” the Kurdish commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) wrote in an op-ed published Sunday in Foreign Policy. “But if we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.”

View the complete October 13 article by Spencer Ackerman on the Daily Beast website here.