Every day brings another scary headline from the Middle East — which makes it easy to treat them as background noise rather than a clear and present danger. But the latest batch is reminiscent of the Balkans circa 1914, which means it may be time to tune back in. Some examples:
A US Navy jet shot down a Syrian warplane. Syria is a Russian client state, so this puts the US and Russia on opposite sides in a shooting war.Russia warned the US that it takes the destruction of its client’s military assets seriously. It suspended the hot line Washington and Moscow have used to avoid collisions in Syrian airspace and threatened to target US aircraft.Iran has begun launching missiles into Syria targeting ISIS. This is new in at least two ways: 1) Iran hasn’t used those particular missiles in decades, and 2) it was not previously active in Syria. This escalation from advising the Assad regime to actually killing people and blowing things up adds another player on Russia’s side against the US.Iran and the US trade threats. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Iran of destabilizing the region and promised that the United States would support “those elements inside the Islamic Republic which would bring about peaceful government transition.” Iran called those remarks “unwise and clear meddling in Iran’s internal affairs.”Saudi Arabia claimed to arrest members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who were attacking a Saudi offshore oil facility, and said that three of the attackers were being interrogated. One day later Iran accused Saudi Arabian border guards of opening fire on Iranian fishermen in the area, killing one of them.
The Saudis and Iranians are leaders of Islam’s two main factions, the Shiites and Sunnis. This makes them natural rivals, but until now they’ve mostly sparred through proxies rather than directly. Here again, the conflict is going from cold to hot.
And that’s in just the past few days.
The old stuff that caused most Americans to tune out hasn’t gone away:
The Syrian war continues to rage,
the Saudis and their allies continue to bomb Yemen even further back into the Middle Ages,
Israel continues to build new settlements in Palestine and threaten to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities,
ISIS is still burning and beheading its victims on YouTube,
and Turkey keeps slipping further into dictatorship.
The difference is that the major players are now bumping up against one another. All it will take is for one fighter pilot or destroyer captain to miscalculate and kill another major powers’ soldiers, and – as in World War I – these interlocking alliances might pull in everyone else. And there’s not a thing the average person can do about it.
The resulting chaos will have at least one predictable result: All pretense of fiscal and monetary discipline will go out the window in the rush to move people and machines into the theater. If you think we’re over-indebted and due for a currency crisis now, just wait.
A US F-15E fighter jet shot down a Syrian regime drone on Monday near At Tanf, Syria, the third downing of a pro-regime aircraft this month, CNN reported. The downing of the drone comes a day after a US jet shot down a regime aircraft that was engaging a fleeing ISIS convoy, according to the Syrian government.
An armed Shaheed-129 UAV “displayed hostile intent and advanced on Coalition forces” at 12:30 am local time on Tuesday, the coalition said in a statement. The drone was observed in the same area where another UAV was shot down on June 8.
"The drone was downed just outside the 55 kilometer de-confliction zone, according to the officials.It was an Iranian-made Shahed 129 and was thought to be armed and in firing range of US troops.One official said that the drone was shot down because it was 'assessed to be a threat.'That drone was shot down after it dropped one of several weapons it was carrying near a position where coalition personnel are training and advising partner ground forces in the fight against ISIS."
According to Fox News, this is the second time the US has shot down an Iranian drone in less than a month. It also marks the fifth time since late May the U.S. military has bombed pro-Syrian forces in southern Syria.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy described the attack as “a dangerous escalation" of tensions between the US and the main backers of the Syrian regime, Russia and Iran.
Murphy told CNN that if the US doesn't stop the attacks, the situation could escalate into an armed conflict between the two sides, who both claim to be fighting ISIS.
“I think we’re getting closer and closer to open conflict between Iran and Russia and the American public need to know that we are moving very fast towards what could be another war in the Middle East – something Donald Trump promised he wouldn’t do when he ran for office.”
On the same day that the drone was shot down by US forces, an armed Russian fighter jet buzzed a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft in the Baltic Sea, two U.S. officials told Fox News.
In the latest in a long series of close encounters, Fox News reports the Russian Su-27 jet had missiles under its wings and approached the U.S. Air Force RC-135 recon jet "rapidly," coming within five feet of the American aircraft, the officials said.
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